Hospital Recovery Art Walk

Problem

While boasting a prized art collection, Cedars-Sinai Hospital's artworks are easily overlooked and underappreciated. At the same time, a captive audience of recovery patients must repetitively walk the drab hospital halls for physical therapy.

Objective 

Design a simple app to guide recovering patients through a tour of the artwork on their floor during daily physical therapy walking sessions. 

Solution

The wireframe below represents a very simple MVP to allow users to access audio tours. Original concepts included interactive maps, text descriptions, and goal-tracking. Nurse interviews led to the realization that starting with a very simple app would better serve the needs of patients, as many are elderly and may not be particularly tech-savvy.

The app is meant to be held by the patient, but the nurse could operate it instead if they use Bluetooth or stay within the length of the headphone cord.

What's left after you remove the extra features is an almost-invisible audio-tour app, inspired by industry-leading audio apps at SFMOMA and The Broad. The interface is designed to be simple and intuitive so the user is focused on the audio and the art rather than the app.

The app allows the listener to identify the first piece of artwork with one-tap; the audio will guide them from there. If a hospital's budget allows for custom maps and lendable iOS phones (for location precision), geotagging could be added so the nearest artwork would be identified without user input.