Year: 2020 - Ongoing
Role: Technical direction, hardware integration, content creation.
Client: Studio Elsewhere
Contributors: David Azar (engineering), Torin Blankensmith (engineering & content creation), Jiyoon Moon (engineering), Isaac Sante (engineering), Mirelle Phillips (overall concept & content creation), Abilities Research Center (research partner)
Burnout is a critical issue for many modern-day workers, but perhaps none feel it more acutely than those in healthcare, where the COVID-19 pandemic has intensified the challenges of an already highly demanding work environment. The pandemic led to surges of critically ill patients into hospitals that were already operating at or above capacity. This rapid influx required healthcare workers to endure extreme workloads in unfamiliar practice environments. They faced tremendous stress, all while navigating severe disruptions to daily life outside of work. Stress, anxiety, existential concerns, and fear regarding the future inflicted psychological trauma, depression, and post-traumatic stress disorder. Before the start of the pandemic, a third of nurses said they experienced burnout, during the pandemic that number grew to 92% of critical-care nurses reporting in a national survey that pandemic stresses would shorten their careers.
To alleviate the ongoing crises, Studio Elsewhere team developed Recharge Rooms- immersive, multi-sensory, biophilic spaces that incorporate large-scale projections, music, scent, lighting, and sound to address trauma, anxiety, and stress and improve the cognitive performance of frontline workers. The experiences were developed with research support from the Abilities Research Center at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.
Since launching at Mount Sinai Hospital during the first surge in NYC, over 50 hospital-based Recharge Rooms have been installed across the nation, powering over a million sessions. The impacts of the Recharge Room have been published in peer-reviewed journals, demonstrating a 60% reduction in short-term stress, while ongoing studies report an increase in positive mood, cognitive performance, and social connection after a 15-minute session.
In the field of cognitive neuroscience, the ability to maintain focus on a task or stimuli is often referred to as “directed attention”. Directed attention is a finite resource that can be depleted resulting in cognitive difficulties, poor decision making, emotion dysregulation, and performance variability. Attention Restoration Theory (ART) is a concept in environmental psychology that suggests that direct exposure to nature or to scenes depicting rich natural environments can help overcome directed attention fatigue, restore an individual's ability to focus and concentrate. According to ART, restorative environments should encourage "soft fascination," a cognitive state that holds attention on the scene the individual is observing, while allowing reflection and the ability to address lingering, unresolved thoughts.Developed by psychologists Rachel and Stephen Kaplan in the 1980s, ART posits that natural environments provide a unique combination of stimuli that can gently engage attention, allow for its restoration, increase positive emotions, leading to improved cognitive performance and overall well-being.
Nurses entering Recharge Room
Frontline workers enjoying the experience
During the first couple of weeks of the surge, the Studio Elsewhere team saw firsthand the conditions that frontline workers had to endure. The hospitals were failing to provide basic needs to the people who were stretched to the limits of their physical and cognitive abilities. Poor nutrition, lack of rest, and extreme shortages of staff was the hallmark of the frontline conditions.
Drawing on our research into the effects of immersive environments on human abilities, we staged an intervention by rapidly converting under-utilized research laboratory space in a New York City hospital into custom-designed nature-inspired Recharge Rooms. These rooms provided an opportunity for healthcare workers to rest and refresh during or after their shift, using commercially available technologies and materials to create a rapid prototype. The team was able to adapt to a variety of underutilized spaces around hospitals including triage tents, waiting rooms, and unused outpatient labs.
The Recharge Rooms were designed to follow the principles of biophilic design and ART (Attention Restoration Theory), with a specific focus on creating natural scenes and experiences that shift users attention away from states of directed attention and promote states of soft fascination. Soft fascination is most easily elicited by scenes of nature, so the final rooms created multi-sensory (visual, auditory, and olfactory), nature-inspired experiences, as these have also previously been found to confer physiological benefits. These environments included silk imitation plants, projected scenes of soothing natural landscapes, low lighting that is tailored in color to match the projected landscapes, high definition audio recordings of nature sounds paired with relaxing music, and an infusion of essential oils and calming scents.
Over the last three years, Recharge Rooms evolved into a scalable product. Since then, the team has developed an in-house software and hardware solution to power these experiences. We developed our own content delivery system and shifted away from third-party consumer devices and models. The system now features a completely on-device voice recognition AI model that’s favored by all hospitals for cybersecurity. With a sophisticated analytics system, the team is able to tailor the content that’s most beneficial to the community at any given location. As of 2023, Recharge Rooms have been deployed to 50 hospitals across the country, and the team continues their ongoing research into the positive effects of these spaces on mood and cognitive performance. On average, every hospital with the Recharge Room has reported a 59% reduction of short-term stress, 44% in mood improvement, and 45% increase in cognitive alertness.
Triage tend before the Recharge Room intervention.
Triage tend after the Recharge Room intervention.
Designing the Recharge Rooms was a challenging task, requiring the team to consider the complex and rigid standards of hospital environments, particularly during COVID, from both design and technology perspectives, while integrating a biophilic design approach.
From a technology standpoint, we knew that the system had to operate 24/7 without human supervision, which meant developing a system that runs completely autonomously. We chose voice activation as our interface, eliminating the need for physical contact and promoting communal experiences that encourage conversations and collaboration. However, we also had to ensure that the system was secure and HIPAA compliant. To achieve this, we implemented an on-device voice recognition AI model that runs without the need to record and send audio messages to servers for processing, and the experiences can operate completely offline if the network connection is unavailable. We also designed a tamper-proof enclosure that protects the hardware from unwanted interaction, 3D printed to resemble an organic stone. From a design perspective, we had to consider the limited range of materials deemed safe in hospitals. The surfaces had to be cleanable to prevent the spread of infection. To achieve this, we custom fabricated wood laminated furniture that evokes the feeling of hard wood while remaining safe and cleanable.
To create environments that foster a connection to nature, the team often travels to culturally and biodiversity significant locations around the world to capture footage. Each shot is carefully crafted in accordance with the principles of biophilic design put forward by Terrapin Bright Green, which include incorporating natural elements, shapes, forms, patterns, and processes, as well as maximizing natural light, using natural materials, and designing structures that mimic natural systems.
Over the last couple of years, I’ve overseen the logistics of the filming expeditions to Navajo Nation, Hawaii, and the Pacific North West. This has involved coordinating travel arrangements, liaising with local stakeholders, and ensuring that all equipment and resources are in place to capture the footage we need. Through my work, I have seen firsthand the power of biophilic design in creating spaces that promote human health and well-being by fostering a connection to nature. One of the most rewarding moments of this work has been observing the impact that these environments have on people, the vulnerability they can afford, and freedom to share personal stories and build deep interpersonal connections.
The Recharge Room project received recognition from the media and the scientific community alike. Numerous respected news outlets and journals have featured the project, highlighting its innovative approach to addressing the growing issue of workplace burnout. Research on the effects of the Recharge Room has been published in peer-reviewed scientific journals, providing empirical evidence of its positive impact on employee well-being and productivity.
