Author:

Keywords:

architecture, creative research, healthcare, review protocol, user experience

Abstract:

Increasingly we recognise attempts that explore user experience in healthcare settings both in research and design endeavours. Our primary interest is in identifying creative research methods (CRM) that are used to gauge the experience of healthcare environments. We see potential in an active involvement of patients and caregivers as experts, not only relying on their present and past experience, but also through CRM, accessing their latent needs and offering opportunities to formulate their vision of the future. We define the term creative in such a way that includes terminology common in both design and research practice. This protocol outlines the steps taken to systematically investigate what is known from existing literature about CRM exploring user experience in research and architectural design processes in healthcare generally or in cancer care in particular. It relays the search strategy for a database search and an additional search of grey literature. The protocol is expected to be helpful in carrying out reviews in related fields contributing to knowledge synthesis techniques for qualitative research. We furthermore anticipate that the dissemination of design-related research outside of peer-reviewed journals will continue and will require further work to ensure inclusion in processes of knowledge synthesis. The final review will give insight into why, where and how CRM are currently employed and applied to gauge the user experience of healthcare environments.