Screenplay: an interactive experience for children in hospital waiting rooms

Elaine Biddiss, from Holland Bloorview Institute in Toronto (Canada), has designed an interactive and inclusive system consisting of a large projection screen and a pressure-sensitive sheet that allows children to remain distracted while waiting their turn in hospital waiting rooms.

Elaine Biddiss, teacher of Institute of Biomaterials and Biomedical Engineering (BBME) of the University of Toronto, and scientific in the Holland Bloorview Research Institute, has developed an innovative waiting room for the children's sections of medical centers. This interactive display has been installed on the 2nd floor of the waiting room at the Holland Bloorview Children's Rehabilitation Hospital in Toronto.

Waiting in a doctor's office or hospital can be a very stressful and terrifying experience for children and their families.. Some pediatric waiting rooms provide toys to distract children and relieve anxiety and boredom. traditional toys, however, They can spread infections when handled and are often not accessible to children with disabilities.

Screenplay Presentation

Screenplay is an interactive and inclusive system for the Holland Bloorview clinic waiting area that features a large-scale projection screen that children and adults can interact with. The facility has a pressure-sensitive track composed of 100 tokens that allow children, that they are both standing and sitting, create large projections on a wall-sized glass screen. Then the projection film is applied, calibrated by your movements, to the glass screen from a ceiling-mounted projector.

For Biddiss, The facility originated from reverse logic that helps serve children has been designed to attract the majority of children with severe disabilities and mobility issues, while keeping kids active and fit calm, motionless, and committed . “The longer you stay in one place, the bigger the projection”, Biddiss explained, allowing those children with the least amount of mobility to create larger images. The floor also promotes collaborative learning: several children can play together on the floor to create, For example, wall size forests.

Biddiss has also pointed out that Screenplay is “a great collaborative effort” among the engineers of the Holland Bloorview Children's Rehabilitation Foundation, and students from the Ontario College of Art and Design, who designed the images of the projectors.

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