Design

Digital Healthcare For Gen Z & Millennials

March 24, 2019 Design Technology
Accenture-2019-Digital-Health-Consumer-Survey

This weekend, I studied an interesting survey published by Accenture Consulting on the prediction of future healthcare for younger consumers. It’s called ‘Accenture 2019 Digital Health Consumer Survey’ and the respondents of this study were from the United States though it essentially provided some wonderful insights into the millennial and Gen Z’s behavioural patterns in general. A striking feature of this survey was the influence of future technology on a wide range of generations beginning with the 20s and the millennials who would become the most influential generation for healthcare consumerism. These are some of my notes from the study.

Distinctive User Groups

At the onset, I came across one of the most distinct categorizations of the user age groups within this survey. The study has been fairly distributed among all classes of consumers including even the generation of consumers who were born in the late 20s. The list of the user group is comprehensive as noted below.

  • Gen Z (born 1997 onward)
  • Millennials (born 1981 to 1996)
  • Gen X (born 1965 to 1980)
  • Baby Boomers (born 1946 to 1964)
  • Silent Generation (born 1928 to 1945)

Prominent Healthcare Insights

Traditional / Non-Traditional Healthcare – doctors, healthcare professionals, clinics, medical centres and doctor’s offices are some of the established types of traditional healthcare services. In contrast, walk-in or retail clinics, outpatient surgery hospitals, virtual health (via the phone, on video or apps), on-demand services or digital therapeutics are some examples of non-traditional healthcare services. [1]

  • Younger consumers are moving away from traditional channels and adopting technology and non-traditional healthcare.
  • The loyalty of younger generation patients is no longer assured, and the providers who heed to the changing dynamics of the consumers would be strongly positioned.
  • Gen Z and Millennials are less likely to have a primary care physician (PCP) compared to Gen X, baby boomers and the silent generation.

[perfectpullquote align=”right” bordertop=”” class=”” cite=”” link=”” color=””]Gen Z is the most likely generation to seek out wellness practices (e.g. yoga, acupuncture) beyond Western medicine. With millennials projected to become the largest generation in 2019, this generation holds the most power to influence future healthcare models.[/perfectpullquote]

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Bigger Screen iPhones? I’m Not So Sure

February 13, 2019 Design
Bigger vs Smaller iPhones
The iPhone 7 (left) and the iPhone SE (right)

Apple’s current lineup of the XS, XS Max and XR iPhones sport bigger screens, that has made me wonder about the practical use for large screen phones which are increasingly becoming unwieldy due to its rounded corners. Has the form finally exhausted its potential and it’s time to bring back the flat edges?

I got my first iPhone in 2010, which was the iPhone 3GS introduced by Steve Jobs in 2009 and unarguably the best iPhone that I have owned even by today’s iPhone standards — if you ignore the SE’s sleek design, including being super portable, in which, Apple dovetailed the potential of communication, music and an internet platform, in a light-weight, user-friendly form factor that fit snuggly into my pant pocket and just as easily removable, though I wouldn’t say it was easier to hold.

Now, admittedly, none of those first generation iPhones had any of the high-tech or hardware splendour that Apple today is cramming into every single new version of the company’s most successful product, TouchID, FaceID, etc. Even the camera on my then 3GS, for instance, was a mere 3 mega pix (mp), it took some decent pictures for me although can’t compare that with the current phones which are insanely high-quality in not just the resolution but the video quality as well. I thought the camera had been sufficiently enhanced with the SE giving it a 12mp and better picture quality and what another practical use of a good resolution image is unless it’s satellite imagery of a secret military installation? Bottom line, a camera isn’t tempting enough for me to invest a fortune into the iPhone.

Practically Small, Not Glamorously Bigger!

For me, it has been less about the bigger hardware (form) and more about the technology (functions) which the iPhone packs into its palm-sized brick shape. The TouchID, for instance, has been a great feature in speeding up the sign-in process, not only within Apple’s own eco-system which consists of iCloud, App Store, and Apple Pay on iOS and macOS but also for the humongous size of its app universe. Much recently, Apple introduced Password AutoFill using iCloud Keychain (also allowing third-party password managers) – also using TouchID, to fill your login credentials in Safari and the rest of the other apps. The experience is not near to perfect, moving in an out of the app depending on the app architecture, but it nevertheless removes the stress of remembering and copying/filling passwords. Of course, another platform that predominantly uses the advantages of TouchID is Apple Pay for secure payments. And now, even Apple is acknowledging its support for old generation (smaller) phones with the iOS 12, that may not remain so in the near future. In all of this, there’s one thing that has stood out for me quite evidently – the bigger screen sizes of the iPhones which have now become a standard feature are no longer validated proof of good design. It’s how the whole package works.

I have always surmised that it’s the technology within an iPhone that makes the iPhone experience truly the best for me. Even if it’s still a smaller iPhone SE which I have recently owned and cherished for its overall design effort.

Wait Times Management For The Digital Age

December 12, 2018 Design Technology

I am involved in an engaging organizational innovation exercise with a team comprising business consultants and senior leadership of one of the top healthcare companies in Canada that own and operate over a 1000 pharmacy locations across the country. Apart from several themes one of the aims of this 3-month long exercise is to understand the barriers in the delivery of timely services to patients and finding an innovative solution to wait-times. So, what exactly is a ‘wait-time’ in the context of a pharmacy? In simple terms, it is typically that period in a given service parameter in which a pharmacy customer (patient or caregiver) has to wait before he/she is dispensed the prescribed medication and depending upon the traffic of a specific pharmacy location that period could sometimes run into hours. The current demographic of pharmacy patients consists largely of ‘baby boomers’ who were born in the 40s-60s but that won’t be the case forever because more millennials, the cohort of people generally born in the 80s-90s, have begun to emerge as an influential group not just for healthcare but the retail industry at large. This segment is most prominent for its early adoption of digital apps and automation but the ‘boomers’ aren’t laggards either with adopting a digital lifestyle. As we gather around in focusing on and exploring various options I wanted to present some of my views on tackling wait times (WT) in the incumbent age of digitization. Additionally, I also wanted to share some of my observation and learning on wait times with other brands, in particular, IKEA.

