Healthcare is a part of our society that has pivotal importance in how we understand wellbeing and how we rate happiness in a country. However, hospitals are usually places that do not pay too much attention to their user experience, surely due to practicality reasons.
Funding is normally directed towards technical equipment and specialisation; the user experience is a secondary issue that due to the urgency of the problems, receives less attention.
Domestic Data Streamers used an art stay, together with La Panera Art Center, to try to understand what cancer patients, both under treatment and those who had already overcome the illness, felt during their stay at the oncology ward of the Arnau de Vilanova Hospital in Lleida (Catalunya).
Visualising the patients’ feelings in different spaces of the hospital
To try to comprehend and empathise with the journey, we documented and visualised with photographs the emotional path of the patients and companions. We repurposed the space to create a data visualisation experience that would explain the feelings of the patients in different parts of the hospital: How did they feel on the counter? In the waiting room? Going into the radiotherapy rooms?
We visualised the answers and turned them into relatable information to show the users believe that they were not alone in feeling fear, boredom, joy or despair. Moreover, we gave them a tool to carry home and to keep on collecting their own experience through empathy and emotion.
The Feeling of Patients
How important is healthcare in the wellbeing of a country?
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