Stephen Reay

• PhD
• Professor at Auckland University of Technology

Aim To identify prioritized strategies to support improvements in early health service delivery around the diagnosis and management of cerebral palsy (CP) for both Māori and non‐Māori individuals. Method Using a participatory approach, health care professionals and the parents of children with CP attended co‐design workshops on the topic of early...

Objective: Digital technology has changed the way healthcare is delivered and accessed. However, the focus is mostly on technology and clinical aspects. This review aimed to integrate and critically analyse the available knowledge regarding patients' perspectives on digital health tools and identify facilitators and barriers to their uptake. Meth...

There is limited evidence for how the medical devices used by a New Zealand District Health Board’s Outpatient Intravenous Antibiotic (OPIVA) system could be improved. This study used human-centred design (HCD) to explore a possible redesign of this system to improve patients’ experiences. Using an iterative design process, informed by semi-structu...

The emerging Design for Health (D4H) field has considerable potential to identify and address existing challenges faced by healthcare systems. D4H is a challenging environment for designers (and others who desire to ‘do things differently’) to work in. D4H projects require transdisciplinary approaches, making it more difficult for those who come fr...

For the emerging field of Design for Health (D4H) to realize its potential, it is necessary to identify and address existing challenges faced by its community. The few papers that have identified challenges and opportunities in Design for Health confirm that healthcare is a challenging environment for designers to work in. In part this is because d...

In this paper we reflect on and discuss the curriculum design, results and impact of a new undergraduate design studio class project that introduced students to design for health and wellbeing in a real-world context. Through the Integrated Studio class project, 11 undergraduate final year design students from a range of traditional design discipli...

This paper describes the development of a creative toolkit - Things for thought – designed as a research probe that engages participants through a guided object-based exploration to help them better understand what belonging might mean to them. The toolkit draws on the Māori (indigenous people of Aotearoa New Zealand) creation narrative and uses en...

Medicalization refers to the process by which ordinary human problems and experiences - such as depression, anxiety, addiction, and child hyperactivity - come to be defined and treated as distinct medical conditions. The growing influence of Western medicine (or 'biomedicine') in contemporary society has had a profound impact on people's understand...

This article explores how co-design was used to engage young people in the design of a new brand identity and online platform for the Auckland District Health Board’s Peer Sexuality Support Programme (PSSP). Unlike conventional branding practices that do not generally engage users as co-creators in the early discovery stages of the design process,...

We drew on the principles of co-autoethnography to explore the experiences of two multidisciplinary university-based teams engaged in design for health work: (1) a design team embedded in a hospital consisting of designers and social researchers; and (2) a person-centred rehabilitation research team of health researchers and professionals. We explo...

Waiting in healthcare environments is common, and the design of waiting areas can profoundly participate in that experience. This paper describes a study drawing on Deleuze and Guattari’s notions of ‘affect’ and ‘assemblage’ to investigate a hospital waiting area: exploring how the area currently participates in the generation of affect and how it...

Introduction: A Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) examination is often described by patients as frightening and uncomfortable. To prepare patients for an MRI examination, this study explored the use of virtual reality (VR) simulation compared to a mock MRI scan (full-scale MRI machine replica, without internal magnets). Methods: Twenty participan...

Many doctors prescribe antibiotics for a cold, to meet patient’s expectations. As a result, patient’s education about antibiotics and antibiotic resistance forms a major component of the WHO’s Global Action Plan on Antimicrobial Resistance. However, it is not known whether simple educational material can change a person’s attitudes about antibiotic...

Listening to specific soundscapes can influence multisensory flavour perception. In the present study, changes in people's perception of the flavour of ice-cream were tracked over time as they listened to a café soundscape, and when this soundscape was overlaid with either bird, machine, or forest soundscapes. In addition, emotions and electrophysi...

Wayfinding is a multi-faceted approach to communication integral to good end-to-end user journeys, often in the context of the built environment. As such, good wayfinding is critical to successful navigation. When wayfinding is poorly considered or executed, user experiences and perceptions of organizations are negatively impacted. Healthcare envir...

This research explores how co-creation and a design-led approach to the traditional notion of symposium brought together industry, academia and the voice of patients in a hospital-based environment. The symposium ‘designing together’ provided a primer to consider what opportunities and constraints might influence how design could thrive in a hospit...

