A major challenge with designing health questionnaires is making sure that questions are both clinically meaningful and are easy for users to answer. One example has to do with hip-to-waist ratio, which can be an important indicator of heart health. I’ve seen health risk assessments ask people their hip and waist measurements, but how many people know those measurements without checking? And how many people have a tape measure close at hand to take the measurement? Even using your clothing size as a proxy is likely to be inaccurate since so many brands use vanity sizing or are inconsistent with other brands (I learned in a recent closet clean-out that I have every size from XS to XL in my closet, and they fit me). Continue reading Case Study: Patagonia Makes Questions Easy To Answer
Tag Archives: design
Design Tactics to Foster Trust, Part 2: Legalese!
Want your users to trust your product? It’s not just about the “fun” stuff like giving your product a personality, showing value quickly, and letting people feel a sense of control. It’s also about the “boring” stuff. What’s your privacy policy? How will you handle your users’ data? How will you write the digital meta-content that explains all of that to users? This stuff matters a lot.
To put the point first: You need to handle users’ data sensitively, and tell them so in language they’ll understand. Continue reading Design Tactics to Foster Trust, Part 2: Legalese!
Design Tactics to Foster Trust
How do you build technology that people trust?
The world gives us so many examples why we shouldn’t trust technology. Many Americans recently had their personal financial data put at risk by Equifax. It’s looking increasingly likely that Facebook deliberately shaped people’s information exposure in ways that influenced a presidential election. And there are reports that hackers can hijack connected home devices with high frequency voice commands not detectable by human ears. Yet, we persist in creating digital solutions for health, finance, and other incredibly personal topics and ask people to trust them–to trust us. Continue reading Design Tactics to Foster Trust
Against Empathy? Maybe
I just read Against Empathy by Paul Bloom and have some thoughts. I picked the book up partly because of the provocative title. My work relies heavily on empathy–or what we call empathy–to understand the challenges and needs of people who will eventually engage with the product or experience we’re designing. Could it be that empathy is the wrong tool? After reading Bloom’s book, I think: Sort of. Continue reading Against Empathy? Maybe
Five Best Practices for Digital Badges for Behavior Change
It’s easy to come up with examples of digital badges that don’t work, or are simply too silly to be serious tools for engagement. It’s far more difficult to take the positive perspective and determine the features that can make a digital badge an effective tool for behavior change. My interest in badges originally stemmed from a critical place, both from seeing badly done versions as a user, and having clients ask for badges without a thoughtful supporting strategy. But working through that critique has brought me to the following set of recommendations for doing digital badges well. Continue reading Five Best Practices for Digital Badges for Behavior Change
Digital Health Is Not a Hammer: Why Your Interventions May Be Set Up for Failure
As more data has become available on the success of digital health and wellness platforms, it’s become clear that many health plans and self-insured employers don’t have the positive return on investment (ROI) they’d hoped to see. A 2013 study by RAND Health (which did not focus exclusively on digital interventions) finds that employers have an overall ROI for health and wellness interventions of $1.50 per employee, but that disease management programs drive much of it. Wellness programs deliver, on average, only about a $0.50 ROI. It’s not nothing, but it’s also not enough to pin all of our hopes on. Is it time to give up on digital health? Continue reading Digital Health Is Not a Hammer: Why Your Interventions May Be Set Up for Failure
Mistaken Identity: How Do We Design for This Edge Case?
I have an ongoing problem. As an earlier adopter of Gmail, I have the “original” firstname.lastname versions of the gmail.com address for both my maiden and married names. This means that people with similar names often mistakenly receive email at my addresses. In the past several years, this has gotten much worse. Some of the emails I’ve received have included: Continue reading Mistaken Identity: How Do We Design for This Edge Case?
A Little Personality Can Improve the UX of Forms
Designing effective forms is a tough but critical UX challenge. You’ve got to collect all the necessary information in a way that’s intuitive to the user and works on a variety of form factors. There’s a lot of work that’s been done on how to get form design right (I linked to a few comprehensive recent overviews at the bottom of the post), but one tactic that always catches my eye is injecting humor or interested into the experience. Continue reading A Little Personality Can Improve the UX of Forms
Content Is Core
It’s been a while since I’ve posted anything. Life’s gotten really busy lately (in a good way) and it doesn’t leave a lot of time or mental energy for writing non-work stuff. Tomorrow I’ll be presenting at UXPA Boston on how to bring behavioral economics into health interventions, so if you’re there come say hello. If you’re not there and you’re interested in the topic, we’ll be reprising a version of the talk the following week as a free Mad*Pow webinar. Continue reading Content Is Core
Why Great Design Will Never Be 100% Effective
No matter how well-designed, well-researched, and well-implemented any given product or experience is, it will never work for 100% of people. This is true for health interventions, consumer products, financial services, you name it. And while it sounds pessimistic to say that, the reason why is both obvious and (at least to me) interesting: Everybody is different. Continue reading Why Great Design Will Never Be 100% Effective