Applying the Living Lab Approach for the Design of Public Spaces– A Living Lab Case Study

Living Labs approaches emphasise the importance of real life contexts in public spaces and service provision as an integral design component of the physical space including technological interactions. We report on the findings and outcomes of a Living Lab Project - the Waiting Room of the Future Project. This research focuses on a waiting room redesign for Access Health and Community, a partner of the Future Self and Design Living Lab both located in Melbourne, Australia. Waiting rooms are an example of a public space where the physical design is an integral part of the service provision. The emotions of staff and patients have a significant impact on service perception and a direct impact on overall patient satisfaction. Previous studies concerning healthcare waiting rooms provide little emphasis on current and desired emotional responses of stakeholders (e.g. staff, patients, and clinicians). This research focuses on patients’ emotions and communication as an integral component for re-designing patient experiences. We place emphasis on how stakeholders would like to feel when engaging with future technology, spaces and services of a local community health care provider. We illustrate our findings concerning stakeholder experiences using goal models and how they can be translated into an innovative design. In considering the spatial, service, and technology layer in one study at the same time we are able to come up with a waiting room concept that has user needs permeating through all three layers truly addressing the complexity of designing such spaces. Lastly, we offer a variety of co-creative methods that are suitable to enable key stakeholder to communicate their emotions that connect strongly service and technology delivery in healthcare settings.