It’s Back! Healthcare’s Only Crowdsourced Survey Call for Questions

We are excited to announce the launch of the Second Hospital Industry Crowdsourced Survey on Digital Marketing! If you are a marketer in the hospital industry, you know how important benchmark data is to your peers and executives. Hospitals compare themselves on everything, using data to stay abreast of their performance, competition and customer behavior, and to inform their ongoing marketing strategies.

Here is what we are looking to accomplish this year:

1) Once again, it is free to participate and as a participant you will get the results first.

2) We’ll keep the questions relevant to you. You will help us determine what they’ll be by submitting questions in the comments area below.

3) The report will include a summary of findings, results for each question and relevant charts and graphs illustrating key points to help you make better decisions for your organization.

A little over two years ago, Mike Stutman our SVP of Strategy lead our inaugural survey where you and your peers provided us with your burning questions on digital marketing. We used them to shape the first ever Hospital Industry Crowdsourced Survey and over 100 respondents provided answers. The survey results were so intriguing that it lead to coverage from several organizations including IHealthBeat, Fierce Healthcare, HealthCare ITNews, AMA, and more.

We’re also excited to announce that this year we’ve partnered with eHealthcare Strategy & Trends, which has served the industry since 1999. They’ve been an incredibly valuable partner, helping us guide the initiative from the start.

Here are some general guidelines to submit a question:

• Submit your question (or idea) by leaving it through a comment to this post.
• Any question related to Digital, Integrated and/or Emerging Marketing in the Hospital Industry is welcome.
• Feel free to submit more than one question/idea for consideration, but please understand that not all of your questions may get asked this time. If you like someone else’s comment please let us know and it will have a better chance of making the final cut.

• Please submit your questions and feedback by Tuesday, June 12, 2012.  After that, stayed tuned for notification of the availability of the survey itself and please take the survey when it is sent to you!
• If you have any questions about this survey, please feel free to contact me directly at:  Matthewd@acsysinteractive.com or (832) 449-5755.

Sample Questions (to spur your thinking):

1)      Do you have a site wide content strategy in place?

2)      What is the one thing patients should accomplish when interacting with your organization online?

3)      Does your hospital have plans for mobile marketing?

4)      Do you have a budget allocated to mobile technology for 2012/2013?

5)      How do you plan to measure ROI from your mobile initiatives? What KPIs will you be tracking?

The above questions are only a few to get your thoughts started.  We are far more interested in the burning questions you would like to ask your peers.  Thank you in advance for your participation.

If you missed the results from the first survey, you can check them out here: http://www.acsysinteractive.com/insights/crowdsourced-2010/

Is Mobile First a Good Thing?

Image Credit- Brad Frost (www.bradfrostweb.com)

(NOTE: We’re beginning a series of blog posts from Bryan Martin. Think of Bryan as our resident “ombudsman”. He’ll provide us with a good dose of common sense and a reality check on our life as marketers)

I’d like to start devoting some time to reigning in on some of the over-hyped technology out there: to give at least a common sense approach to adopting new methodologies, technologies, languages, etc.

And with that: let’s start with what got me on this kick in the first place – “Mobile First” design.

Mobile first – It’s been a term kicked around my office for a few months now.  And at first it sounds like a great idea: “How should this <insert project type here> act/feel/look on a tablet? Once that’s figured out – extend that out to both the phone and desktop.

I used to be a huge proponent of this idea until the idea struck me: If I start making sure that everything I do will look great on a tablet: I’ll start producing stuff that a) won’t work as well as it could on the desktop, and b) be doing so at the cost of 80-95% of the users who happen to be using desktops (the numbers depend on which study you’re looking at).

Please don’t mis-understand, I don’t want come off as some Luddite who wants to go back to the good old days when desktop computers ruled the earth like the dinosaurs they are.  I use my phone and tablet for casual computing more than I do the laptop.  But honestly: have any of you tried typing a blog post on a tablet?   I have: Google dropped the ball by even making the blogger app. This is one example.

