with NUS Centre for Ageing Research in the Environment, in collaboration with URA
Designing Future-Ready and Sustainable Nursing Homes for Person-Centric Care Models in Communities
I worked on this architecture-led, multi-disciplinary research study during my employment at NUS. The project investigates the future typology of nursing homes in Singapore. I worked with the multi-disciplinary team, providing design research support.
Nursing homes in Singapore have a reputation of being isolating, gloomy and hospital-like. This study seeks to understand how we might cater aged care services that meet the psychosocial needs of a rapidly ageing, diverse demographic, and change the prevailing narrative.
I carried out design ethnography and focus group discussions with the team across 5 case study nursing homes in Singapore, bringing a human-centred design lens to a multidisciplinary team.
Key themes of interest in our research included enabling a home-like living environment, community integration, and technology’s role in mitigating manpower costs.
The 2-year research culminated in a set of guiding principles for future nursing home design, and 2 future vision proposals.
Design Ethnography
I conducted over 40 hours of design ethnography across 5 local case study nursing homes, observing a day in their lives.
The aim was to understand the nursing home occupants’ lived experiences (residents, care staff, family members), observing their routines, interactions with each other and the space.
The team and I recorded notable observations onto ‘highlight cards’, which were thematically analysed and sorted. Broader observations around routines and space usage were mapped onto a Time-Space-Activity map, capturing a snapshot of stakeholders’ movements through the nursing home across a typical day.
The data collected were synthesised with data from the architecture and OT researchers on the team, using their respective methodologies, to surface common themes and patterns.
Our research culminated in four key principles and 12 sub-principles, aimed at promoting autonomy and self-reliance, empowering positive social relationship, inclusivity for different users’ needs and catering for future change.
The principles serve to inform future nursing home designs and were translated into design concepts by two architectural firms. Read more about the outcomes here.
Translating human stories into future scenarios as research Stimuli
From our research, I crafted a series of personas of the future older adult generation, the demographic who will be users of aged care services in 30-40 years time, drawing out key differences in their educational background and life aspirations in old age compared to the current generation.
With my architecture colleagues, we explored a hypothetical nursing home model that is integrated into public housing, enabling ageing-in-place and greater community integration.
We asked, what if autonomous technologies can be integrated to provide care support to older adult residents with low to moderate care needs?
And how can community be leveraged to support holistic ageing-in-place? How might the built environment facilitate this?
We sketched scenes to explore a day-in-a-life of our personas in this fictional future scenario and created illustrations to capture the zeitgeist of the concept.
with STUCK Design, for SG Enable
Inclusive Design
I provided design research and visualisation support for this project with SG Enable, in two phases. The first was creating a set of illustration that captured “seed ideas” for the SGE Design Playbook - a set of design principles to guide businesses and establishments to design more inclusive experience.
The second was providing support running research activities (interviews and FGDs) to understand the way-finding needs of persons living with disabilities. The findings go towards informing the architects’ design of the extension building of Enabling Village.
Pre-shopping appointment to allow preparation to accommodate specific needs.
SGE Design Playbook - Seed Ideas for Inclusive Design
The seed ideas serves to illustrate and provide inspiration for how a particular design principle within the playbook can be translated. I elected to go with a minimal, simplified illustration style to create focus on the key experience and main touch points rather than overt, prescriptive details.
A highlight colour was used to emphasise key touch points and to differentiate between the different chapters.
Variety of seating options in F&B places to cater to different social and physical needs.
Ensure visitors can quickly identify who they can approach for help.
Easy to locate calm rooms in community spaces for those who may experience sensory overload.
Inclusive Wayfinding at Enabling Village
I provided support in planning and carrying out 4 x Focus group discussion sessions with participants living with different disabilities.
Together with the team, I adapted the format of each session to cater to participants’ needs, for example, assigning a workshop assistant to scribe for participants with visual impairment, or preparing visual instructions and descriptions for participants with hearing impairments.
