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Maintaining an older adult’s health is crucial to achieving a high quality of life. However, as older adults age, many face health issues making it impossible, or unsafe, to venture outdoors. Nevertheless, the natural environment has consistently shown, dating back to ancient times, to have therapeutic benefits with mounting supporting evidence. The premise of this chapter is that technology is an effective means to simulate natural landscapes as a substitute for actual immersion in nature. The health benefits related to simulated landscapes are widespread including encouraging physical activity, boosting cognitive functioning, and facilitating social relationships. This emerging field is demonstrating how technological supports are recreating nature through interactive display screens, fiber optics, virtual environments, and virtual reality googles. Technology is increasingly extending beyond isolated objects and becoming fully integrated into physical environments, yielding simulated experiences that more closely replicate real world settings.

The delivery and consumption of health care services and information is in rapid change due to the introduction of technology, socio-political considerations (in the United States), and the change in population demographics (i.e., the “baby boom generation”). This chapter discusses some of these trends and their implications for two specific stakeholders in the health care system: the nurse and the older patient. In two case studies the authors report on the application of human factors methods to better understand the role of the built-environment on nursing work and the role of technology acceptance issues in older adult usage of electronic personal health records. The authors hope to show that while the challenges are great, the application of human factors methods can help increase performance, safety, and satisfaction for both nurse and older patient.

Although a nurse's job is inundated with prospective memory (PM) demands, and studies show that PM failures are a key component of adverse medical events, only one study has examined prospective memory in nursing (Grundgeiger, Sanderson, MacDougall, & Venkatesh, 2009). The purpose of the current study was to complement existing research with self-reports from 25 nurses on the PM tasks they must remember and those they forget. Results revealed that nurses most frequently perform episodic tasks, and these tasks can be further classified to better explain when nursing PM demands arise and what the demands consist of. A more specific categorization of nursing PM tasks enables researchers to focus on specific design solutions. We provide examples of such re-design recommendations intended to alleviate PM demands.

To improve the healthcare environment where nurses work and patients receive care, it is necessary to understand the elements that define the healthcare environment. Primary elements include (a) the occupants of the room and what knowledge, skills, and abilities they bring to the situation; (b) what tasks the occupants will be doing in the room; and (c) the characteristics of the built environment. To better understand these components, a task analysis from human factor research was conducted to study nurses as they cared for hospitalized patients. Multiple methods, including a review of nursing textbooks, observations, and interviews, were used to describe nurses' capabilities, nursing activities, and the environmental problems with current patient room models. Findings from this initial study are being used to inform the design and evaluation of an inpatient room prototype and to generate future research in improving clinical environments to support nursing productivity.

The idea of affordance, borrowed from perceptual psychology, is applied to the domain of architecture. As to architectural theory, affordances can be used as a conceptual framework to understand the relationship between environments and occupants, especially with respect to form and function. Regarding architectural design, the concept of affordance allows for a common theoretical basis to improve the design process. Concerning architectural practice, affordances can be used as a tool to explore the connection between the intentions of the design with how the artifact is actually used, leading to archived knowledge, and the potential for avoiding common design failures.

Concern for the deleterious effect of nursing homes on older adults' quality of life has resulted in a grassroots movement calling for a shift from the traditional medical model of care to that of a social model, thereby creating life enriching environments which foster meaningful relationships and activity engagement among residents, staff, and family members (Eaton, 1997; 2000; Kane, Kane, & Ladd, 1998; Pioneer Network, 2004). In this manuscript one approach to creating a life-enriching nursing home environment, the family model, is presented. The Family Model of Care provides guidance and direction to nursing homes seeking to create home-like environments that will foster family-like bonds among residents, staff, and family members. The components of the Family Model of Care include: (1) collaborative culture, (b) home-like setting, and (c) meaningful activities.

Analysis of recordings made by a wearable eye tracker is complicated by video stream synchronization, pupil coordinate mapping, eye movement analysis, and tracking of dynamic Areas Of Interest (AOIs) within the scene. In this paper a semi-automatic system is developed to help automate these processes. Synchronization is accomplished via side by side video playback control. A deformable eye template and calibration dot marker allow reliable initialization via simple drag and drop as well as a user-friendly way to correct the algorithm when it fails. Specifically, drift may be corrected by nudging the detected pupil center to the appropriate coordinates. In a case study, the impact of surrogate nature views on physiological health and perceived well-being is examined via analysis of gaze over images of nature. A match-moving methodology was developed to track AOIs for this particular application but is applicable toward similar future studies.

Objective: The goal of this project was to create an easy-to-administer and inexpensive tool that can help identify usability issues in a patient room bathroom during the design process so improvements can be made before the final product is constructed and put into operation. Background: The bathroom is an essential part of any hospital patient room, yet it is associated with nurse dissatisfaction and patient falls. Minimal literature has examined whether the physical structure of various elements within the bathroom are efficient, safe, and satisfactory for the majority of users. Furthermore, there is a paucity of human factor guidelines for architects and designers to follow to ensure the usability of bathroom space for a wide variety of users. Methods: The authors adapted a common technique used in software usability: the heuristic evaluation. A heuristic evaluation is a “discount” evaluation method used to quickly and efficiently evaluate the usability flaws of user interfaces. Three methods were used to provide input for the heuristic evaluation: (1) Review of existing heuristic evaluations, reported hospital bathroom problems, and safety checklists; (2) Interviews with nurses and nursing assistants; and (3) Focus groups with nurses. Analysis of the interview and focus group transcripts enabled the categorization of the types of problems nurses encounter in the patient room bathroom. These categories served as the basis for the heuristics in the heuristic evaluation tool. Results: Eleven major heuristics (or categories of problems in the bathroom) were identified initially. The authors then went through several iterations of designing and refining the heuristic evaluation to form parsimonious categories and subcategories. Each of the eventual six major heuristic categories contains a general description as well as specific exemplar questions. These detailed subcategories enable an evaluator to easily gauge whether a bathroom adheres to the guideline, to write any comments about a particular issue, and to rate the severity of any problems. Conclusions: The bathroom heuristic evaluation was designed to be a discount usability evaluation tool. It can be used to assess a hospital bathroom during the design process for major usability issues, enabling necessary alterations before a final product is developed.