word vomit 12042015 "RESEARCH LED DESIGN"
Starting with my growth in The Department of Interior Design followed by professional practice, the phenomenon of basing design decisions on something more than intuition has been consistently ingrained in me. Reinforced by graduate experiences and subsequent professional practice, this nebulous thing has evolved into empirical evidence. As part of the creative process, iteration informed by evidence resolves formerly uncertain outcomes into those of relative predictability. Part of my evolution from student to professional is the ability to assimilate that information and depart that knowledge to the younger staff within our practice thus leading many major efforts into creative scholarship for our clients.
In 2010, while practicing architecture at Gresham Smith and Partners, we crafted a submission to an international juried design competition “Small Hospital, Big Idea Competition” administrated by Kaiser Permanente. We were one of 3 finalists in a field of 327 applicants. This success was in no small part thanks to our multidisciplinary team including our researcher Dr. Sheila Bosch, and the incredible wealth of EBD strategies we employed.
I am a firm believer in this paradigm and would encourage all creative disciplines to engage in some form or peer reviewed research and if possible, practical application based on that research. I would be very much interested in continuing the tradition of studio course work based on precedent studies with opportunities to seek out government funding for practical application.
Further Evidence
In 2014, while at RS&H, Inc. we proposed and our design/submission to a national juried design competition for “2014 Family Centered Cancer Care Design Competition” administered by The Institute for Patient-Centered Design, Inc. We were one of 3 finalists and presented our proposal at the 2014 Healthcare Design conference held in San Diego, California. In this instance we no longer had direct access to an academic researcher, so we made the best use possible of popular sources such as; herdjournal.com, googlescholar.com, pubmed.gov and free webinars hosted by CHD’s EBD Journal Club.
In 2015, following our previous success, we proposed another design/submission to another national juried design competition for “2015 Patient-Centered Behavioral Health Design Competition” administered by The Institute for Patient-Centered Design, Inc. Again, we were honored to be one of 3 finalists. Accessing again our popular web based research, we also sought the additional expertise of one our clients for a real world case study. We did not conduct any formal research, as our project was hypothetical and sole purpose was to postulate, based on evidence, multiple strategies to change the way behavior health is delivered. Our project was well received by the jury and conference attendees at 2015 Healthcare Design conference held in greater Washington, DC metro.