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At Great Ormond Street’s new Sight & Sound Centre, we brought together illustrations, wayfinding, branding, and multi-sensory interactive artwork – helping patients with hearing and sight impairments to play their way to appointments.
This project celebrates and supports its diverse community through use of accessible multisensory design and a gender-neutral gang.
We designed an interactive doll’s house to greet families at in the main waiting area. Children can “meet” an illustrated gang of clinicians and patients in friendly animated scenarios, interacting with the various windows in the house.
At the press of a button, a window lights up with audio, offering words of reassurance (for example, “I used to be scared of eye drops but they’re not too bad!”). All 27 windows feature recordings of real patients we interviewed on Zoom during the 2020 lockdown period.
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The doll’s house makes the building a size children can explore, and investigate independently. As they listen to real clinicians and former patients, children grow more confident and get a sense of what happens in different parts of the hospital. The funny voices and bright colours make the hospital seem less scary than it did on the way in.
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The characters re-appear on the journey from the waiting room to their treatment, pointing the way and reminding children that they are welcome and important.
The characters embrace gender neutrality, and a range of ages and abilities, along with cochlear implants, glasses, various skin tones, and varying heights.
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We worked with the GOSH communications team to extend this friendly welcome to create over 1000 pop-up welcome cards to announce the building’s opening. These were sent out to every current patient, along with branded appointment letters, introducing the gang and doll’s house concept before their visit.
The Centre’s patients will frequently return over their entire childhood, so creating a warm, inviting first impression is important, and we hope it will help prevent children developing hospital phobias.
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Project Information
Date
2022
Sector
Healthcare
Service
Children's: Sight and Sound
Client
Great Ormond Street Hospital NHS FT
Architect
Sonnemann Toon Architects
Artists
AiS in house
Team
Martin Jones, Chloe Northover-Naylor
Awards
EHD Awards
2022
Winner
,
Interior Design & the Arts
