Healthy Design
American Public Media’s Caitlan Carroll for Marketplace examined the efforts of one hospital in San Diego to “improve health by design”. As the story goes, Sharp Memorial Hospital is taking a new approach to keep their patients healthy and shorten hospital stays by utilizing innovative architectural, interior and process design. Implementing design elements one might expect in a 5-star hotel in hospital waiting rooms or practical details like laundry hampers in patient rooms improve everything from employee workflow to a patient’s state of mind. The hospital expects real results in patient recovery time, employee morale and, yes, even their bottom line.Read Carroll’s complete story here.
So who wouldn’t benefit from this emphasis on healthy design? We tend to take the everyday design elements around us for granted. But if better design works to improve our well-being and productivity, isn’t it time we all reexamine the spaces in which we live and work?
That rationale should apply to our virtual environments as well. According to Mashable.com, the average person spends 68 hours online every month. What if all that time was spent in frictionless virtual endeavors. All our searching would result in meaningful findings (bing anyone?). All our tasks would culminate in productive exchanges. We can derive a list of best design practices from the flood of analytics and metrics available. So how is it so many websites make it difficult for internet users to purchase/participate/donate/volunteer?
By promoting good design online, we can create healthier and more productive online communities/users/consumers… and, as a result, healthier online businesses. Here’s to a new Design Revolution!
This was posted by lherbert on Sunday, September 5th, 2010 and is filed under Blog, Creative Team Blog, Featured, it contains the following tags American Public Media, Bing, Design, health, Healthcare, hospitals, Marketplace, Mashable, web design.
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