Exploring emotions for technology and service design in health care setting waiting rooms

Patients' experience of waiting rooms has direct impact on satisfaction levels within healthcare settings. Previous studies concerning waiting rooms place little emphasis on current and desired emotional responses of stakeholders be they staff, patients or clinicians. The study presented in this paper demonstrates the use of emotional goal modelling when designing for the patient experience in a Melbourne based healthcare provider's waiting room. Emphasis is placed on how stakeholders would like to feel when engaging with future technology and services. Focus groups, probes and mapping methods were used to elicit staff members' future goals and emotions surrounding service delivery to their clients with particular focus on how technology can connect their patients with appropriate services, offering enhanced experiences. We present our preliminary findings concerning stakeholder experiences using goal models and rich picture mappings. Lastly, we offer a variety of methods that are suitable to the context of capturing key stakeholder emotions surrounding technology in healthcare setting waiting rooms.