Client/Company/Project type
Mayo Clinic / Conceptual Project
Project date/duration
Fall 2023 / 3 months
My role
User Experience Researcher: Designed and implemented the interactive experience room. Responsible for project conception, design, user research, and execution.
Project Summary
In my professional role as a User Experience Researcher at Mayo Clinic, I devised an innovative way to bridge the empathy gap between clinical and non-clinical hospital staff. The project aimed to create an interactive experience room—similar to an escape room—to simulate the daily challenges faced by hospital-based floor nurses. This novel approach was intended to foster empathy and understanding among non-clinical staff by immersing them in the nurses’ work environment and tasks.
The Challenge/Problem
The primary challenge was the lack of empathy and understanding between non-clinical and clinical staff at Mayo Clinic. Non-clinical staff often have limited insight into the rigorous and demanding nature of nursing, which can lead to communication barriers and decreased workplace collaboration. The goal was to design an interactive experience that would not only be engaging but also educational, providing a hands-on way for non-clinical staff to experience the daily challenges faced by nurses.
The project had to address several constraints:
- The experience had to be accessible to individuals with no medical background.
- It needed to simulate realistic nursing tasks without overwhelming participants.
- The technology employed had to be readily available and cost-effective.
- The experience had to be designed for a standard conference room setting.
The Solution
The solution was an “Experience Room” that combined interactive technology with empathetic design to simulate a nurse’s workday. The room contained seven puzzle stations, each representing a critical nursing task, set up in a standard conference room. The technology included marker tracking, pattern recognition via machine learning, augmented reality, and video and sound effects.
Design Process
- Concept Development: Brainstormed and outlined the concept of using an escape room format for empathy-building.
- User Research: Conducted interviews and shadowed nurses to understand their daily challenges and key tasks.
- Design and Prototyping: Developed sketches, wireframes, and prototypes for each puzzle station.
- Technology Integration: Implemented marker tracking, AR, and machine learning for task simulation.
- Testing and Iteration: Conducted usability tests with non-clinical staff, iterating on feedback to refine the experience.
Key Features
- Vein Finding: Used augmented reality on a mobile tablet to simulate vein visualization.
- Medication Administration: Required participants to correctly portion tokens representing different medications.
- Mandatory Training: A puzzle demonstrating IV catheter insertion.
- Pain Control: Participants used laminated cards with pain management strategies to reduce a simulated patient’s pain level.
- Shift Handover: An audio-recorded report that participants used to answer questions and complete a task.
- Scheduling: Participants arranged tokens representing nursing roles on a floor plan according to specific rules.
- Unexpected Events: Simulated interruptions like a code blue and family member requests to mimic real-life nurse challenges.
Results
The project successfully demonstrated the potential for interactive experiences to build empathy among non-clinical staff. Participants reported a heightened appreciation for the complexities of nursing tasks and the pressures faced by nurses. The project highlighted the importance of innovative methods in employee training and empathy-building, contributing to a more collaborative and understanding workplace environment.
Reflecting on the project, it was clear that leveraging technology in creative ways can significantly enhance empathy and understanding within an organization. The next steps involve scaling the experience room to include more nursing tasks and potentially expanding it to other clinical roles.
Transcript
This is my final presentation for Interactivity 1, Fall of 2023. In my professional role as a user experience researcher, I study and learn about how employees at Mayo Clinic perform their day-to-day jobs and create recommendations on how we can make the digital workplace function better for them. To communicate my findings, I usually create presentations and reports designed to help stakeholders, business leaders, ERS, and product managers understand how these users think and feel about their experiences. Sometimes, this gets boring, so I’m always looking for new and engaging ways to transfer this knowledge to decision-makers.
Interactive experiences make a more profound impression on people who engage with them, so I thought an escape room—or a better name would be an experience room—would be a novel way to create empathy for a group of employees that I have recently studied in depth: the hospital-based floor nurse or RN. Escape rooms have been used successfully for hands-on training purposes with nursing students and other learners to provide an engaging change of pace from the traditional classroom. These photos come from escape rooms at New York’s University of Buffalo and the University of Connecticut. This experience room combines interactive technology from this class with empathetic design to simulate the everyday challenges of a hospital nurse in a complex environment.
Technology employed includes marker tracking, pattern recognition via machine learning, augmented reality, and video and sound effects. Our primary audience is non-clinical hospital staff, so one design challenge is that higher medical knowledge cannot be assumed. Like most escape or puzzle rooms, this one is intended to be played by a team of two to six cooperative players. The hope is that players will leave the experience with a better appreciation for the everyday working life of their patient-facing colleagues.
The nursing experience room is set in a standard conference room, approximately 15 square feet, equipped with challenges that represent important tasks in the nurse’s workday. The room contains seven puzzle stations set on standard conference room tables surrounding a central table. Also in this room are overhead speakers and lights capable of displaying different RGB colors. A flat panel display is mounted on the wall near the door, displaying a countdown timer and other messages as part of gameplay. A webcam is mounted to this display, aimed to visualize the players’ faces.
Each station contains the same equipment and is set up the same way: a mounted webcam pointed down at the marked work area on the table, red and green indicator lights, a flat panel display, and a variety of manipulatives like tokens, printouts, and other objects that depend on the puzzle theme. Near the door is the clue or help request station. Players are informed before the game starts that if they run into problems or want help, they can go to this area and press the button for a clue from the game master, who keeps an eye on how the game is progressing in the room via cameras. When a player requests a clue, the message is shown on the display for 15 seconds before disappearing.
