An interactive tray to better your stay at the hospital. This all-in-one tray lets you have control over your room and entertainment. It revolutionizes the hospital stay experience by giving paitients
When we visit our loved ones in the hospital, we can’t help but feel pained to see them in discomfort. From the cold, sterile, and unfamiliar environment, to the loneliness and boredom, patients are left with anxiety and loss of independence.
Our solution is an interactive tray to better your stay at the hospital. This all-in-one tray lets you have control over your room and entertainment. Read full usability report here.
Interviews were conducted to define problems surrounding the general hospital stay experience, and to discover ways that Smart Hospital can fulfill needs of patients.
The questions in the interview focus on patient’s experience of comfort and discomfort both mentally and physically, their experience with the hospital setting, and the use of their time spent during their stay. The three main things we want to learn are: the most uncomfortable part of being in the hospital, the things that patients require assistance with, and what sorts of things they use to entertain themselves.
We had two sets of interview questions, one for patients and family members that visited someone in the hospital, and another set for nurses or people who assisted patients in the hospital.
The three main things people have expressed desire for during their hospital stays are: independence, comfort, and entertainment.
Our primary audience are between the ages of 65 and 85 who typically stay in the hospital for two or more days. These patients have a general understanding of technology and tablets and may be first-time or repeat patients. The secondary audience are younger patients between the ages of 15 and 64 and also includes family and friends who may want to help entertain the patient or update them on their current treatments.
Initially, we came up with features we thought would benefit the patients, nurses, and family visitors such as: pain level indication, patient medical history, personal health goal charting, and informational videos to prepare for discharge. However, after analyzing interviews, we chose to focus only on the main concerns of the patients, which were comfort, independence and entertainment. To this end, we decided on six options: room setting adjustment, bed adjustment, beverage requests, nurse paging, and shows.
One of our concerns was regarding a homepage that displays the main navigation. We questioned, how the users go back to home page, where would the button go, if there should be a tactile button on the side. Our solution was no homepage, and instead placed a bottom navigation in for ease-of-use.
Wireframes and prototyping were done on Adobe XD, and tested on several lucky candidates that matched our persona characteristics!
Users experienced similar struggles when asked to perform the light switch function and noted that differentiating between lights that were on and off was confusing. On the other hand, some users mentioned liking the check mark that came up when they clicked on lemon and ice, indicators for clicked elements, and suggested having the same response for the lights.
Another useful suggestion from this test was to change the confirmation pop-up from “A nurse will be with you shortly” to “A nurse is on the way”, which would help ease the mental state of most patients.
The visual language takes on a gentle, but professional look. We used large icons which are easy to see, especially for patients on pain medications who would have a hard time reading small print. We felt that the blue color communicated a health-related, yet friendly app.
The physical design serves to aid those who have limited mobility.