Client: Department of Health
Design: Curtain Lock

Problem:

As part of the design councils ‘Patient Dignity’ initiative we looked at the problem from the patients’ perspective.   

The problem we uncovered was that the patient experienced a low locus of control over their environment when in a hospital bed and felt fundamentally exposed.  The blue curtain is a thin veil of protection and can be pulled open at any moment, especially when extremely busy health professionals are concentrating on treating many patients.

Solution:

The solution we developed gave the patient agency over their environment by creating a curtain lock. We redeployed behavioural codes to make it universally intuitive to use; using red for the universal colour for stop and shaping it like a long ‘shoe horn’ device that simply hooks over the curtain rail stop the curtain in its tracks.