User Group Consultation: Design Quality and Project Success.

Aim: User group consultation is more effective when participants work toward commonly agreed goals and objectives. To understand how they set these goals, this research explored how "user group" participants from diverse professional discipline backgrounds define the concepts of "design quality" and "project success," and their connection on a healthcare facility design project.

Background: User group consultation is often time-consuming, frustrating, and expensive. Rarely are design quality or project success clearly defined, nor is the connection between them communicated well either in the literature or by project clients.

Method: Using an online survey, respondents were asked to rank frameworks of components for design quality and project success in order of importance and to indicate how they believed their project clients would assess the same items. They were asked about the connection between the terms, and how well each was achieved on their healthcare projects, both from their personal and their client's point of view.

Results: Design quality and project success were personally valued highly by respondents, with a strong connection seen between the concepts. By contrast, respondents perceived their clients saw the connection as less important. Functionality was essential to all, especially clinicians, but designers and other consultants demonstrated a broader perspective on all design outcomes.

Conclusions: Healthcare designers should take the lead on project teams in defining design quality and its connection to project success as part of setting clear goals and objectives for more effective user group consultation.