Participation in healthcare environment engineering Engineering
produces things (environments, products, processes) to improve
our quality of life, yet the people who will ultimately use
these things are often not involved in the design (or if they
are, this consultation is often tokenistic). Decision making
about design needs to directly involve the people who will use
these things, to capture their subjective opinions, ideas,
language, needs and feelings, and then to translate these into a
format meaningful for designers and engineers. Involving people
in engineering and design can have a transformative effect on
new products and environments but since this is traditionally
not part of formal engineering training, the benefits of
participation still have huge, untapped potential. Furthermore,
the notion that engineering can be enhanced through working with
other disciplines is only just beginning to have an impact in
engineering practice. Participation is most powerful when it
contributes to improving quali