Insights & Solutions

Aging often involves a multitude of changing needs and priorities. However, there are human needs and desires that remain constant throughout the life course. Design strategies for aging must not only address basic physiological and safety needs, but attend to higher-level human needs as well. The universal design approach is being adopted by many forward-thinking designers who aim to support equitable, flexible, and accessible environments for all users.

Learn about: the homelike model for resident care Riverside Assisted Living Facility Administration wanted to apply, the full-scale mock-ups of the proposed living spaces that launched the project, and the ‘neighborhood’ concept that enables greater resident independence as well as safety.

Healthcare is provided in a variety of settings, from a person’s home to outpatient clinics, to the hospital. While the settings and specific design elements may differ across the continuum of care, the objectives of safety, efficiency, satisfaction, and high quality care remain constant. This set of interactive diagrams provides a link between the evidence base, design strategies, and desired outcomes – in a visually intuitive and actionable format.

This Clinic Design Post Occupancy Evaluation Toolkit is self-administered and provides a way to collect a variety of data on the physical enviornment, subjective perception of users, and objective healthcare outcomes.

Learn about: the frequency and cost of falls among older adults, reasons older people fall and what can be done to prevent falls, and other safety concerns among older adults.

Learn about: cognitive changes that occur with normal aging, the definition and stages of Alzheimer’s disease, and design interventions that can reduce negative behaviors characteristic of Alzheimer’s disease.

The goal for this project was to design the new UCSF Medical Center at Mission Bay for health -- for the individuals who will use the new Medical Center, the Mission Bay community, and the greater global environment.

The goal for this project was to have the interdisciplinary design team pursue the creation of a total environment of care with the following objectives: reduce patient and visitor stress, reduce wait times and improve flow, improve staff sightlines both for security as well as clinical care, and capture natural light and views of nature at an urban edge. 

The goal for this project was to create a highly realistic participatory learning experiences in an environment that does not involve an actual patient. This method of teaching is rapidly becoming a new standard in both primary and continuing education for health professionals. The intent is to improve learning experiences through improved personal and technical skills and interdisciplinary team communications in an environment designed and built around current evidence-based medicine, evidence-based practice and evidence-based design knowledge.

For many years, legal precedents have spoken to the need for quality environments for behavioral health patients. Behavioral health facilities span a wide range of care environments including psychiatric hospitals, psychiatric neuropsychiatric nursing units of general hospitals, facilities for the psychiatric medically infirm, neuropsychiatric units, alcohol and drug addiction retreatment facilities, mental health clinics, day hospitals, and day treatment centers. The wide variety of setting and diagnosis is one of the major impediments to creating evidence based design guidelines for behavioral health facilities.