For my human-centered collaborative design class, I and three teammates worked alongside hospice workers to assess their needs and design a concept for the next five to ten years to help improve their quality of life. After months of interviewing, co-designing, and ideating with hospice and end-of-life workers, my team created some impact statements about the group: hospice workers are tasked to care for one’s physical welfare, but most of the job entails the mental welfare of the patient and themselves. After deciding this, we developed an idea that produces a safe space for hospice nurses to destress while immortalizing the patients they took the time to get to know. We present the Garden of Memories. The Garden of Memories is a room within a hospice facility that lets the nurses unwind while reliving memories of past patients. This enables them to relax and destress during their shift without sacrificing their precious breaks or quality of care to the patients. When hospice nurses feel particularly stressed or miss a patient who has passed, they walk into the Garden of Memories. In the garden, they can experience aromatherapy, calming music and sounds, and getting to be in nature. They will also experience their favorite memories with their patients as holograms play based on the recordings they took on their watch. They also have access to food so that they do not need to worry about finding time to eat on their breaks.