Before the game starts, the game master briefs players on the rules and reminds them they are not trapped and can leave. Personal devices are discouraged. Each player receives a printed paper brain that looks like a medical form and a pen, but they receive no instructions on what to do with these objects. A paper brain is something that nurses typically carry with them throughout the shift to write down data and information about their patients until they get back to their documentation station. At game start, the overhead lights are normally lit, there is no sound on the speakers, and all the puzzle stations are set to the start position with indicator lights off.
In the center of the room, this large puzzle must be completed to fully complete the room. Players see five flip chart-sized pieces of paper with some details about each patient already filled in. This represents the medical documentation for the five patients currently admitted on the floor, a major part of every nurse’s workday. Sometimes, nurses spend more time charting or documenting than actually caring for patients. This puzzle requires clues and components from other puzzles in the room to finish it.
Puzzles 2 through 7 operate similarly. At random times and in a random order, the red indicator light at the station will light up and begin playing a pinging noise—not loud, but enough to create a sense of urgency and to be annoying. This represents the patient activating the nurse call light in their room. Instructions on how to complete the puzzle appear on the display and will remain there until the puzzle is complete. The overhead camera watches the marked work area on the table for successful completion of the puzzle, at which point the red light switches off, the pinging noise stops, and the green light illuminates.
Puzzle 2 is vein finding, using augmented reality on a mobile tablet at the station. Players need to aim it at the outline of the patient’s arm to visualize the veins. They are instructed to put a marker on the largest vein in the arm, which then completes the challenge. Players are given a clue that the tablet will also show answers for the vital signs component of puzzle one’s medical charts.
Puzzle 3 is medication administration. Players must portion tokens representing different pills into each of five cups mounted on the table. The camera detects when the correct tokens are in each cup via pattern recognition. The tokens are unlabeled, but two printouts at the station contain descriptions of the medication, and another shows dosages for each patient. This information is also needed to complete puzzle one’s charts.
Puzzle 4 is mandatory training. Players have to put together a puzzle showing the insertion of a type of intravenous catheter. Once the puzzle is assembled correctly, the camera sees this, congratulates the players, and gives a clue. Data needed for the puzzle in the center of the room is written around the edges of these puzzle pieces.
Puzzle 5 is pain control. At this station, there are several laminated cards with various pain control strategies, like offering a pillow, offering an ice pack, mild pain medication, and strong pain medication. Each card has an unmarked point value that shows how dramatic the effect is on the pain. Players are instructed that the patient is complaining of pain, and they have to hold up cards to the camera to reduce the patient’s pain level from eight out of ten points down to zero without going over or under zero. The camera will recognize the cards and automatically deduct those numbers from the pain value. While the players work, they hear a repeated loop of the patient saying things like, “Ow, nurse, give me something for this pain, I feel like I’m dying,” to add urgency to the task. Like the other stations, there is data on the back of the cards needed to complete the puzzle in the center of the room.
Puzzle 6 is shift handover. Players must listen to an audio-recorded shift report and arrange pre-printed words to answer questions printed on the tabletop. Information from this recording is needed for puzzle one, and players are also given a clue to nudge them to write that information onto their paper brain printout so they don’t try to remember it.
Puzzle 7 is scheduling. Players are given a simple floor plan of a hospital with four areas marked and a bunch of tokens representing three different nursing roles: RNs, LPNs, and techs. Players must portion the tokens according to the rules displayed on the monitor. The rules include things like every area needs at least one RN or LPN, the emergency room needs two techs, and Pediatrics needs two RNs. Every tech needs an RN or an LPN to supervise them. After completing this puzzle, a clue is given to find information needed for puzzle one, which is taped under the table for puzzle 4’s station.
To make things even more fun, there are two randomly timed events triggered at some point during gameplay, representing the interruptions nurses deal with all the time. The first unexpected event is a code blue. When this occurs, the overhead lights flash blue, and the speaker announces “code blue” in a very dramatic way. A message is displayed at the clue station, telling players to come there and press the button to stop the lights and alarm. There is no challenge to solve, but the monitor displays an informational message about how nurses play an important role in medical emergencies.
The second unexpected event is interruptions. For this event, the overhead lights flash white, and the speaker plays a loop saying, “Excuse me, hello, can I get some help here?” repeatedly. Like with code blue, players must come to the clue station and press the button to stop the lights and sound. There is no challenge to solve, but players are informed of how often family members drop by with questions, doctors come by with orders that need immediate assistance, and other interruptions that pull a nurse’s attention away from what they are trying to do.
When participants solve the central puzzle, the game master congratulates the winners. Successful participants are encouraged to take photos of themselves using a printed poster on the wall outside the room to help spread awareness of the experience. The poster says something like, “I escaped” or “I completed the experience room,” with a social media hashtag to help advertise the experience. The goal is for everyone to have a positive experience, so the game master may need to provide more help or give players more time to be successful.
For scope and constraints, the big advantage of this project is that it uses equipment and technology currently available and cheap or free to get. Anything used can be returned to service after the experience room is taken down. Like any project, the experience room has risks, especially since we’ve never done it before. While technology and gameplay will be thoroughly tested, unforeseen complications can arise, such as requisition problems, people not enjoying the puzzles, players not cooperating, or something going wrong with the technology.
In conclusion, this project’s goal was to leverage technology in new and innovative ways to help bridge the gap between clinical and non-clinical hospital staff. After all, increased employee empathy will help contribute to a more efficient and enjoyable working experience for everyone.
