The Museum of Life
Designing a museum exhibit that is contemplative, cohesive, and collective — bringing clarity to the End-of-Life planning process through consolidated resources and spaces for personal reflection.
Back To Projects
Project Details
Date - September to December 2023 (4 months)
Topic - End-of-life Planning
Skills applied - Human-centred design Research tools and Methods, Data collection and Synthesis, Ideation, Service Design, Prototyping.
Team - Atchayaa Krishnan, Evelyn Syau, Isabel Alexander, Sneh Chandan
Institution - M.A in Design Focused on Health, The University of Texas at Austin
My Role
Service &
Experience Desigener
- Recruitment
- Conducted User Interviews
- Synthesis & Insights
- Facilitated Intercept Activity
- Ideation & Brainstorming
- Ecosystem Mapping
- Service Blue Print
- 3D Prototyping
- User Testing & Feedback
- Change Management
Main Learnings
- Leveraging Team Strengths: Recognizing and utilizing the unique strengths of team members can significantly enhance project outcomes. Effective collaboration and communication are key to maximizing team potential.
- Establishing Key Principles: Developing clear guiding principles or experience principles serves as a framework for decision-making and helps maintain focus on the desired outcomes.
- Change Management as a Learning Opportunity: Change management is integral to successfully implementing new experiences or initiatives. Adaptability and resilience are essential traits in a dynamic environment.
Project Overview
A medical crisis can leave someone unable to communicate their healthcare decisions, making it crucial to decide, discuss, and document end-of-life preferences well in advance.
This project aims to understand the psychological and social factors preventing individuals from completing their advance directives by qualitative research and design a service outcome to promote awareness and facilitate the process of end-of-life planning.
What is an Advance Directive?
Advance directives are legal documents that provide instructions for medical care and only go into effect if you cannot communicate your own wishes
Living Will
Durable Power of Attorney
For Health Care
Document that tells doctors how you want to be treated if you cannot make your own decisions about emergency treatment.
A Legal document that names your health care proxy, a person who can make health care decisions for you if you are unable to communicate these yourself.
Americans currently have an Advance Directive
Research Methods
Insights
Ideation
Hypothesis
Prototype
Feedback
Value of Advance Directives
.jpeg)
Less costly care
Improved satisfaction and quality of life leading up to death
Decreased utilization of unwanted intensive treatments
Opportunity to receive care consistent with preferences
Better communication with one’s healthcare team
Research Goal
We aim to understand the existing barriers regarding the completion of advance directives among adults ages 18+ in order to design a service that ultimately increases their awareness of and participation in this component of End-of-Life planning.
Research Methods
1. Interviewing Users and Experts
Few Interview Questions
Context - What are perceptions towards end-of-life planning among individuals of various ages and their caregivers or healthcare proxies? (e.g. levels of knowledge and awareness)
System - What are the components and steps to engaging and completing advance care planning?
Individual - How does one’s health status and prognosis/proximity to death inform their likelihood of engaging in end-of-life planning?
2. Intercept Activity
75%
Awareness of Advance Directive
100%
Belief on Importacne of Advance Directive
37%
Have knowledge on Advance Directive
31%
Has taken action to complete Advance Directive
3. Observing AARP
4.Data Synthesis
We attended community events in Austin to understand initiatives promoting end-of-life planning, including a Death Cafe, an AARP workshop, and a meet-up for death doulas.
Insights
Given their competing priorities, medical and legal systems shift the responsibility to individuals to explicitly document their EOL wishes and opt out of default life-sustaining protocols. This makes EOL planning siloed, inefficient, and non-collaborative.
.jpeg)
Ecosystem Map
Bird's eye view with detailed information on the factors influencing the and key stakeholders involved in assisting or facilitating the completion of an Advance Directive at various levels of the system. This helped in identifying potential design opportunities to improve the flow of the process in completing Advance Directives, enhance informed decision-making, and bring awareness while normalizing and facilitating conversations about end-of-life planning.
Stakeholder Map
Stakeholder mapping helped us to gain an overview and understanding of the various systems and stakeholders involved in end-of-life planning and the completion of an Advance Directive by the user. The goal is to explore how these systems interact with each other and the services offered to the user when engaging with each system.
Ideation
Idea Priortization
.jpeg)
The highlighted ideas were selected for prototyping and implementation
Hypothesis
A Museum Exhibit that guides individuals (>18 yo) through the stages of Awareness, Belief,Knowledge, and Action would Increase Psychological readiness around and ultimate Completion of Advance directives.
2D Prototyping
3D Prototyping
Our team presented a preliminary museum model with exhibit depictions, interactive games, video testimonials, welcome materials, and AD templates. This prototype was a fundamental framework to gather feedback on the museum's ability to encourage end-of-life planning.
Service Blue Print
This is the service blueprint for the museum exhibit, outlining both the front-end and back-end operations of the exhibit.
Feedback
Change Management
