Hospital Toy

RISD 2019

Hospital Interventions was a research heavy studio with RISD designers and Brown University engineers focused on improving the ER experience for geriatric patients with dementia. This studio was sponsored by Dr. Hayward at Miriam Hospital and Rhode Island Hospital.

Team: Sophia Xu, Yoel Zaid, Andrew Brodsky

Skills:

Ideation, physical prototyping, design for manufacture

Opportunity

Solution

Currently, emergency room visits for agitated and delirious dementia patients frequently worsen their condition in the long term.

The emergency room protocol for agitated dementia patients is to employ physical restraints and sedatives that further distress and disorient patients, making for difficult transitions back to care giving facilities and worsening their conditions both physical and mentally.

Our solution is to mitigate agitation by introducing play in the ER.

Our hospital toy uses texture and touch-responsive lights to facilitate low stimulus play that distracts and entertains dementia patients, preventing agitation.

Research

Working with Dr. Hayworth, our team visited Miriam hospital and interviewed ER specialist to find insights that guided our design process.

Key insights:

Emergency Room protocols are designed for patients with traumatic injuries needing surgery or medication and involve long wait times between operations in which patients are alone. Dementia patients would often get confused, lonely and agitated during these periods known as “unvaluable time periods”.
During “unvaluable time periods”, delirious patients were calmed by dim light, and while many stayed awake, they were too tired to play complex games to distract them.
Dementia patients often took toys or stuffed animals they found in the children triage area with them to their pod. Many patients gravitated toward light-up toys.***
When agitated, patients sometimes threw objects, or pulled out IVs. Our product needed to be durable.

To comply with ER sanitation protocols, our product needed to be easily cleaned.

Concepts

Form:

Our research showed that dementia patients already gravitated toward children’s’ stuffed animals and light-up toys leading us to create a lap toy for use in hospital beds. In our form studies, we gravitated toward abstract, zoomorphic figures with a playful and dignified form language.

Texture:

Our team was drawn to the satisfying texture of silicone noodles found on silicone kitchen brushes and experimented with different texture forms, sizes and densities.

Fabrication

My team fabricated this light-up toy in a two step roto-moulding process that formed a structural resin core with a soft silicone over-mould. The arduino, battery and other electronics are attached to a cap on the bottom.