Research

Methods

Survey

We gathered 28 survey responses with various staff and clinicians that work at the UW IHDD. Because of HIPPA, there is a barrier stopping us from conducting first hand interviews with parents/guardians of patients and the patients themselves. Thus, we have revised our plan to focus primarily on staff of the UW IHDD. 

We recruited participants by asking our sponsor to send a recruitment email to staff, visiting researchers, and other visitors of the UW IHDD as they will all have experiences with navigating the UW IHDD.

With 28 survey participants, this will give our research findings a confidence level of 95% in our margin of error and our true score to be within 15% of the observed score. 

After getting this data, we compiled the survey findings in a spreadsheet and created data visualizations in order to better understand the data. 

Interviews

We conducted 9 user interviews with various staff and clinicians that work at the UW IHDD, including one pilot interview with our sponsor. The purpose of these interviews was to help us better understand UW IHDD’s current user base and their attitudes towards various aspects of the building (waiting rooms, patient rooms, walkways). 

We recruited participants through our survey and our sponsor emailing the staff directory. We then filtered these participants to fit our inclusion criteria of regularly setting foot in the UW IHDD and regularly interacting with patients at the UW IHDD. The interviews were conducted over zoom and took roughly 20 minutes and were semi-structured. We also asked participants to sign a consent form in order to record these conducted interviews for analysis. 

Architectural Mapping

To understand how people navigate the UW IHDD, we navigated the entire facility ourselves and then photographed each space to create a map of the waiting rooms, furniture, signs, and hallways. Additionally, we noted any potential pain points or obstacles in wayfinding or the patient experience. 

On top of the overview of the building, a video was taken of each possible method to navigate to the 2nd floor waiting room after entering the building from its various entry points. These videos, photographs, and navigational maps served as supplementary information to our surveys and interviews as well as was a tool for us to understand timing, UX, accessibility, and signage when navigating each space. 

Findings

Finding 1: Multiple entrances into the building

While there is one recommended path to navigate to the main waiting room on the second floor, there are multiple possible paths, leading to confusion for visitors. 

From our interviews with staff at the CHDD, we found that visitors are told to navigate to the main waiting room on the second floor by going up the ramp to the right of the S1 parking lot. 

However, from our interviews and from our architectural mapping, we found that the ramp is nondescript, with the sign for the ramp less noticeable in comparison to the sign above the first floor entrance. 

This is an important issue to address, as it adds additional stress to visitors who can already be stressed from their visit to a medical space. From our architectural mapping, we found that alternate paths from going up the ramp also takes more time, which may add additional stress by making visitors late to their appointments.

Recommendation 1

Large signs like the ones next to the ramp and above the first floor entrance are difficult to change, especially for the scope of our project. Instead, we recommend adding a visual aid signifying that visitors for the UW IHDD should head towards the ramp on the right of the parking lot instead of towards the first floor entrance straight in front of the parking lot. From one of our interviews, P5 recommended that silhouettes of footprints would be helpful to navigate from parking up the ramp to the building. This is a low cost solution which would clarify which path visitors should take.

Finding 2: Building is difficult to identify

There is a lack of confidence that visitors are at the correct clinic when arriving at the UW Institute on Human Development and Disability.

From our interviews, surveys, and architectural mapping we found that patients struggle to park and find the UW CHDD building making many patients and families late to appointments, often even coloring their appointments in a negative light and making already stressed and nervous families even more stressed. From our surveys, we found that when asked to rate the following statement: Patients can navigate through UW CHDD building easily from 1-10 staff members of the UW CHDD gave an average rating of 3.89 which is incredibly low.

The UW CHDD does not have a building number.

Despite the address for the UW CHDD specifying a building number (1701 NE Columbia Rd, Seattle, WA 98195), the number 1701 cannot be seen anywhere on or around the building. 

Furthermore, many participants also stated that the nature of the building looking identical to the buildings around it with no identifying factors also contributes to the confusion and lack of ability to identify the UW CHDD building.

There is no signage on the outside of the building specifying the clinics that the UW CHDD houses.

Patients and guardians make appointments with their specific clinics such as the genetics clinic, adult autism clinic, and many more and thus are often unaware that these clinics are housed in the CHDD or look for their specific clinic when they are mapping to their appointment. Thus, this causes confusion where visitors don’t see a sign for their specific clinic and overlook the CHDD building completely.   

The UW CHDD lacks clear sign visible from cars and pedestrians.

The UW CHDD building is tucked behind the UW medical center and is in an inherently hard to find location. The first misstep that many visitors make when navigating to the building is driving through the wrong entrance or parking in the wrong parking lot.

Once visitors park or make it to the correct area visitors then struggle to identify the building while driving since there is no large sign or indication that the UW CHDD is the correct building or no obvious pedestrian level sign.  