Involving children in the evaluation of hospital environments has been recognized as important. It is argued that this should extend to engaging children in the evaluation of medical products. A study was undertaken to evaluate how children, parents/caregivers and nurses viewed the design of a new intravenous (IV) pole compared to the existing IV p...

This article examines the ethical and practical challenges of undertaking a study using art-based methods with children/young people. It is argued that an important component of qualitative research and research with children/young people is researcher reflexivity and flexibility, particularly when the anticipated and actual implemented methods of...

Student‐led design projects undertaken within healthcare settings raise considerable ethical challenges, primarily resulting from collaboration with service users. This article emerged out of the experiences of design from a New Zealand university undertaking real world projects in acute health care contexts. A human‐centred approach to design is u...

Design is about people. As designers, focussing on people and their needs seems intuitive. But, this is not always the case with design students. Immersed in their personal practice, they often regard design as an abstract activity that makes something look good or work well without considering whether people who ‘aren’t like them’ can understand o...

Studies of the characteristics of therapeutic landscapes have become common in medical geography. However, there is limited analysis of how therapeutic landscapes are produced. Based upon the qualitative theoretical thematic analysis of focus group data, this study examined the spatial work carried out by healthcare practitioners in a paediatric ou...

This practice led research project explored visual representation through illustrations designed to communicate often complex medical information for different users within Auckland City Hospital, New Zealand. Media and tools were manipulated to affect varying degrees of naturalism or abstraction from reality in the creation of illustrations for a...

This case study presents a project based on a spatial redesign at Auckland City Hospital. The project aimed to improve the public waiting area located outside an intensive care unit – a space where families and friends wait for updates on their loved one's condition. As an environment, the area was characterized by high levels of stress and anxiety...

A tracheostomy is a commonly performed surgical procedure to alleviate some form of inadequate breathing. Tracheostomies may be temporary in the case of airway emergencies or may be for long-term access to airway and breathing depending on a patient's condition; in the case of the latter, this may have a major impact on a patient's life, one for wh...

Tracheostomy product designs have barely changed in 100 years. Furthermore, there is limited research into the experiences of people living with long-term tracheostomy. Existing tracheostomy designs focus on minimizing costs and maintaining clinical function, often at the expense of user experience. Because tracheostomy user numbers are relatively...

This paper describes the development and use of creative methods to engage young people experiencing psychosis in co-creation of an online resource to support their education and wellbeing. Engaging young people in a meaningful way, let alone those experiencing psychosis, can be challenging using traditional research methods. Throughout a series of...

Background Patient-directed education that aims to lower patients’ expectations for antibiotics is a promising strategy to reduce antibiotic usage for viral upper respiratory tract infections (URTI). We aimed to test three posters on a patient population to see whether the messages were comparable in reducing expectations for antibiotics to treat U...

Background: A tracheostomy is a surgically created opening through the anterior neck tissues and the trachea, into which a tube is inserted. Despite its influence on basic human needs such as respiration, communication and nutrition, little is known about the impact of tracheostomy on patients and their caregivers or what could be done to enable b...

This project explores how a design-led approach can be used to improve health seekers’ wayfinding experiences within a public hospital. It questions how communication design might support and empower wayfinding health seekers. Whilst addressing physical wellness, hospitals often overlook the high levels of stress, anxiety and uncertainty that come...

Background: A study was designed to understand the experiences and needs of children within the public spaces of the Outpatients Department of New Zealand's national children's hospital, Starship Childrens' Directorate. Aim: To find out from children what they thought about the outpatient environment. Design: A participatory art based methodol...

This case study presents the first project undertaken in a recent in-hospital design collaboration – the Design for Health and Wellbeing Lab (DHW Lab). Specifically, we explore some of the challenges and opportunities associated with designing a journey map for the Adult Emergency Department, the DHW Lab's first opportunity to put co-design into pr...

This paper will present a design anthropological perspective on an ongoing project called 'Living Well with Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI)'. The project explores how people with MCI (and their families) manage and respond to changes in their memory and thinking. One of the primary aims of this project is to design an online resource that will supp...

This paper describes how the DHW Lab facilitates third mission activities, as well as advancing undergraduate pedagogy and post-graduate research. It suggests there are challenges and opportunities involved in creating a hybrid of two very different organizations, that need to be addressed to advance transdisciplinary education in the 'transformati...

