Design Guidelines of Witness Preparation Room: A Case Study of Phuket Public Prosecution Office

Abstract

The interior design for Spaces within the judicial process is very important, especially the witness preparation room. This room is the area for preparing witnesses before giving testimony in court. The environment in the room must make witnesses feel safe, confident, and trustworthy, which in turn has a positive effort on the performance of prosecutors. The objectives of this research are 1) to summarize the elements of design of the room and 2) to propose guidelines for the design of witness preparation rooms within the Phuket Provincial Attorney’s Office. This qualitative research consisted of 32 participants, divided into five groups: personnel from the Office of Administrative Litigation, the Thailand Institute of Justice (TIJ), the For Freedom International Foundation, the Phuket Provincial Prosecutor’s Group, and Individuals who have experience dealing with the judicial process. The research tools used a questionnaire together with a focus group method. The questionnaire was divided into three parts: Part 1) general Information, part 2) elements of design, and part 3) human perception assessment (reliability, safety, relaxation, and user-friendliness). The research results summarized the design elements into 7 aspects: floor, walls, ceiling, void size, lighting, furniture, and overall physical environment. The analysis of data from design elements is summarized into three design guidelines. All the informants are of the same opinion, stating that the ‘Comfort’ design approach (Comfortable & Natural Look) is a suitable format for the witness preparation room. The perceived scores are distributed as follows: feel safe ( =4.41; S.D. 0.87), feel relaxed ( =4.31; S.D. 0.90), feel friendly ( =4.16; S.D. 0.92), and feel reliable ( =4.13; S.D. 0.87).