Exploring photo-elicitation to elicit architecturally rich users’ experiences with(in) palliative environments through a human-centred approach: a pilot study

Abstract

The physical character of a palliative environment can (when well-designed) positively impact the wellbeing and experiences of its various users (residents, family, caregivers, and volunteers). However, it seems difficult for architects to translate quite abstract and subjective multi-user perspectives into more specific applicable design solutions, which is why the impact of palliative research in architectural practice seems little so far. To contribute to closing the loop between architects' design intent and actual users' experiences, conducting qualitative interviews with users of palliative environments seems a plausible approach to understand how they experience these environments. However, this concerns several ethical and practical challenges regarding the participants, the context, and the topic of this research. Hence, tension seems present between collecting more applicable architectural richer experiences and ensuring that this research does not unnecessarily burden participants. Therefore, this paper will focus on (1) how we can contribute to the participant-researcher dialogue in order to elicit more architecturally rich (subjective) experiences from various users of palliative environments, and (2) how we can adopt a human-centred approach when designing and conducting interviews of varioususers with(in) a palliative environment. For this purpose, a pilot study with three participants of a small-scaled palliative environment in Belgium was carried out to explore the potential and approach of photo-elicitation interviews. This paper reports on the pilot study and highlights methodological strengths and challenges from the lens of an architect-researcher with a strong focus on human-centredness. In this way, we hope to contribute to (re)designing more human-centred palliative environments.