This paper describes how the DHW Lab facilitates third mission activities, as well as advancing undergraduate pedagogy and post-graduate research. It suggests there are challenges and opportunities involved in creating a hybrid of two very different organizations, that need to be addressed to advance transdisciplinary education in the ‘transformati...

This paper will present a design anthropological perspective on an ongoing project called ‘Living Well with Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI)’. The project explores how people with MCI (and their families) manage and respond to changes in their memory and thinking. One of the primary aims of this project is to design an online resource that will supp...

Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) procedures can be intimidating experiences, in particular for young children.

This paper contextualises the emergence and continuing development of the Design for Health and Wellbeing (DHW) Lab, a collaboration between a university and a hospital in Auckland, New Zealand. The DHW Lab was established with the vision of creating a design space in which designers, students, patients and hospital staff could work together to ide...

Within the University sector, there has been concern expressed in recent years over the accreditation of alternative higher education providers to deliver degree programs. This presupposes that the two sectors would be in direct competition for the same students with providers offering similar programs and content, and catering to students with sim...

The Design for Health and Wellbeing (DHW) Lab is a collaboration between the Auckland District Health Board (ADHB) and the Auckland University of Technology (AUT)’s Faculty of Design and Creative Technologies. Located inside Auckland City Hospital, the Lab combines the design-led research and teaching activity of a university with a hospital’s comm...

Collembola were sampled from litter and soil in two regrowth Lophozonia menziesii (silver beech) forests situated 25 km apart in Southland, New Zealand, as part of a larger study investigating the ecological effects of selective timber harvesting. Over 2000 specimens were collected, representing three orders, ten families, ≥ 20 genera and ≥ 23 spec...

In this paper we focus on design experimentation and prototyping within a hospital design lab. We describe how things designed within this environment act as socio-technical entities that support the work of the hospital. In this research, healthcare is viewed as a socio-material assemblage, and the hospital as a complex, heterogeneous community ne...

Design programmes are undergoing continual pedagogical and curriculum development, especially as the role of the designer evolves and broadens and as new technologies become accessible and mainstream. As a relatively new academic option, product design at AUT was in a strong position to respond to these changes without the constraints of history an...

Successful collaborative design harmonizes diverse inputs from disciplines with often contrasting paradigms (Reay & Withell, 2013). Designers must respond to these challenges using both objective and subjective, quantitative and qualitative methods of research and analysis (Cross, 2001). The use of more tangible, quantitative methods to elicit evid...

This paper will critically examine how an interdisciplinary commercial research project undertaken by staff in Product Design at AUT University can be leveraged to inform sustainable design curriculum and develop authentic learning opportunities to help give students a more realistic understanding of the complexities associated with ecological syst...

Mobile social media can be used to augment physical learning spaces and bridge formal and informal learning contexts. This paper presents the ongoing implementation and impact of a mobile social media project, which aims to augment and enhance a Product Design programme underpinned by a Design Thinking methodology. The goal of the project is to enh...

The entomopathogenic fungus Beauveria bassiana commonly causes disease on a range of insects, including bark beetle pests of plantation forest trees. However, using broadcast application of the fungus to control pest beetles in large scale plantation forests could be difficult to achieve economically. B. bassiana has also been found as an endophyte...

The introduced pine bark beetle Hylastes ater has been present in New Zealand for around 100 years. The beetle has been a minor pest on pines. Research was undertaken to control the pest in the 1950s–1970s, with a biological control agent introduced with limited success. Following a reasonably long period with minimal research attention, renewed in...

Raw turpentine, α- and β- pinene, and ethanol were tested as attractants to Hylastes ater and Hylurgus ligniperda. These volatiles were tested alone and in combination with ethanol using multiple funnel traps in cutover Pinus radiata forest. In comparison with combinations of α- and β- pinene, and ethanol, raw turpentine alone was a poor attractant...

Scolytid beetles (Coleoptera: Curculionidae: Scolytinae) are a large group of beetles associated with many tree species. Some species consume dead wood and vector an array of fungi which contribute to recycling of organic material, so are often an important component of forest ecology. However, populations can increase to pest levels. In this revie...

