Stacey Chang, Executive Director, Design Institute for Health, The University of Texas at Austin
Lindsey Mosby
Kijana Knight-Torres
Natalie Campbell
Jeff Steinberg
Jose Colucci
Kate Payne
Design Institute for Health at The University of Texas at Austin
This research project focused on the redevelopment of Chalmers Courts, one of the first public housing projects in the US arising from the 1937 Housing Act. As part of the rebuild, 5000 sq ft of space was dedicated to development of a clinic to provide medical services to the community. The Design Institute for Health at The University of Texas embarked on a research project to not only better understand how to design the space at the clinic, but also what the residents needed to support their health and wellness in the broadest sense, and discovered that the needs for the clinic fell far beyond just medical services. In conducting traditional ethnographic studies, it became apparent that conversational approaches did not capture all the necessary nuance of the residents’ needs. Two participatory mapping exercises were developed to give research subjects a different mechanism to express those needs, giving them the freedom to identify the people, places, and things that contributed to their health, and how they might materialize in their community. What emerged were insights about the tangible things individuals needed, but also the way they framed their health in non-medical terms, and subsequently how the design of physical space could support those needs. Social connection, safety, conflict management, economic enablement, and the ability to give back to community, in addition to medical services, all factored highly in their hierarchy of needs, and the clinic, reimagined as a hub for community, could play a significant role in solving for those needs. Understanding the role of individuals in the community who served as influencers and realists, alongside those struggling and striving for change, helped shape a portfolio of interventions that could enable those ready to act, and elevate those who needed assistance. Within that portfolio of proposed interventions were capabilities that resided in the home, in the transition between home and clinic, at the clinic itself, and spanned onboarding, in-clinic experience, and follow-up.