Xperience This!

Over the past few months, the topic of Patient Experience has come up more and more in my client meetings. Everyone seems to know that there are huge issues when it comes to providing people with a great healthcare experience, but no one seems to be able to put their finger on exactly what the problem is.  

All the players in the experience are taking their lumps. Pharmaceutical companies are accused of inserting themselves into a process in which they don’t belong in; Payers are accused of only caring about what will save them the most money; Physicians are scolded for not taking a more proactive role in improving the experience; Pharmacies…well, no one really seems to know exactly what to do with pharmacies these days as they actively search for the right way to redefine their role.  In my experience as both a consumer of healthcare products and services and as an experience design professional who has done a great deal of research on various interactions among these players, the root cause doesn’t fall on any one, rather on all of them collectively.

FYI…There’s more to this blog post, but if you are interested in learning even more about today’s patient experience and why patient’s fail to follow their doctor’s orders, join MISI on 2/24/2011 in Philadelphia at the Patient Adherence Cocktail Convention hosted by MISI, WoolLabs, and Smart Brief. Visit Wool Labs for more information or to register

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In order to provide a successful product or service, you need to know who your audiences are, what they want, and how you can help them get there. Performing both qualitative and quantitative audience research is an integral part the experience design process – whether for physical products, digital offerings, spatial designs, professional services, or a combination of all of the above. The challenge frequently put to us is, “How can we integrate research into our project cycle without breaking the bank?”

Your objectives will ultimately drive the types of research you choose to conduct – interviews, focus groups, natural observation, journals, card sorting and so on. But when the budget is tight and every piece of a project is under the financial microscope, you can use some of the following guerilla research tactics to gain an actionable level of audience understanding. More »

I went to my local Duane Reade recently and noticed “Get your flu shot here” signs everywhere but no date or time listed. When I asked, the pharmacy employee responded with, “oh, any time during pharmacy hours, but we’re a bit backed up right now, so 15 minutes.”  

I learned as part of being acquired by Walgreen’s, Duane Reade introduced a flexible vaccination service, allowing customers to get a flu shot any hours that the pharmacy is open (albeit not well advertised). Some large survey by a market research company probably told them that 87% of customers don’t get flu shots because of inconvenient timing.

But who cares why they are doing it! This is great, or so I thought, until I started this seemingly ideal patient experience process. More »

Wikipedia: An edge case is a problem or situation that occurs only at an extreme (maximum or minimum)  operating parameter.

The most satisfying and memorable interactions are often the simplest. Life is complicated enough, and…surprise…most people don’t want to spend any more time interacting with your company’s call center, sales team, application or website than they absolutely need to. So why are so many interactions between companies and their target audiences so complex? Often complexity is the result of trying to design interactions for everyone, which inevitably leads to interactions designed for no one.

One of the culprits in this drive to satisfy everyone is the edge case. Also referred to as the “Corner case”, the “Outlier” or the “Exception,” these are interaction scenarios that are not typically part of the main set of use cases for a given experience. These scenarios rarely happen, yet unwary design teams can be drawn into spending a disproportionate amount of time and effort addressing them. The solutions typically result in layering complexity on what should have been a simple, streamlined process.

When dealing with edge cases, the stakes can be high. They range from driving up the cost of product/process/system/service design, to the creation of poor employee or customer experiences that jeopardize the achievement of your business goals. The following tips can help businesses and experience designers get the edge on edge cases. More »

The concept of addressing people’s emotional needs in experience design has been around for quite a few years in the consumer world.  Companies like Apple, Disney and Starbucks have become well known for driving intense customer loyalty by infusing their customers’ experiences with a personality to which their customers can relate or even aspire. Interact with your customers on an emotional level and they won’t just become loyal customers; they’ll become your advocates.  As A.G. Lafley wrote in The Game Changer (2008), “Good design is a catalyst for creating total experiences that transcend functional benefits alone and delight customers. It is a catalyst for moving a business from being technology-centered to one that is customer experience-centered.”

So why not apply this same principle when designing your employee experience? After all, employees are essentially your organization’s internal customers. Often companies will focus their internal efforts on improving performance on processes and new tools/technologies, but that misses a big part of the picture.  Process improvements and new tools won’t have their desired impact on your bottom line if your employees don’t embrace them. Simply announcing such changes won’t ensure your employees are aligned with your business goals; and it certainly won’t turn them into advocates.

Design your employee experiences to make an emotional connection, and you change everything. When designed to delight your employees, new processes become something they follow because they want to, not because they have to. New tools become those things they’ve been asking and waiting for to help them do a better job. More »