Either/And Evidence-Based Design
 This issue’s research articles, which will all be presented at the Design & Health World Congress in Singapore in June, challenge designers to respond to multiple and non-parallel goals, bridging the research-design gap with clarity and careful methods.
Shepley, Gerbi, Watson and Imgrund promise a comparative study of an old and a new Intensive Care Unit in the same hospital, focusing on the effects of increased daylighting and window views on staff, patients, and families. Only the methodology and data from the old ICU in phase one of the study is presented. The design team for the new hospital ICU argued that increased capital costs for windows into the ICU would be offset by benefits to staff and patients. This research – when finished – should either prove or disprove this hypothesis. We anxiously await phase two comparative data from the new unit.
Kate Bishop presents the results of interviews with children that identify elements of the built environment in paediatric hospitals that provide children with positive healing experiences. Bishop fi nds that the aesthetic environment, spatial variety and adaptability all contribute to children’s comfort, positive frame of mind, and engagement. She provides specific guidance: Provide artwork by other children and adolescents yet avoid “simplistic images associated with young children.”
Provide places where kids can carry out “normal routines” including “age- appropriate areas for socialising.” And enable kids to feel able to express their identity by personalising their immediate environment – their bed area. Bishop’s discussion of single and double rooms clearly raises the “Either/ And” design question. While there is a drive among researchers and designers to control in-hospital infections by providing patients only with single bed rooms, Bishop’s data show that 50% of the kids she interviewed preferred two-person rooms to increase social contact, ward off loneliness, and reduce fears of isolation.
All applied research and evidence based decisions raise the question: How should a responsible design decision maker respond to conflicting “evidence?” This case clearly demonstrates that evidence-based designers do not face conflicting facts, but rather data with different objectives leading to different design decisions.
Rostenberg, Baum, Shepley and Ginsberg face this potential dilemma head on by comparing the demands of evidence-based design to those of sustainable design. They demonstrate that there is no conflict between evidence-based design principles and practice, and those of sustainable design. But as with single and double rooms, the fact that there is no such conflict means that responsible designers now have a double responsibility—an either/and responsibility to resolve multiple sets of requirements that do not easily fit together.
Dr John Zeisel is chair of the international advisory board of the International Academy for Design & Health and president of Hearthstone Alzheimer Care
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