UCSF Children’s Hospital Playground
Co-designing an inclusive playscape
Role: Experience Designer
Our team engaged with UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital through Adaptivepath.org and Capital One’s Design pro bono program. Our brief was to activate their existing garden playscape that wasn’t functioning for long term and short term patients, patient family members, and hospital staff. The design team consisted of PXD, the UCSF children’s hospital staff, KidMob and Stantec, an architecture consulting company that worked on the architecture of the hospital.
Design approach
To better understand the needs of the people occupying the space, our team held two workshops, one with patient’s families and one for hospital staff. We co-created ideas with children and their families; representing the needs of patients who were not mobile enough to participate in the workshop first hand. Our primary insights were that families and staff desired a space that…
is safe but also inspires play and excitement with kids (patients and their siblings) yet
has embedded moments of privacy to serve as a relaxing getaway for parents and staff
is accessible for the entire spectrum of patient needs
is designed to meet infection control standards
has seating, shade, line of sight/visibility of kids in the play space
includes sound dampening for neighboring patient rooms
In development
The hospital staff and stakeholders loved the concepts we presented and decided to pursue the build out. We took the most popular elements from each concept and combined them to create a single design that is currently being developed by Stantec architecture firm who will bring the design to a higher fidelity (meeting safety & construction codes in accordance with hospital and state regulations.) The larger team plans to hold a fundraiser to increase investment and awareness of the project.
Synthesis
The team took the insights from the workshops and developed 3 complete versions of the playground in Rhino and then lasercut and 3D printed scale models of the environment to accompany a set of posters to help stakeholders better understand the space they're investing in.
