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200273 – Managing Service and Experience

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Monthly Archives: February 2014

Design – Servicescapes and the customer experience

27 Thursday Feb 2014

Posted by csheringham in Food Experience, Servicescapes

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This article was published in The Conversation it describes the link between facility design and the customer experience in the health care sector. I found the article not only for what it argues but also for the relevance to material and approach we are adopting in this unit. We need to constantly look outside our own domain, learn the lessons and then apply our knowledge in new realms. The article also points toward the relevance of the material you are studying to a wide variety of employment opportunities.

Babies, not burgers: why we need better-designed labour wards

By Athena Hammond, University of Technology, Sydney

I recently visited a new McDonald’s outlet on the northern fringes of Sydney. What I found inside left me gawping in astonishment: soft lighting, views of nature, a mixture of private and communal spaces, adaptable furnishings, excellent way-finding, warm colours, natural materials, positive distractions!

Everywhere I looked I saw evidence-based design features that, when translated to the hospital environment, have been shown to improve experiences and outcomes for users. But this was a McDonald’s store… so why did it feel better designed for low-risk maternity care than most hospitals?

The answer is simple. McDonald’s is using design to create spaces that support an optimal consumer experience.

The influence of design

In the maternity care setting, the childbearing woman is the primary consumer. And from a health perspective, the optimal experience and outcome for most women is a normal birth – without medical intervention.

But despite this, medical intervention is at an all-time high in this country, with caesarean sections now accounting for 33% of all births.

About 97% of Australian women give birth in conventional hospital labour ward rooms. These rooms are commonly designed with a narrow bed as the focal point, contain multiple pieces of medical equipment and display a clinical aesthetic.

According to a Cochrane Review, women who labour in conventional birth rooms are more likely to experience interventions including caesarean section. Women who labour in alternately designed, or ambient, rooms use less epidural pain relief, have fewer medical interventions and a higher chance of having a normal birth.

Women have reported that the birth environment is a key factor in how easy or hard it is to give birth. Remarkably, one UK study found that simply obscuring medical equipment from view with a painted screen, shortened the duration of labour by two hours and reduced requests for epidural pain relief by 7%.

National guidelines state women should be able to use birth rooms much like they’d use their own home. AmySelleck

Although the reasons that underlie birth outcomes are complex, design is likely to play a role. This is partly because the designed environment has widely acknowledged effects on human neurobiology. The complex hormonal system that controls labour is disrupted when part of the brain called the neocortex is stimulated.

A range of environmental factors can stimulate the neocortex including bright lights, loud noises, unknown people and places that are perceived as hostile or frightening. By adapting the design of hospital birth rooms to minimise these factors, we give women a better chance of achieving a normal birth and optimal health outcomes.

Spaces for an optimal experience

Maternity care providers are now implementing strategies to increase the normal birth rate and decrease caesarean sections. The NSW Health policy directive Towards Normal Birth, for instance, states that all women giving birth in hospital should have access to an environment that “is conducive to facilitating/promoting normal birth.”

This is reinforced in the Australasian Health Facility Guidelines for maternity units. They state that birth rooms should be designed so that “women may use them much as they would use their own homes”. The guidelines clarify that the bed should not be the focal point of the room and a calm, private, ambient space is the ideal.

The cost of refurbishing or rebuilding maternity units to reflect these guidelines is perceived as a barrier to the provision birth rooms that support optimal outcomes. However, many design features that facilitate normal birth such as wall-mounted bars, benches of various heights, birth stools and inflatable birth pools can be added to existing birth rooms without major alterations to architecture or infrastructure.

Simple changes to enhance ambience can be made by altering colour, lighting and room layout. These changes may ultimately reduce health expenditure by lowering the number of costly interventions performed during labour and birth.

Even simple changes to enhance ambience can make a difference. Mercy Health

Designing for health

Over the past 30 years, research into the field of evidence-based design has significantly altered how we think about the design and function of health-care facilities. Coupled with advances in neuroscience, cellular biology and epigenetics, a clear message has emerged that the designed environment has measurable therapeutic and practical benefits.

Innovative, evidence-based hospital birth room design has been incorporated into a handful of new maternity units around the country, such as the Centenary Hospital for Women and Children in the ACT and at the (yet-to-open) Royal North Shore Hospital in Sydney. In these units, rooms incorporate the needs of healthy, active women while still providing safe emergency options.

These units show that normal birth and unexpected outcomes can be catered for in the same space by implementing thoughtful design. Hopefully these advances inspire further change around the country. Let’s face it: if you can get good design when you’re having a burger, you should really be able to get it when you’re having a baby.

Athena Hammond is a graduate student at the University of Technology, Sydney (UTS) and is the recipient of a scholarship administered through an ARC Discovery Grant on the Birth Unit Design Project at UTS.

The Conversation

This article was originally published on The Conversation.
Read the original article.

Birthday Parties

27 Thursday Feb 2014

Posted by csheringham in Experience Economy

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One of the examples that Pine & Gilmore discuss is the change in the commercialisation of children’s birthday parties.

