Universal Design in Healthcare Servicescapes: Uncovering Multisensory Customer Experiences among Visually Impaired Pateints to Enhance Service Convenience and Customer Intimacy.

Healthcare services are subject to huge challenges such as improving user experience while being (economically) sustainable. However, little attention has been dedicated on how to create adequate healthcare servicescapes through an optimal architectural design to enhance service convenience and customer intimacy. Hospitals often lack awareness for architectural experiences and can even create disabling situations: this is especially true for visually impaired patients as servicescapes heavily rely on visual components while those may not be (sufficiently) perceptible to visually impaired patients. After an extended customer journey throughout four hospitals, in-depth interviews with visually impaired patients are conducted to uncover obstacles met by the patients and to identify multisensory qualities that patients would value to enhance the service convenience and customer intimacy. This multidisciplinary research will provide both managers and architects of healthcare facilities with insights on how to best define architectural design methods to improve both service convenience and customer intimacy.