The Wrap Wrobe was designed for one of my design classes as an alternative to traditional hospital gowns. The design brief for the project gave each group a theoretical patient to keep in mind during the redesign. My group was focused on re-designing a hospital gown for a patient being treated for shingles. After creating an empathy map, we brainstormed ways to keep the patient comfortable and covered. We finally settled on a design that worked similarly to a wrap dress and had snaps across the shoulders to allow medical staff access to the patient in an emergency while keeping the patient comfortable throughout their stay. We also did some research into the life-cycle of the current hospital gowns and determined that overall, they are often worth the investment in terms of patient satisfaction overall. The Wrap Wrobe is designed to be made out of a moisture-wicking athletic material to keep the patient comfortable for long periods of time and has a small loop on the shoulder to help hospital staff with cord management in the case of an IV etc. This project helped me get comfortable making an empathy map and working through the lens of User-based design. I learned that the empathy map is an extremely efficient method of communicating the wants and needs of the user to a design team. I not only gained research skills as well, but I took the initiative to ask a professional in the field and was able to form a better design based on their experience. The poster below was the final presentation for the project and was designed to be printed on a large scale to present to other students in the design class and the empathy map is shown in the "User Needs and Perspective" Section.