Ian Sinclair is presenting at the Annual JAS Quebec Conference on Healthcare Design, June 4th, 2025

Hosted by: JAS Quebec

 
Date: Wednesday, June 4th, 2025

Location: Science Centre – Old Port, Montreal, QC

To find out more about the event, register here.

Presentation: The Case for Empathy-Based Design

 
Hospital design can be characterized as a process that consults “users” to create an efficient, functional and affordable solution. However, rarely do we consult with those for whom the hospital is actually designed: patients and families. Instead, ‘users’ — typically staff and clinicians — serve as proxies for the patient.
 

What would happen if instead of starting by asking staff “what do you need”, we began with patients and asked “how do you feel?” What might we learn if we started by asking patients and families to share their feelings and emotions experienced during their care journey? What emotional context might be unpacked that would offer new insights to drive design?
 

Ian Sinclair‘s research with cancer patients shows that by embracing patient empathy, patients’ fears, hopes, and aspirations will reveal new design drivers, never imagined for the spaces that patients and families ultimately occupy.
 

Applying a process that is intended to uncover the emotions that patients feel along their treatment journey may help us to uncover salient, yet less obvious but more important, drivers of design.
 

Learning Objectives:
 
– Learn about new design drivers that may lead to breakthrough results
– Challenge traditional approaches to healthcare design
– Learn about simple, easy to implement patient-focused research
– Learn about which healthcare facility type is a logical starting point for empathy-based design

Join hospital redevelopment and healthcare design professionals at the JAS Quebec Conference – View registration details and form.