Through the Interface

On Friday I headed across to the Swiss Center for Design and Health in nearby Nidau (it's just a 30-minute drive from my home).

I'd been invited by Michal Gath-Morad and Christoph Hölscher, who very kindly suggested I might find it interesting to join a meeting at the centre and tag along for a subsequent tour.

I've been interested in visiting the SCDH for some time: in many ways it's similar to the UCL PEARL space, but it also has a very different focus and has made some really interesting choices because of it.

A lot of things at the SCDH are at the cutting edge, starting with the system to call up to the reception.

As a counterpoint to the technological innovations, there's a clear undercurrent of Swiss design and artisanship. Check the traditional "parquet" hardwood flooring, for instance.

In the conference room where we met I was particularly transfixed by the blackboard.

One fantastic detail was the sea sponge you could use as a board cleaner.

The SCDH is a space where organisations can test their designs for healthcare facilities. You can think of it as a real-life simulation space. They have an operating theatre where it's possible to simulate workflows using the latest surgical equipment.

You can see motion capture cameras in the corners of the room to analyse the "performance".

In many ways the most interesting space for me was the Extended-Reality Simulation Area.

To enter this area you need to put on special slippers over your shoes: the floor is covered with a sensitive material, so you need to be careful not to walk with outdoor shoes on it directly.

Here's a video that shows the space in action:

 

 

Here's a view that shows the overall space. The sensitive material is basically a massive screen, with ceiling-mounted projectors displaying your 2D CAD model as a 1:1 scale floorpan. So cool.

You can see it more clearly here.

It's really neat to see a floorplan projected at this scale.

I found some stairs, but didn't manage to see where the title block was. 😉

The space is intended to house run-throughs of common real-world scenarios, particularly in the context of the patient experience. The projected floorplans are complemented by "physical" rooms that have walls made from cardboard (or presumably something more solid, should it be needed), to give a better sense of how a space is enclosed.

A typical simulation will involve healthcare professionals and actors (who are given instructions on what role to play). The doctors and nurses will presumably be surveyed for their subjective feedback on the experience, which will complement any recorded data, whether coming from trackers, wearables or video/motion capture cameras.

The simulations are orchestrated from this control room, from where I expect the captured data can be visualised.

There are other areas where it's possible to explore different interior design alternatives relative to furniture or materials.

It was raining on Friday, but this fake skylight was incredibly realistic. I could absolutely imagine having these in my basement, although I do worry that one day we'll become overly reliant on these brain hacks.

Here's another room where it was possible to explore different lighting and material choices.

If you have a proposed software system this is also a place you can try it out in a realistic setting.

To support all this reconfiguration there's quite a bit of behind-the-scenes infrastructure. It was nice to see a large format plotter at the back of this room - I think that must be a cutting table in the foreground.

There were sewing machines, laser cutters, robots...

… and various 3D printers.

Here's one you could walk into.

For clients to choose between colours and materials the SCDH has effectively built up a materials bank similar to those used at architectural firms.

It was really interesting to visit the SCDH: the simulations they're doing at 1:1 scale - and with real people - are something we hope one day will be possible using software. (Not that I would expect our tools to replace the need for this type of facility: it's more that very few designers have local access to such an amazing resource.)

I'm hoping I'll get to participate in a data capture event at the SCDH sometime next year: I think that understanding how real-world simulations are run will be highly instructive for the kind of problems we're likely to face in the software space.

Many thanks to Michal and Christoph for the invitation, and to Monika, Linda, Emma and Michael for the warm reception. (It was very nice to meet Ruth and Theresa, too.)