Intro
Arriving
Bath
Beds
Circulating
Consulting
Shopping
Sanctuary
Social
Waiting
IDEAs assists in the generation of design briefs, proposals and schemes
Colour and form Calm, elegant + welcoming Wooden floors for home comfort Sculptural forms in atrium An obvious entrance

Healthcare buildings exist primarily for the people who use them. There is a mass of evidence that if we get the design right then satisfaction levels improve as do patients’ health outcomes and staff productivity.

Working with the latest evidence, IDEAs starts the design of healthcare places with people – patients, staff and visitors – and responds to the emotional and functional requirements of healthcare delivery.

Examples of activities that people do in healthcare places include arriving and entering, receiving, waiting, circulating, consulting/examining, bed, and so on.

IDEAs deals with these rather than individual spaces or rooms. IDEAs is not intended to solve all the problems associated with the technical spaces in healthcare. However, the vast majority of the floor space of healthcare building can be designed using IDEAs.

October 2008 update
Following publication a recent CABE report 'Assessing design quality in LIFT primary care buildings', 6 of the best AEDET/ASPECT scoring schemes have been added to the IDEAS site:

View the CABE report at: www.cabe.org.uk.

If you have any suggestions for new content please use the feedback button at the foot of this page.
Who uses IDEAs and when?

IDEAs is design tool to aid Trusts and all their architects and design consultants to develop their briefs and design ideas. Design Champions in Trusts may find IDEAs useful in promoting design within their Trusts.

IDEAs is intended to help create aspirations towards good design from the beginning of the process and direct attention towards qualities that otherwise are often lost in highly technical healthcare environments.

IDEAs treats both interior and exterior spaces as “Places” where a number of activities commonly take place. It works by understanding these activities and the functional and emotional needs of the people involved.

IDEAs can either be used as a standalone tool within a workshop context or as a web-enabled integrated tool by individuals.

IDEAs can be used in conjunction with other design tools such as the evaluation tools AEDET Evolution and ASPECT.
How does IDEAs work?

IDEAs has two main window panes to help us understand healthcare places:

CHALLENGES and CONSIDERATIONS pane

  • CHALLENGES looks at what people need to do: their activities.  
  • CONSIDERATIONS looks at what the design should do to respond to these needs (these are also mapped onto the AEDET and ASPECT tools)

PRECEDENTS pane

  • Looks at what others have done: existing solutions to similar problems.  
collage of images

There are 3 types of information in IDEAs: pictograms, photographs and accompanying text.

Pictograms:
these are abstract and unreal illustrations, free of architectural style which are not intended to be copied because they do not represent design solutions but act as a kind of visual index.

Precedents:
these are digital images (photographs, plans, sections, elevations etc.) of existing design solutions.

Accompanying text:
that explains the range of activities and associated design considerations most commonly found in each place.