What I suggest we actually do, is to look at the problem we have before us: whether it’s a complex web application, a commerce site, or just some brochure-ware site.  look at it.  Really look at it.  If it can be done with “Mobile-First” mentality, then go ahead but go full bore into it – last thing people want is a site that acts radically different on the mobile site vs. the actual site.  And for Pete’s sake use responsive design.  Yeah, the first project is a pain in the arse, but you’re going to have to do it eventually.  I’d suggest using some “compiled” css like SCSS or LESS to help get things right.  And defiantly use a framework like jQuery Mobile. I’d imagine most commerce sites and web comic sites (I’m looking at you, PvP) could fit into this just fine.

Past that:, if it really doesn’t make sense to even be using your application/site on a mobile platform (like Blogger) then don’t waste your resources doing so.

Now, for some sites it does “kinda-sorta” make sense – like the huge brochure-ware sites that most hospitals have become.  It’s a lot of static content, some forms of various complexity, and a very extensive hierarchical menu.  The more complicated forms might need a re-work beyond going responsive, and the menu – well, you’ll have to do what you have to do.  I’m not an IA – but I can say that any menu system I’ve seen would have to be completely blown apart and rebuilt.  And that’s not going to be easy.

Well, those are my 2 bits for today.

The Information is the Interface

As a grad student, I had always heard about Edward Tufte, an authority on information visualization (‘infovis’) whose teachings had became foundational in the field.  The New York Times calls him the “Leonardo da Vinci of data.” You can imagine my excitement (as an information architect here at Acsys) when I heard about- and attended- his one-day course in Boston last week.

The Information IS the Interface
Great design is about the relationship between the user and content. It is not about visual embellishments or ‘over produced styling’, but about helping users process and experience content. Think of the Apple iPhone UI and all the elements that went away: the scrollbar, the cursor, the start button and more. Removing these elements created a closer interaction between user and content by eliminating middle steps (moving a mouse, tracing the cursor to the target, etc).

To achieve this goal, the designer must be endlessly self-effacing. Superfluous elements should be reduced to the point where the information is the interface. A good metaphor is a map: in maps, there are no boxes around city names. The only elements included are those that denote geographical locations and spatial relationships.

But does that mean the less content, the better?  No.

Think of every element of a visual display as either signal or noise: it’s signal if it is meaningful, it’s noise if does not carry meaning.  The goal is to maximize the signal-to-noise ratio by reducing noise.Compare the two graphs below (figures 3 and 4) showing the exact same information. Which is better?

(That’s right folks, go for the brew.)

The only difference between the graphs is that one is in 2D while the other is in 3D.  Notice that in both graphs the colors correspond to a size of a drink; therefore, color is a signal. But if the colors were only there for aesthetic purposes (and did not correspond to a drink size) Tufte would consider that noise. The 3D layer is thus an excellent example of noise, because it introduces additional visual elements which do not convey meaning: shading, height variations, slanted positioning, etc.  In addition to introducing noise, the 3D layer makes the bars harder to compare with one another, and to map onto specific calorie numbers on the Y axis.

Conclusion: the 2D graph is better, because it maximizes the signal-to-noise ratio. Thus, you determine if an element is signal or noise by virtue of its relationship with the content. You cannot determine it from its presence or absence alone; a 3D layer could introduce signal if it helps to convey content. Notice how the 3D graph on figure 3 helps to convey spatial orientation.

The “information is the interface” ideal speaks to the user-centered design methodology, since the reason people visit a website or app is ultimately to experience the content. I see great value in keeping it in mind when creating visual displays, since it helps the designer be self-effacing and put the needs of the user first. Yet I also wonder if the line between noise and signal isn’t much fuzzier than one might expect, when it comes to interface design. Improved aesthetics cause people to perceive an interface as not just more beautiful, but easier to use as well, even if it is not.

So, ‘noise’ sometimes can improve people’s cognitive processing of content. When it does, shouldn’t it be considered signal rather than noise? For all we care, isn’t users’ perception what counts?

Something to think about….

