Towards Healing through Digital Nature in Critical Care and Beyond - An integrated approach to design nature-based aesthetic experiences to promote delirium prevention and patient wellbeing
Chan Mi Kim is a PhD student in the Department Interaction Design. Promotors are prof.dr.ir. G.D.S. Ludden and prof.dr.ir. G.J. Verkerke from the Faculty of Engineering Technology and dr. T.J.L. van Rompay from the Faculty of Behavioural, Management and Social Sciences.
From a morning forest that makes us feel refreshed to a sunset beach that puts us in a mellow mood, nature provides a myriad of experiences that positively influence how we feel, think, and behave. As such, nature has been a source of inspiration for designers, especially for promoting health and well-being. Fuelled by digital technology, simulated nature environments, which refer to digital nature, became available to bring benefits of nature experiences to people with contextual and physical barriers. We focus on the potential of digital nature to benefit healthcare settings, particularly for vulnerable patients in intensive care units (ICUs), by transforming the ICUs into a healing environment that promotes patient well-being and reduces delirium. While the potential of digital nature is promising, little attention has been paid to understanding how diverse nature experiences foster healing in individuals. Furthermore, there is a lack of actionable insights for designers to effectively incorporate these findings into the design of products and services. We, therefore, explore nature experiences focusing on their therapeutic potential, and investigate how designers can systematically apply nature-based stimuli in the design process to support patient well-being and recovery, incorporating digital technology– designing digital healing. This thesis covers fundamental research into nature-based stimuli through mixed-method studies, context research into ICU patient experiences, a literature review on ICU delirium prevention technologies, and a multi-stakeholder co-creation workshop synthesizing insights to build a collective vision for creating digital healing for critical care. A series of design tools and frameworks that explain the working mechanisms and elements in nature that bring about healing experiences are conceptualized. The thesis also proposes two design concepts for ICU and post-ICU patients as examples of integrating insights from our findings. Seven individual studies have been conducted, resulting in seven journal and conference publications, six of which are published and one currently submitted. This study contributes to healthcare design by introducing a novel approach to incorporating nature-based stimuli in creating personalized healing experiences, providing knowledge and tools for designers to utilize these insights. These explorations are conducted in collaboration between the Interaction Design Lab at the University of Twente and Philips Healthcare.