Basics of Wait Times

wait times in pharmacy

I would continue with my comprehension of WTs in the context of pharmacies. So, to begin with, what is a wait time and why is it important? In technical terms, a ‘wait-time’ is a crucial factor from the perspective of implementing the prioritization order in a customer queue to ensure that one person’s isolated need/demand does not gain precedence over the others waiting in the line. If managed efficiently on a consistent basis, WTs also play a major role in managing the working time of the pharmacy staff and also helps bring productivity and efficiency into the work culture, such as preparing the medication while the patient waits in anticipation. From a pharmacy standpoint, despite all the clear advantages, there are prevailing challenges which prevents pharmacists from meeting their stated goals. Some of those challenges include lack of team coordination and overlapping (or the lack of) of responsibilities. Then from unskilled staff to complicated digital systems and sometimes even the unavailability of medications at pharmacy locations can not only affect wait-times considerably but could also drastically lower a brand’s value over a period of time. On the other hand, it might be harder to realize but customer wait times are not just limited to pharmacies alone. In fact, in Canada, it’s common for patrons to wait for their turn while availing any form of service just that and experience levels of anxiety and anticipation. Services which have lower levels of expectation generally escape the customers’ ire from bad service experience, whereas others like IKEA have developed a robust & orderly mechanism for addressing wait time challenges using a combination of digitization and environmental factors (store). I have described my experience in IKEA in the post a little later. 

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Strategic Design As A Business Offering

December 7, 2018 Design

Not so long ago, McKinsey published an insightful article on the importance of strategic design in delivering business value called ‘The Business Value of Design’, it was based on a research study conducted on the design practices of 300 big corporations. I was so enthralled by their findings that I published a post in dissecting its virtues.

Recently, they published another piece titled ‘Why design means business’ in yet another attempt at defining the value of design in relation to business. However, I found this article to be a rejoinder to the previous one listing the key themes from that research study. There was one thing though which stood out for me from this post which was the definition of design as a strategic tool.

Organizations have garnered their own individualistic approach for interpreting ‘design’ based on its overall positioning in the hierarchy of the business. The fact remains that that interpretation is widely based on 3 key elements which complement each other, that is, 1) the positioning of design in the current operating model for delivery, 2) the perceived value that is derived from the design activities, and, last but not the least, 3) the integration of design in the organization’s future strategic focus. In creating a justifiable acceptance of design as a standard for building a strategic vision and in proving how companies have delivered value through this approach McKinsey has defined ‘strategic design’ for innovation in an easy to understand terminology in its latest article.

What exactly do we mean when we talk about “design?” Well, much like “strategy” and “analytics,” design is a term that suffers from misuse. Design is not just about making objects pretty. Design is the process of deeply understanding customer/user needs and then creating a product or service—physical, digital, or both—that addresses their unmet needs.

If there’s anything that the twin McKinsey articles have uncovered its some organizations which have woken up to the cadence of strategic design for innovation and delivering striking results. It’s a slow process but it’s not for too long that the corporate world would sit up and take notice and accept this new age phenomenon for innovation. ‘Design’ has the potential to bring that change.

Source: Why design means business | McKinsey & Company

Share Your Gifts, And Be Creative, Says Apple

November 22, 2018 Design

With the festival season just around the corner, it’s the time of the year to ‘Share Your Gifts’ with loved ones, and you could be forgiven for considering this as just another headline for a TV commercial. This is a stupendous effort and the newest holiday spot with all the warmth & love from Apple’s creative depository, helmed by an animation studio called Buck along with the agency, TBWA\Media Arts Lab. It’s also interesting because the title song “Come out and play” was written by Los Angeles singer/songwriter Billie Eilish, a 16-year-old prodigy who, according to Wikipedia, has been writing songs on her Mac since she was 11!

Share Your Gifts - AppleIt’s an account through the eyes of a lonesome lass with a secret penchant for creativity and her companion dog as the only one who knows & values her innate talent and who eventually albeit creatively, of course, forces her to come out of her hiding. In all this, I was astonished to see how Apple has taken fancy to Pixar-inspired storytelling for the first time! The past commercials from Apple have resorted to numerous graphical treatments in making visually stylised product campaigns though animation not being a prominent theme on that list so far. While the tagline ‘Share Your Gifts’ is a beautiful wordplay for acknowledging not just the sentiment of giving in the festive season but also for energising & sharing creative material using the power of Apple’s great products. A company that has always championed the cause of the creative arts community worldwide yet again communicating its unequivocal stand with this fabulous ad, and dare I say, the folks at Pixar would be so pleased to see their artistic journey as an inspiration for the design of this spot. Also, there’s a moral for everyone that creativity is yearning to come to life only if you could use your artful imagination, so go ahead, surprise yourself and your peers. “Don’t hide” and dream on!

[perfectpullquote align=”right” bordertop=”false” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]You see a piece of paper
Could be a little greater
Show me what you could make her
You’ll never know until you try it
You don’t have to keep it quiet[/perfectpullquote]

Happy Holidays, dear folks!