An experiment in light expression

The NYtimes reported the results of an interesting survey conducted with patients in North America at several top hospitals. The article notes that nationwide 67% patients mentioned they would recommend their institution to friends and relatives. It also notes….“Many patients reported that they had not been treated with courtesy and respect by doctors and nurses; that they had not received adequate pain medication after surgery; and that they did not understand the instructions they received when discharged from the hospital”. 

My personal hospital experiences always involve apprehension (what new papers do i need to fill out before the doctor condescends to see me), a bit of anger at how casually healthcare providers act (inured i’m sure by the sight of the dying day in and day out) and some relief when I leave the place - i almost find myself feeling  better when I leave a crowded, dark, dull hospital and feel the sun and wind on my face outside!

I’ve been coming across this ‘Healthcare experience’ discussion a lot lately. Last month as part of a workshop at IIT Kanpur we gave students the problem of redesigning  the healthcare system at the IIT through technology interventions (most groups came up with hybrid solutions - website and mobile SMS, mobiles and the IIT-wide intercom facility and such). One student group found through their discussions with staff and students at the healthcare center that patients felt doctors were ‘not touching us enough, not talking to us enough, not hearing us intently enough’. I also recall reading in Dan Pink’s Whole New Mind recently that several medical schools in North America have been teaching their students ‘empathy’, ’story telling’, ‘role playing’ and other such softer skills - which sounds like a good move.
I’m still skeptical though - will the medical profession ever embrace an open-source approach towards sharing medical knowledge and conducting treatments? Do they need to?

via the Economist - an objective summary of Social Networking and its business potential circa 2008. Their verdict? Social Networking is a great Internet success story with clear utility but may or may not be a sustainable business model. The article also notes ..”Historically, online media tend to start this way. The early services, such as CompuServe, Prodigy or AOL, began as “walled gardens” before they opened up to become websites. The early e-mail services could send messages only within their own walls (rather as Facebook’s messaging does today). Instant-messaging, too, started closed, but is gradually opening up. In social networking, this evolution is just beginning…”
I am curious about MingleBox and TechTribe and other high profile Indian social networking startups - how much will they scale by 2010? They seem to have a sound business model and a reasonably better and consistent user experience as compared to the run of the mill Indian social networking sites…

Is there a direct relationship between a company’s design investments and its stock market performance? Can PE firms and venture funds use such a relationship to select winners just as they use environment friendliness and carbon footprints?

The British Design Council which first came up with the ‘Design Index’ and ‘Emerging Index’ seems to think that there is. In a comprehensive study first released in 2005 (and updated in early 2008), they showed how an index of 61 top design-award winning companies had outperformed the FTSE by 200%.

The Design Council primarily used prestigious design awards (including by Interbrand). I think if someone wanted to take this research ahead, they could additionally look at:

-         Media coverage of customer reactions to the ‘design’ or ‘user experience’ of the company’s products and services

-         The company’s resource (human and infrastructure) investments in building core design competencies

-         The company’s global footprint (in case of multinationals)

-         The company’s history of using quantitative design and usability metrics to track improvements longitudinally

In these volatile financial times, I would be personally happy if someone could prove a ‘strong corelation’ between Design and stock market performance – at least then companies in India and China would ‘get’ the value of design and invest in building world class design teams and infrastructures.

70%Inspired by Vilayanur Ramachandran’s pioneering research on synesthesia and creativity (shown brilliantly in one of his TED lectures), this website created its own version of measuring your creativity through a quick-n-dirty synesthesia.
I also took the Apple addiction challenge and found that I was 26% addicted to Apple - and I don’t even own an iPhone or a Macbook Air yet!

Yesterday on Mar 6 we finally managed to lift one foot off the ground and get the Bangalore User Experience and Design community closer through the first event of 2008 - a guest lecture by Murli on User Experience ecosystems, creativity, design thinking and innovation held at the Oracle Outer Ring Road office and supported by UPA Bangalore, CHI Bangalore, IxDA and various other individuals with a passion for user experience and innovation and that sort of thing.

Muthu’s just posted some pictures from the event on Picasa at http://picasaweb.google.com/bangaloreux/Mar06UXmeet/

If you were there, we would love to hear from you on what you thought and what kinds of things you’d like the community to keep working on further.

I am off to San Francisco tonight and will soon post my reflections from the event.

In mid February I traveled to IIT Kanpur with my colleague Adesh. We spent a good three days in the company of design students and faculty in the midst of the hustle bustle of ‘Techkriti’ - the annual IITK technical fest (read: a love fest for geeks and robo-heads) and the quaint (imagine peacocks walking outside your window) and picturesque IIT campus.

On Friday, we met some enthusiastic students and Prof. Satyaki Roy who was the brain behind this workshop idea - easily one of the most accessible, engaging, enthusiastic and savvy professors I’ve interacted with in a while. We had made up our minds that we would keep the workshop very engaging and hands on with minimal ‘Powerpoint gagging’ - however as I stood in front of those students and started my spiel on our past engagement and our plans for them and such, i had a moment of doubt on whether we’d be able to pull off an intensive Interaction Design workshop in all of two days.

Some say we did!

On Day 1, we started off the students on some basics of Interaction Design including user research and persona development. For the given design problem (Redesigning a healthcare system for the IIT Kanpur community on campus), the group conducted interviews with students, staff and faculty and went through the whole affinity diagramming process of sorting and synthesizing their interview findings. My big reminder/lesson from Day 1 was that user research is indeed a political process as much as it is a design process. We rounded off Day 1 with a requirements generation exercise.
On Day 2, we shifted gears and moved into Interaction design models, prototyping and usability evaluations. The students developed Interaction Design models to drive their requirements forward and subsequently worked with Powerpoint to visualize low fidelity prototypes. Dr. Roy was game enough to act as an archetypical ‘user’ during the usability testing session. My big reminder/lesson from Day 2 was that when you give students a free hand and let them work through figuring out a solution, they can come up with some pretty interesting ideas.

We ended Day 2 with each group giving brief ten min presentations to the workshop participants on their design rationale, process and final solution.

Alok Agashe, one of the workshop participants has posted the pictures from the workshop on Picasa

We left Kanpur on Sunday and were unfortunately too physically exhausted by the end of it all to try out Kanpur’s famous “Thaggu ke Laddoo” (The thug’s sweets). However, i found myself intellectually very charged up and inspired at the end of that weekend - I hope to be back in IIT Kanpur soon enough. There is something about good university campuses which is so different from air conditioned corporate existences. Edward Said, in one of his books fondly remembered his days at Columbia University as some of the best in his life.
I am hoping to conduct similar workshops within the Bangalore UX and Design community as well.