Please answer these prompts:
Q: Identify 5 Key Takeaways from the Research component of your capstone project
Q: What did you learn?
Q: How did you apply this learning?
Q: Did you use a strategy for your research process? Did you encounter challenges or hurdles during your decision-making process? Can you think of a strategy that may help propel your work in the future?
Q: How has the Research component of your Capstone course influenced your thinking about the value of Research in the professional practice of Interior Design?
The key questions from the research component were how I could integrate a market, clinic and pharmacy to address the needs of the community without making it feel like a current-day pharmacy (Walgreens, CVS, etc). How biophilia could be implemented to positively impact the traditional healthcare experience. How can color psychology be used to create more empathetic spaces in healthcare settings. What kind of lighting is used in healthcare settings to promote better healing? I don’t know if I had the answers to all of this since I hadn’t touched or looked back at the research I did in a while. I did learn that community health centers were something that seemed like the solution I was looking for. Through my research, I did adapt my capstone project to be a community health center with a food pharmacy incorporated into it.
The strategy I used for my research process was starting off big on Google, looking at any article I could find in relation to healthcare design, food pharmacies, and the effects that design had on health. I filtered through these articles through lighting, space layout, and biophilia. While there were a lot of articles on biophilia and lighting, finding specific articles on certain topics was harder. A setback for me was that since I’m fairly used to evidence-based medicine, it was harder for me to find the articles or journals I needed. I wasn’t sure what article was backed by evidence or if it was opinion-based and wasn’t sure if the opinion-based ones were okay to use or not. So I fell into the rabbit hole of research and sort of lost my way in what I wanted for my research project. I’m not sure what strategies to help propel my work in the future, but searching broadly, then narrowing your topic down has always worked for me most of the time.
The research component of the capstone course has reinforced my thinking about the value of research in interior design. There are a lot of useful articles and papers I found on how design elements can affect one’s psychology and the space. These articles are really useful in healthcare design and I hope that further research in interior design can help the field out more in the future.