Ethnography Report on BMC Waiting Room

Liang Zhang

Observing in the waiting room of Boston Medical Center Geriatric Clinic for one hour is an interesting experience. We try to figure out what patients usually do during their waiting time and what are they response to Tanya, the relational agent kiosk. The most important thing we found was that patient didn’t usually engage with the agent. That’s because of several things, but one specially was that they don’t feel any need to use it.

The observation began on Wednesday at 10 o’clock in the morning, which it’s said to be a busy time that most patients meet their appointments. During that time, there were approximately 10 patients came to see their doctors. That seems not very busy comparing to the situation in China. And the waiting room always had empty seats. Besides observing, we also conducted two semi-structured interviews, which talked about the waiting experience, the agent and ways to improve.

We found some problems that were related to kiosk:

l  The Position

The kiosk was place in the corner of entrance of the waiting room, where it’s very easy to neglect. Because when people walk in, most of them were facing to front desk and signed up for their doctor, and then they just seat opposite to the front desk. In this whole process, it’s very easy to miss the existence of the kiosk.

I think it’s better if kiosk can be move to the place where there was a welcome green plant which is next to the front desk. So most patients would find out there were something else interesting in this waiting room.

l  The Height

The height of the screen of the kiosk is adjustable, also the kiosk is moveable. But most of the patients will not try to adjust it to fit them (but they would turn the volume). After a trail, a patient told us that “It’s hard for us to stand for a long time.” So it suggested that we should improve the interaction position. The simple way is to place a seat in front of the kiosk. But it will block the entrance.

l  The Schedule

We found out that the biggest problem that the patients were facing is their schedule. Patients were usually told to take a seat and wait patiently, and without knowing how long would they have to wait. Their schedules were very easy to affect. For example, if the doctor was late then schedule of every patient that had an appointment with he/she had to postpone. Or if their interpreter was late then their meeting was late too.

So the kiosk is better to have a feature that can predict how long a patient needs to wait. The prediction can be made by gather info of how long the doctor has been with his/her patient and usually how long the doctor needs to finish an appointment. Although this can’t be rocket science, that’s a great help for patients.

l  The Interruption

We discovered that patients here were very likely to be interrupted by the front desk. They have to listen to their calls very carefully. Meanwhile the kiosk’s conversation seems to be a little bit longer. They want to know something related to their health. Because we seen patients read those health flyers. So we guess if we can shorten the conversation and provide some easy talk that would be a release for patient to wait and still focus on their doctor’s calling.