EFFECTS OF ENVIRONMENTAL GRAPHIC DESIGN ISSUES AS A SUPPORTIVE SOURCE OF HOSPITAL SPATIAL PERCEPTION

Abstract

Aim: Increased awareness of creating design solutions that can meet the social and psychological needs of patients in healthcare spaces highlights research on the psychology of place-patient/ doctors/healthcare staff. Therefore, patient-oriented health space designs that provide a sense of trust and satisfaction to patients – along with a supportive approach to their treatment – are the points of departure in this study, while understanding the effects and experiences of design on patients. Environmental graphic design elements (photographs, illustrations, typography, and pictograms) in the interiors of hospitals emerge as the factors that shape the patient's spatial experience, such as orientation, information, and perception of a space. In this study, the effects of such design elements on user perception in health spaces were investigated, and these design criteria that play a role in determining and actively interacting with the environmental graphic design elements in hospital spaces are encountered. Based on the abovementioned facts, this research aims to contribute to the graphics in health spaces in the context of environmental graphic design, with experience covering both fields. Method: Three hospitals, which are sufficient in terms of environmental graphic design elements and have differences between them, were determined as the research places. The elements in these hospitals were photographed and surveyed on user groups (patients, doctors, health personnel) who experienced the places continuously or temporarily. Results and Conclusion: It was demonstrated by statistical data that the elements in the investigated places could not provide the expected effects as a whole. As a result, environmental graphic design applications that have a supportive design understanding in hospital spaces should have a holistic language, and that design understanding can only be demonstrated with the cooperation of architects, interior designers, graphic designers, and industrial designers.