Here Tim explains the profit in children’s parities to the Campbeltown sport management students.

Tim & Birthday parties

Why I hate penguins

27 Thursday Feb 2014

Posted by csheringham in Experience Economy

≈ 1 Comment

Why I hate this little guy – Jessica M explains her journey through 200273.

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I still have nightmares about Managing Service and Experience. So maybe that is a bit dramatic, but at the time I did think that it was the most boring and useless subject since high school math. During my time doing the subject we had to analyze experiences and I thought this was point less I mean who thinks about experiences in that much depth, and I guess that is why I found the subject so boring. I was one of those students that sat in the back on Facebook not really listening thinking that this is all common sense stuff that I don’t need to know.

However 2 years down the line my eyes have been opened to the need and use for this subject. On a recent trip to Vietnam with Colin and a few other students we where walking through a cave and noticed penguin garbage bins within this cave. To a general person this would seem completely normal, however it is the knowledge from Managing Service and Experience that we knew this did not work, Penguins in a cave, really?? It’s not only strange places like Vietnamese caves that we see things that don’t fit we can see them all around the world. So I know that Colin can sound like a nagger when he says this is important but from someone who has been in your position and knows that you might find it boring, it really is something that you will find useful in your future careers.

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Surprise Cave – Vietnam

Jess is a sport management student and Jedi master with chopsticks. ( and it only took a little nagging to have her write this 😊)

Getting your message across

27 Thursday Feb 2014

Posted by csheringham in Social Media

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We used this infographic on the vUWS site to summarise the key points of the unit. A way of making the complex information more accessible.

Have a look at this Pinterest page – a collection of Customer Experience infographics.

Infographics

Engaging the senses

27 Thursday Feb 2014

Posted by csheringham in Experience Economy

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One of the topics that we addressed in the first lecture was the concept that experiences should aim to engage the five senses. I gave the examples of how different colours and music can impact on the experience. How a simple thing as changing the type of music played in the background can have an amazing effect on the customer’s experience.

In the attached link Industry consultant Zhecho Dobrev explores this idea in a little more depth. His ideas also help demonstrate that even simple ideas such “engage the senses” are in practice far more complex than they first seem.

Also take time to watch the embedded video.

Beyond Philosophy Blog

Here is another article by Zhecho that provides an interesting insight into how this engagement is translated into practice with food and the cinema experience.

Edible Cinema

If you find Zhecho’s ideas interesting it might be worth following him on Twitter.

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First Lecture – Parramatta

25 Tuesday Feb 2014

Posted by csheringham in Uncategorized

≈ 1 Comment

So the first lecture is done – for some it is maybe the first or second Uni lecture ever. Starting Uni is such a big adventure. Makes you wonder what they made of it?

For others they have seen it all before 😎

For those that missed it it will be online soon. I listened to a couple of minutes – it put me to sleep – so it is just like being there but without the pictures.

So in an effort to please – Here is what you missed – a couple of photos from the back row.

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WOW – looks like this social media stuff may just work 😊

22 Saturday Feb 2014

Posted by csheringham in Social Media

≈ 3 Comments

So we have our first student comment…..

“  Hey Colin, Thanks for the video 🙂 Super excited to start with ‘Managing Service and Experience’ Looking forward to meet the the associated Dinosaurs next week!! See you soon… Cheers! Simran 🙂

Simran – given your our first response we should find a special prize for you. (Don’t hold your breath the prizes aren’t that at special – last time I looked they all seemed to be photos of Tim with the VC)

Twitter

14 Friday Feb 2014

Posted by csheringham in Social Media

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It is time to get those twitter accounts working for you.

Firstly,
Engage with the goings on in the unit by following Tim at @DrTimHall and follow Colin (me) at @200273exp

You should have a look back over my account and view who I followed and re twitted – who are the more interesting people. You can even follow one of the authors of the text book. Joe Pine is @joepine

Secondly – there are plenty of UWS sites that provide useful info. Follow them. The library has a useful site @UWSLibrary

Then if you are new to twitter (I was) you are in for a surprise at just how useful it can be. It is not all about boring Uni stuff. There is plenty of good things out there. Start following people or organisations you are interested in. Plenty of what’s on advice, places to go, bands to listen to, things of interest ( both practical and internet weird & wonderful) or just stay up with the celeb gossip.

Video

Another reason the iPad is an awesome tool for Blended Learning

14 Friday Feb 2014

Posted by csheringham in IPad

≈ 2 Comments

http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=6a8Eimr-fm0

This is an amazing app

Almost week one

14 Friday Feb 2014

Posted by csheringham in Uncategorized

≈ 1 Comment

So the planning is done (well almost- the exam question is still unresolved.

Spent the afternoon trying to film the welcome video message – must have killed a million pixels – the delete button is now seriously worn. So what do I think of the end result – well I will never bag out an actor again – it is much harder than it looks.

Note to self – re watch this before I mark the iMove trailers – will probably add 10 marks to the student’s Mark 😉

Anyway for what it is worth here is the opening video.

intro video message

And yes the stats thing was a joke 😁

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