Recommendation 2

We recommend implementing a large sign outside the building specifying the building number (1701), building name (UW IHDD), and individual clinics that are easy to spot via car or on foot. However large signs can be expensive and time consuming to install, thus, we also recommend creating a poster to tape onto the doors outside the building as well as next to the elevators that showcase building name, building number, and which clinics are housed in the building so visitors can easily identify them. Moreover, we recommend clear and deliberate signage right after you enter each entrance that states the building is the UW CHDD and which clinics it houses to let visitors know when they enter the building that they are in the right place. (i.e. “Welcome to the Institute on Human Development and Disability)

Additionally, a potential solution that may not be in scope for us as students is to allow muralists to create murals on the outside wall of this building. This would be visually enticing and welcoming to visitors as well as allow for a clear indicator of the building outside of its neighboring buildings and make the building much easier to spot for visitors.

Finding 3: Building is difficult to self navigate 

The interior of the CHDD is not easily navigable for visitors when they are self-navigating through the building.

According to our research, this is due to several factors, including: hallways looking identical across the north and south ends of the building, minimal or lack of signage, and inconsistent signage across floors.

In our survey responses, when participants were prompted to rate how strongly they agree or disagree that “patients can navigate through UW CHDD building easily” on a scale of 1 - 10 (1 being “Strongly disagree” and 10 being “Strongly agree”) the average response was 3.89, meaning that participants disagreed with the statement.

One survey participant elaborated on their response saying that:

“Navigation of the CHDD building and finding the second floor reception area is  difficult and unfriendly for families entering through the west-door on the first floor.” 

Visitors have difficulty finding the correct clinic room.

While navigating the hallways, visitors have difficulty returning to the clinic room they are meant to be in. 

Interview participant P6 mentions that: 

“People mainly get lost in the hallways and while getting back to the right clinic room because the east and west hallways look identical.” [B]

Another instance where we see visitors having trouble with finding the correct clinic room is when, as P4 states, they often see “lost solo family members” near the audiology department on the third floor. 

A lack of signage makes navigation within the center difficult.

Many participants mentioned that the signage within the building is unclear. 

P8 mentions that the building “doesn’t have any signage to find [the third floor waiting area]” and that visitors wander into her office even after getting instructions from the front desk.

Architectural mapping of the space shows that there is minimal signage on the wall, with no direct signs on what each room or area of the hallway the visitor is in. Below is an image of the second floor hallway, with no clear signage to indicate where the visitor is in the context of the building.

Furthermore, interview participant P2 stated that when finding the restroom,

“When you look down the hallway you can't really see it with signage; you have to be right in front of the bathroom to see it.” 

This is a recurring theme throughout our research findings as many interviewees mentioned that having more signs would improve wayfinding for visitors when they are unaccompanied throughout the space.

P7 also mentioned that visitors usually have to ask for directions, because signs that can be seen from the end of the hall can be inconspicuous. 

With staff members giving directions to visitors, we paid notice to the directory signage as we conducted our architectural mapping, below is an image of such a directory:

This general directory is on multiple floors of the building, located right next to the elevators. However, the sign itself is difficult to read, with a lot of text content, and small font. 

Inconsistent signage across second and third floors confuses visitors. 

The signage on the first, second, and third floor are varied when they are used for the same purposes. 

Interview participant P8 states this directly: “it would be nice to have consistency with second and third floor signs.” [B]

P8 also goes on to mention that they are unsure if the numbers on the second floor are being used. The right side of the image below shows the number signage P8 is referring to.

Another area we see discrepancy with signage among floors is regarding restrooms. 

For restroom signage on the second floor, shown below, we see the signage vary in size and clarity, but not include information about the first floor restroom such as whether the restroom is family-friendly. This restroom sign is also positioned towards the view of visitors as they walk down the second floor hallway.

The third floor restroom signage, shown below, does not include aspects that the first and second floor restroom signs have. It is unmarked.

P1 mentions the difficulty in determining which side of the building is the mens’ and womens’ restrooms, and that directs families to all gender bathrooms is challenging because there isn't clear signage to direct visitors there directly.

With the type of visitors and patients that visit the CHDD varying in accommodations we see that each restroom’s amenities are not communicated clearly. 

As P8 mentions, some restroom accommodations that are helpful to know for visitors include whether a restroom is family friendly, gender-neutral, or contains a baby-changing station.

Recommendation 3

With the interior of the CHDD not self-navigable for visitors, we recommend adding more extensive and standardized signage to ensure that visitors can easily navigate to the space they need to be in. Some specific recommendations include having more readable and clearer signage on the general directory and signs that orient visitors to where they are in the building. Additionally, important signage–such as restroom signage–should be standardized across all floors to minimize confusion. 

A lot of confusion for internally navigating the building arises from the east and west hallways looking identical – a recommendation here is to incorporate signage, color, or obvious differentiating factor to mitigate this pain point.

These recommendations would clarify to visitors where they need to go within the building.