Experiencing the world as an unwell child is tough. Processing unfamiliar medical spaces, and large feelings – can overwhelm a child.#
The Sydney Children’s Hospital Network had this at the forefront of their minds when redeveloping the children’s treatment spaces in their new buildings at Randwick and Westmead.
Their Arts, Play and Discovery strategy included commissioning Cybernetics’s Dr Jess Herrington alongside production company Handy Squid to create playful, fun and calming installations for children.
The installations were specially designed to reduce children’s perception of stress and pain in medical environments. This is to enable a better experience for children, their carers, and medical staff.
“When children physically engage in a mindful, sensory activity like drawing an animal or colouring in, their stress response can be reduced by that engagement,” says Jess.
“The digital experiences work through agency and play, since children get to create an animated landscape (through drawing) or create a soundscape themselves.”
By partnering with Paul Stapelberg from the creative technology agency Handy Squid, Jess helped develop a suite of digital and physical works to enhance the hospital experience for patients before, during and after their procedures in corridors, waiting areas, and treatment rooms.
The installations come in three forms.
- Mind Forest: Children draw and colour animals native to the local area of each hospital on a tablet. The drawing is animated and placed in a natural landscape on a large wall-mounted screen in front of them, where they can add more animals that interact.
- BioHarmony: Children mix nature sounds on a tablet to build their own audio ecosystems.The soundscape works as a calming distraction.
- Growth Canopy (the ‘healing ceilings’): These are artistic ceiling tiles for children lying down or reclining in a chair for a lengthy period of time. They include attention-grabbing elements, such as animals hidden in a tree canopy, to give children something to focus on.
An artist and a neuroscientist, Jess tapped into crucial elements of the design to achieve its goal.
“I brought research on perception, attention and stress, along with the artistic side of making something that children want to engage in,” she explains.
“Each experience targets a particular emotional state, so it was a chance to apply psychological and behavioural research to interactive design. A lot of the skill is in the balance of elements – the work has to grab attention without being over-stimulating, so it remains a gentle visual or tactile exploration rather than something overwhelming.”
“The ceiling installations draw on principles of visual perception. We’ve inserted salient (attention grabbing) elements such as half-hidden animals and detailed textural elements to give children something to focus on while they’re processing a difficult clinical setting,” says Jess.
“Each experience is designed to ease the child into a calmer state, and to enable hospital staff to work with children more easily.”