The Mock-Up Debrief: Corridor Boxes and an Absent Physician Group
During a two-week mock-up of a prototype emergency department exam room, three conflicts surface. Security requires an unobstructed sightline from the central station. Nursing wants a supply cabinet at the room entry. Infection control rejects the proposed wood-look laminate because it cannot be terminally cleaned. The ED physician group, already skeptical of the project, calls the mock-up 'a waste of two weeks' and skips the debrief. Meanwhile staff have begun stacking supply boxes in the corridor outside the mock-up, which the design team reads as a workflow problem. The debrief is in three days and design development closes in five weeks.
1. How do you run the debrief and resolve the three-way conflict within five weeks?
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Separate the conflict types - they are not all trade-offs.
- Sightline vs. supply cabinet: a real spatial trade-off. Test it physically rather than arguing: tape out both options, run two timed scenarios (code arrival, supply restock) with security and a nurse present, and record times and sightline angles. Numbers end the debate faster than preference.
- Laminate: not a trade-off at all - it is a specification problem. Infection control is authoritative on cleanability; the design team's job is to find a compliant product that meets the aesthetic intent. Do not put this to a vote.
- Physician absence: the physician group's skepticism is a stakeholder risk, not a design input to be outvoted. Get one physician to a 20-minute walk-through at shift change, and send the recorded findings with a specific question they can answer in writing.
Run the debrief with a written decision log: issue, evidence, decision, owner, date. Circulate within 48 hours so absent parties can object in writing before design development.
2. Staff are storing boxes in the corridor. How do you decide whether that is real design feedback or noise, and what do you do with it?
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Treat it as a hypothesis, then test it against the intended design.
Interpretations to distinguish:
- The supply cabinet is undersized or wrongly located - a genuine design defect.
- Restocking logistics were not simulated - the mock-up never tested the real par levels or delivery route.
- Behavior carried over from the existing department, where corridor storage is the habit.
How to tell: count and photograph what is stored, measure its volume against the cabinet specification, ask staff why it is there, and check whether the same items appear in the cabinet at all. If volume exceeds spec, it is design. If the cabinet is empty and boxes are in the corridor, it is habit or logistics.
Action: if design, resolve now - it is cheap pre-DD and expensive post-occupancy. If habit, it belongs in the operational readiness plan, not the drawings. Either way, record the finding with the evidence, because 'staff stored boxes in the corridor' is exactly the observation a POE will need to explain later.
3. How do you document and disseminate the mock-up findings so they survive past this project?
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Capture, structure, and route the knowledge - mock-ups are usually wasted because nothing is written down.
- A structured capture sheet per issue: observation, who observed it, evidence (photo, measurement, timing), decision, and residual uncertainty. Not prose minutes.
- Two audiences, two products. An internal decision log that feeds design development immediately, and a one- to two-page transferable lesson set ('what we would specify differently') for the system's design standards and future ED projects.
- Close the loop with participants. Send the physician group and security the decisions their input changed - visible responsiveness is what converts a skeptic into a participant on the next project.
- Feed the POE. Register the mock-up hypotheses (e.g., 'entry cabinet at 1.4 m will eliminate corridor storage') as items the post-occupancy evaluation will test. That link is what makes the next project's evidence base better than this one's.