Abstract
As the view of patients as passive receivers of care is changing towards more active participants in the healthcare process; hospitals are gearing up to provide more patient-centric services. At the same time; they are under increasing pressure to do more with stretched resources and demographic changes. To this end; service design has been utilized in many institutions to provide insights gathered from stakeholders and to design services to that focus on the patient. However; hospitals as a unique design context provide specific constraints for the design process. This paper presents a method of enquiry that was developed during an experimental service design project in which services were developed for sarcoma-type cancer patients. The method borrows visualizations; tangible props and actions from the world of games to assist the patients in the interviews to remember; understand and communicate their patient experiences. The patient journey was visualized in the form of a board game and physical props used by the patients to indicate significant people and events during their care. The game board acted as a design medium; both presenting information for the participants and engaging them to communicate personal and sensitive experiences. It was observed that in addition to the patients; the hospital staff was drawn to the game board as a way of representing information about the patient journey in an easily accessible way. The feasibility of the method was evaluated in the action and fine-tuned during the process. This paper describes the context of the case; the method developed and discusses the implications of this method for design research in services.
Keywords
Design research; patient experience; design games; customer journey
DOI
https://doi.org/10.21606/servdes2012.3
Citation
Kronkvist, J., Järvinen, M.,and Leinonen, T.(2012) Games as Design Medium: Utilizing Game Boards for Design Enquiry with Cancer Patients, in Tossavainen, P. J., Harjula, M., & Holmlid, S. (eds.), ServDes 2012: Co-Creating Services, 8–10 February, Espoo, Finland. https://doi.org/10.21606/servdes2012.3
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
Conference Track
Research Papers
Games as Design Medium: Utilizing Game Boards for Design Enquiry with Cancer Patients
As the view of patients as passive receivers of care is changing towards more active participants in the healthcare process; hospitals are gearing up to provide more patient-centric services. At the same time; they are under increasing pressure to do more with stretched resources and demographic changes. To this end; service design has been utilized in many institutions to provide insights gathered from stakeholders and to design services to that focus on the patient. However; hospitals as a unique design context provide specific constraints for the design process. This paper presents a method of enquiry that was developed during an experimental service design project in which services were developed for sarcoma-type cancer patients. The method borrows visualizations; tangible props and actions from the world of games to assist the patients in the interviews to remember; understand and communicate their patient experiences. The patient journey was visualized in the form of a board game and physical props used by the patients to indicate significant people and events during their care. The game board acted as a design medium; both presenting information for the participants and engaging them to communicate personal and sensitive experiences. It was observed that in addition to the patients; the hospital staff was drawn to the game board as a way of representing information about the patient journey in an easily accessible way. The feasibility of the method was evaluated in the action and fine-tuned during the process. This paper describes the context of the case; the method developed and discusses the implications of this method for design research in services.