Waiting alone. Waiting for surgery on the day... in the room, on the bed. I can hear everything but the sound of silence. Anticipating the footsteps, waiting for them to take me. Any moment now. I was scheduled to start 47 minutes ago... still waiting. As the clock ticks, I try to distract myself to stop over-thinking: the fear... the pain... the consequences... but all in vain.

The above notes are the anxious thoughts that I noted down prior to surgery just a few months back. This is where the journey begins: going through the treatment process, each phase of waiting is completely different — both physically and mentally. However, all the little “moments of waiting” are summed up into this concept of waiting being a “pre-service” to the main point of medical action. Whether it’s experienced in the waiting room or waiting to be assessed or waiting to hear back, it is not considered to be a core part of the medical experience. Before this journey, waiting in healthcare was compressed into the waiting room as a location. However, it is much more than that as visualised in the diagram below. That is why our responsibility as designers is to dismantle it through the eyes of the user, exploring all the dimensions involved to be able to create a better understanding of the healthcare waiting experience and design an appropriate solution.