LBS and You- Making The Real World Easier to Use

(note- this is blog post #3 in a 5-part series of blog posts focusing on key learnings from SXSW)

The pre-SXSW buzz was all about the new ambient Location-Based applications like Highlight, Glancee and Ban.jo. Did the buzz live up to the hype? Is Foursquare still relevant? What’s next for LBS?  No, Yes, and Read on. Here’s our take:

What makes Ambient Location Based Services (LBS) Apps so compelling?
The value of these LBS apps provides contextual and social relevance while you’re checking in to locations. They are helping to orchestrate serendidipitous meetings with the people around you. We’ll let their descriptions tell the story.

Glancee: a mobile app that helps you discover and connect with new interesting people around you
Highlight: a fun way to learn more about people nearby
Ban.jo: a social discovery app that lets you view people’s social network profiles based on their location

At SXSW, plenty of people were using these apps, but at a conference full of 30,000 techies, is it really helpful to be notified that 370 people are nearby and 47 of them like tacos? Let’s be nicer, and back that out to a smaller case study, say at your local coffee shop. There is indeed value if you discover a fellow pottery enthusiast there,  but is that value worth it Given the privacy/creepiness factor surrounding these apps? Our argument is no. Learning, discovering and connecting with new, like-minded people with similar personal interests in real-time is best left to us humans.

Is Foursquare still relevant?
Absolutely. We had the opportunity to listen to Dennis Crowley during his “Making The Real World Easier to Use” keynote.  Here are some take-aways from the Q&A sesssion with TechCrunch’s MG Siegler.

Q: Why aren’t you engaging with “auto-discovery” and the likes of Glancee, Highlight and Ban.jo, and other “push” technologies based around location?
A:  The batteries simply aren’t there. They exhaust a phone’s suitable life. We’re waiting for the hardware to catch up.

Q: Are you still going with games as an entry point to Foursquare? Aren’t people getting tired of mayorships and badges?
A: There is a big difference between making games and making a utility (like Foursquare) that is playful.  Badges are still the “gateway drug” for new foursquare users and gets people excited. Points may be neat, but the data behind it is really cool. – data will become more powerful as insights are extracted.

Q: Tell us about the value of your data
In time, with more users and lots more data, we’ll be able to serve up relevant, location-based data that can improve the way you experience everyday life.  In three years, looking at a map without any social data will seem silly. When I call up Google maps, I’d like to see what restaurants are recommended to me, what vendors are worthwhile, and much, much more.

What’s Next for LBS?
Picking up on the heels of Reid Hoffman’s talk at last year’s SXSW, big data still rings true. Data gleaned from social platforms like LinkedIn and Twitter will still provide insightful customer data like never before. In the case of LBS applications, here are two examples of how they’re putting LBS too good use.

Partnerships: One of Foursquare’s best relationships is the one they have with American Express. At nearly every restaurant/bar in Austin that week, there was a “spend five-get five” promotion with American Express. If you spent $5, and used your American Express card, you’d automatically receive a $5 credit on your American Express statement. No paperwork to fill out, no survey, just a check-in and a swipe of a card. Now, imagine what American Express and Foursquare can do with that data. Add “location” to American Express’ deep library of cardmember data, and you’ve struck gold- especially with millions more mobile-phone toting consumers.

Sonar: Absent from the Ambient LBS discussion above was connecting people with similar professional (LinkedIn) interests. Sonar is one of the few ambient LBS apps that allow for Linkedin integration. If you’re at a small conference of 100 people, and you’ve checked in via Sonar, you’ll be notified of shared professional connections. Sonar is the “icebreaker for introverts”. Keep an eye out for Sonar in the coming months as they quietly go about their business

What should I do?
-Never underestimate the value of data. As a marketer you know this, but experiment with this using an LBS tool like foursquare. Use foursquare as a reward, recognition AND customer service tool.
-Embrace human nature. No amount of technology replaces the value you get from human interaction. Use a technology to be an ice-breaker and a tool, nothing else.
-Experiment. At the next event you go to, check in using foursquare or sonar and follow whatever path it leads you down.