Mobile social media can be used to augment physical learning spaces and bridge formal and informal learning contexts. This paper presents the ongoing implementation and impact of a mobile social media project, which aims to augment and enhance a Product Design programme underpinned by a Design Thinking methodology. The goal of the project is to enh...

The school of Art and Design at Auckland University of Technology, New Zealand has recently developed new undergraduate and postgraduate programmes in Product Design. The development is the result of intensive research and pedagogical develop- ment in response to emerging needs of industry and of graduates. The undergraduate programme consists of a...

Design teams are expected to produce physical prototypes that demonstrate the working principles of their designs. These projects may involve multiple areas of technology, such as industrial design, electronics, mechanical engineering, software, and even marketing. The integration of physical, threedimensional prototypes into the newproduct develop...

This research project explores the feasibility of a Cradle to Cradle approach to sustainable product design in New Zealand. Relatively recently a framework for sustainable design was proposed by environmental chemist Michael Braungart and architect William McDonough who suggest that the current paradigm of “cradle to grave” product development is u...

The advent of additive manufacturing technologies presents a number of opportunities that have the potential to greatly benefit designers, and contribute to the sustainability of products. Additive manufacturing technologies have removed many of the manufacturing restrictions that may previously have compromised a designer’s ability to make the pro...

New Zealand Pinus radiata and associated exotic and native trees were surveyed for presence of Beauveria bassiana. Samples were collected from trees located in 33 sites in four geographically distinct areas of New Zealand. Needle samples were taken at all sites, while seed samples were taken from a single tree at one site and four root samples were...

The European pine weevil, Hylobius abietis, is an important pest of temperate conifers and a significant biosecurity threat to countries such as New Zealand (NZ) where commercial forestry is largely dependent on pine monoculture. The economic impact of this insect is determined by its abundance and the degree of resistance of young pines to adult f...

This research project explores opportunities for sustainable design in New Zealand. Recently a new framework for sustainable design was proposed by environmental chemist Michael Braungart and architect William McDonough who suggest that the current paradigm of cradle to grave product development is unable to provide a solution to the world’s curren...

Hylastes ater and Hylurgus ligniperda are introduced pests of re-established Pinus radiata in New Zealand. Both species breed under the bark of stumps in recently harvested areas. Adult maturation feeding on pine seedlings planted in adjacent areas can significantly impact seedling growth, and in severe cases seedlings will die. Entomopathogenic fu...

A survey of entomopathogenic fungi associated with Hylastes ater and Hylurgus ligniperda was undertaken in six Pinus radiata forest sites in New Zealand. In each site soil, bark and frass associated with beetle galleries were sampled, as well as a selection of live beetles, larvae and mycosed cadavers. The density of Beauveria spp. (as measured by...

In New Zealand, two introduced scolytid beetles, Hylastes ater and Hylurgus ligniperda (Curculionidae: Scolytinae) are pests in pine plantations. Investigation of the naturally occurring pathogens of these exotic pests revealed that both are attacked by Beauveria caledonica, a species originally isolated and described from soil in Scotland. The iso...

Three native species of pinhole borer Treptoplatypus caviceps, Platypus apicalis and Platypus gracilis (Curculionidae: Platypodinae) are occasional pests of indigenous forests in New Zealand. These species predominantly attack ‘southern beech’, usually colonising fallen logs or stumps, but populations can reach densities which threaten healthy tree...

A survey established in 2002 of 1-year-old Pinus radiata seedlings in New Zealand confirmed the presence of a number of members of the Ophiostomataceae family within the seedlings following damage. The persistence of fungi in P. radiata trees for extended periods following prior damage to the seedlings by the bark beetle Hylastes ater was studied s...

A nationwide survey of New Zealand sap-stain fungi on Pinus radiata was undertaken between 1996 and 1998 with collections of 1958 samples of material from 869 sites in the North and South Is-lands. Material was collected from mills, ports, forest plantations of native, exotic, or P. radiata, nurseries, farms, and urban areas. Material collected inc...

The relationships between crown and stem dimensions of trees in two South Island, New Zealand, natural forests were investigated to determine whether they might explain differences in tree species composition estimates based on canopy area and basal area. Dacrydium cupressinum, a common canopy emergent at the lowland podocarp forest site, had the s...