Tech Craft
Design
Providing an MRI Stargazing Experience Through Synaesthesia
Providing an MRI Stargazing Experience Through Synaesthesia
Dec 22, 2021
Dec 22, 2021
Tech Craft
Design
Tech Craft
Design
Providing an MRI Stargazing Experience Through Synaesthesia
Providing an MRI Stargazing Experience Through Synaesthesia
Dec 22, 2021
Dec 22, 2021
Color of a Season
Smell of the Sun
Sound of Time
All These Are Synaesthesia
Breaking the boundaries of the five senses of sight, hearing, taste, smell and touch to realize multi-contact interaction is a bold innovation of traditional design. In "synaesthesia design", users' individual experiences and thoughts are fully activated, heightening their senses and behavioral experiences, but also triggering emotions and spiritual reactions unexpectedly.
In the technology-intensive high-end medical industry, product research, development and design once put technology first, often ignoring the human side of healthcare and lacking attention to patients and aesthetics. How could we transform a large medical machine from a "cold tool" into a piece of equipment that reflected human needs, and show care, trust and respect for both patients and operators through design?
Pioneering the MRI Starry Sky Environment in the Industry
In 2016, United Imaging Healthcare's design innovation team took the lead in subverting the traditional design concept in the medical industry and helping our equipment create "synaesthesia". Our MRI starry sky environment in the tube uniquely connects sight and perception during an exam, making it more possible to tolerate MRI scanning.
Dark, depressing, helpless... In traditional MRI exams, upon opening their eyes, patients find themselves in a dark, narrow tube, and need to remain still there for ten minutes or more. This could result in huge mental stress, especially for those with claustrophobia.
How could we make the patient relax and believe that medical treatment aims to cure disease instead of cause anxiety?
"Star Watching Experience" in the Tube
A starry sky is the most sacred thing that we can see.
Starlight travels through the dark and secluded universe for tens of hundreds of light-years before it appears in front of our eyes. Looking up at the starry sky, it's easy to be mesmerized by the flickering stars and immersed in thoughts about the vast galaxy.
Screening dozens of types of lamps and studying dozens of customization suppliers, we conducted hundreds of lighting experiments from various light sources with different illumination, color development, adjustments, "starry sky" lighting angles and densities. The designer team spent nearly a year continuously looking for the lighting method that is closest to real starlight and most visually appealing. In November 2019, a starry sky environment experiment with different layers of light won the experiment, marking the emergence of the world's first starry sky immersive MRI equipment.
When the bed is pushed into the tube, the starlight begins to shine and the patient can feel like they're in a sea of stars in the galaxy. The starlight flickers slowly with breath, which reduces the examinee's tension as light and darkness interact, and transforms a boring and long MRI scanning process into an immersive "stargazing" experience.