Imagineering is the research and development arm of The Walt Disney Company, responsible for the creation, design and construction of Disney theme parks, development of merchandise, Disney games and other attractions worldwide .
Joe Lanzisero, former Walt Disney Imagineer and current Vice President of Zeitgeist Design & Production, spoke with MobiHealthNews to discuss the process of creating immersive worlds and how these techniques can be used to design experiences to improve patient care.
MobiHealthNews: How does your experience as a Walt Disney imagineer influence how you would create an immersive experience for healthcare?
Joe Lanzisero: I consulted several different people, two companies. You may be familiar with Reimagine Well. Another Imagineer, long-time friend and colleague at Imagineering, Roger Holzberg, has been involved with this project for a long time and led me to consult with them more on physical design, how we create environments and places, in especially for young children.
A lot of the work I did at Disney was designing children’s spaces; I designed the original Toontown. I have created children’s areas on cruise ships. So I have an understanding of the types of environments and the types of activities in a theme park.
Then, of course, working with Roger, we had to understand how that translates – mainly, you know, how horrible the (patient) experience can be for a little child. We created a journey before they even got their experience online: working with the doctors, working with the parents, and then once they started the experience in the hospital, seeing what we could do. A lot of it is distractions. So that was part of my job in the industry.
MHN: Are you looking to design immersive experiences for healthcare?
Lanzisero: Absolutely. It was interesting to note that during the pandemic, when theme parks were closed, most of them were closed, and many in our industry began to pivot to healthcare and other types of institutional services.
It’s about applying what I learned at Disney, which is just knowing the experiential journey that people go through and how they respond to different types of experiences. And because I had a wide range of design challenges, like I said, from cruise ships to hotels to dark rides, for all of them I had to think and, especially at Disney , you always had to think about all your users, and that ranged from little kids to older people and everything in between.
MHN: There are many things to consider when it comes to designing experiences for healthcare. Take, for example, psychiatric care; you don’t want to inadvertently trigger a traumatic memory. How would you consider creating experiences for various healthcare sectors?
Lanzisero: I would do the same thing I’ve always done for every project: you have to become an expert, and you become an expert by talking to experts. So, immediately, I would sit down with the psychiatric doctors, understand what the triggers are, and understand what they’re looking for in terms of what type of experiences we’re going to create.
MHN: There’s a lot of talk in the healthcare industry about AI and how this technology could eventually enable the design of immersive experiences on the fly. As a designer, what are your thoughts on the role of AI in creating these experiences?
Lanzisero: I’m not afraid of it. I think it’s going to be another amazing tool. I think back to when computer-aided design started to appear in CAD drafting. People were like, “Okay, that’s it, that’s the end of designers.” But no, I mean, you still need all the things you and I talk about. You first need that human engagement from people who are talking and understanding what you’re looking for, and then you think about which tool you’re going to use is going to work best to get the results you need. And one of them could be AI. Maybe it’s talking with other people. Maybe it will be another consulting firm. So I always try to think about it in general terms.
