Participatory design practices

Within the course “Participatory System Design” we worked with the outpatient department at Gentofte Hospital. Our process involved extensive user studies of all personal at the department to identify key bottlenecks. The studies was done by both passive observations, participating in the daily work life and several user involving workshops. The end result was an overall optimization of the waiting area and registration system through various prototypes tested on sight.

Along with a team of 4 fellow students we designed and performed several design games to foster interaction and knowledge exchange between different personnel groups (receptionists, nurses, doctors, section leader etc.). A co-creation workshop was carried out which helped us foster and develop new ideas that was latter used in our final concept proposal.

Co-creation through design games
Workshops to foster knowledge sharing
Pretotyping / rapid prototyping
Contextual design methods to open up a problem field