Designing test sites that meet people where they are
Gehl’s client Curative was one of the early pioneers in COVID-19 rapid testing, developing a non-invasive oral swab test that could be administered independent of traditional medical facilities. Curative could see that not all Americans had the same level of access to testing, and that their product had a unique opportunity to reach communities that were underserved by existing health facilities and testing clinics.
Working in step with Curative, Gehl worked quickly to design the Covid-19 Testing Kiosk, a self-contained unit small enough to be deployed in a parking space wherever communities needed it most. This was paired with on-site user data collection to ensure a user-informed, iterative design process. Gehl deconstructed Curative’s test to analyze how its administration could be made more user-friendly for a variety of users in a public setting. Working in parallel, another Gehl team devised a deployment strategy and data-driven tool to help Curative and its public sector partners quickly identify the best sites to deploy testing kiosks where they were needed most.
The Covid-19 testing kiosks were deployed to more than 30 cities by the end of 2020 and increased the daily test-collection capacity across these cities by over one million tests per month.
