This research project aims to create an interdisciplinary artistic research platform to develop concepts in experience design to optimize sensory experiences in patient-centered dying environments, or palliative care centers.
Working with our research partners at Karolinska Institutet and Umeå University, we will begin a course of participant observation in three palliative care centers in Sweden: Stockholms sjukhem, Bromma Geriatric Clinic, and Axlagården hospice in Umeå. We will document the dying environments with special emphasis on conducting a sensory audit, examining the experience of sound, light, smell, touch, and time for patients, family and health care staff at the end-of-life, through death and its immediate aftermath. We will then create three case studies, one for each palliative care centre, which describe deficits in sensory experience and develop prototypes for improvements using the concepts and techniques of experience design. The case studies will thus facilitate an interdisciplinary evaluation and analysis carried out between experience designers, health care professionals, and researchers. Our goal will be to investigate how experience design may be relevant to identifying and fulfilling the criteria contained within the concept of ´good dying´ – with special emphasis on the patient, but with additional consideration to palliative care staff and family.
