Mobile Makerspace idea!

Mobile Makerspaces for hospitalized and chronically ill patients are much more than just physical learning environments. In 2014, I carefully designed these spaces to address the broader goal of therapeutic environments by encouraging social interchange, increasing physical activity, and creating a more positive hospital environment. The primary design features of the mobile Makerspace support these goals in four critical ways: (1) They are colorful and bright; (2) They are deeply engaging; (3) They serve as a workspace; and (4) They encourage collaboration. These mindful features resonate with an argument put forward by Ulrich (1991), who suggested that in order to support coping with stress and promote wellness of patients, healthcare environments need to be designed to foster a sense of control, provide access to social support, and positive distractions, and ensure a lack of exposure to negative distractions.

[1] The lack of color and stimulation in a patient’s room can significantly impact a child’s mood and emotion. For this reason, it was essential to design the mobile Makerspace to be both colorful and bright so that it could serve as a “positive distraction,” in the sense that it helped to shift patients’ thoughts away from the isolation of hospitalization and their illness (Ulrich, 1991). To that end, I attached strips of multicolored LEDs (light-emitting diodes) to the inner walls of the mobile Makerspace. The lights could be controlled either by remote control (in an initial prototype) or a dial (in a revised prototype) so that children could pick and choose their favorite colors and customize the color of the cart according to their mood or emotional state. Additional elements of color were added in the form of different colored modular jars, which contributed to the overall aesthetic appeal while at the same time providing practical storage for organizing a variety of physical and digital materials.

[2] To help transcend some of the isolation that many children experience in the hospital, the mobile Makerspaces were designed in such a way as to trigger a more enduring interest by engaging patients in their own learning. Ainley (2012) elaborates on the relation between interest and engagement by using a “hook and switch” metaphor. When an activity (or condition, specific situation, learning environment) triggers interest, specific features of the activity snare the user’s attention, drawing the person in for deeper engagement (“hook” metaphor). The opportunity to engage opens connections between the person’s existing personal interests and opportunities to express those interests (“switch” metaphor). Likewise, the design of the mobile Makerspaces aimed to “hook” patients’ interest with a variety of physical and digital materials, while the activities and challenges accompanying the cart would then “switch” their attention from their illness and daily routine by inspiring them to pose and solve meaningful problems by deploying an array of human, material, and environmental resources around them.

[3] Patients frequently suffer from overwhelming boredom, feeling like they have nothing to do and no reason to get out of their hospital beds. The mobile Makerspaces were specifically designed to serve as a workstation for patients’ invention and creation activities to help overcome this issue. While making use of this workstation, patients are given many opportunities to increase their physical activity by moving from the bed to the workspace. To better understand how the mobile Makerspace might impact patients’ physical activity, I asked patients to use wearables to track their total number of steps per day. The results were truly fascinating. For example, without the mobile Makerspace, one patient only took around 320 steps in an entire day, but with the mobile Makerspace in her room, the total number of steps she took increased daily to about 2400 steps. That’s more than a 7 ­fold increase in activity!

[4] The social context of the hospital makes coping with a chronic illness difficult and stressful. Being disconnected from peers can cause patients to feel isolated and depressed, feelings that are counterproductive to their treatments and the overall process of getting healthy. The mobile Makerspaces were designed to encourage collaboration by providing openings to talk to others going through the same health and life issues, offering an escape from the dull routine of hospital life. The mobile Makerspaces were equipped with large touchscreen tablets that included communication software to foster this collaboration among patients. Using software such as Skype, patients could now virtually collaborate with other patients who had their own mobile Makerspace in their hospital room. Working together on projects provided opportunities to make new friends and extend relationships beyond the hospital stay.

Citations

Ainley, M. (2012). Students’ interest and engagement in classroom activities. In Handbook of research on student engagement (pp. 283-302). Springer US.

Ulrich, R. S. (1991). Effects of interior design on wellness: Theory and recent scientific research. Journal of health care interior design, 3(1), 97-109.