UX To The Rescue of Healthy Eating

Driving down a San Diego freeway into the city on the eve of the opening of COMIC-CON was a challenge. Thank goodness for National Public Radio and the fact that traffic was moving so slowly I could put both arms behind my head, lean back into the headrest and coast with one foot ever so lightly on the gas pedal.

I was not attending that particular convention. Nor was I attending the San Diego Yoga Journal Conference, also in town this weekend. Everyone else on the planet seemed to be. However, luck was mine on many fronts as I managed to find a free parking spot a mere 9 blocks away from Red Door Interactive, the location of this month's UX Speakeasy meeting. (UX : User Experience)

What a view! From the 11th floor, plastered to the floor to ceiling windows, I looked straight down into Petco Park (home of the San Diego Padres baseball team) and across the Coronado Bridge all lit up in the twilight. A great backdrop for holding exciting, nerdy conversations such as the one I had with a developer about coding and the educational merits, potential and pitfalls of Khan Academy.

Defining quality in online education has more than just a little UX matter wrapped up in it, don't you think?

Before moving on to the meaty stuff, I want to provide you something in the "You heard it here first" department: Chad Martin announced to the group that UX Speakeasy will be hosting a one day Sketch Camp in the fall as a followup to the extremely well received UX Conference we held last Spring (read my conference posts starting here). Details will be forthcoming; if you are starving for information now or want to help out contact Chad at chad@pivotalaction.com

Gema Almilli, an Interaction Designer from Red Door Interactive hosted our meeting this month and gave a very interesting talk about ways to obtain User Experience data when you don't have a huge in-house lab or bottomless resources (which is most of us). I couldn't help thinking about all the non-profits out there, the small businesses, who want UX research but think they can't afford it, or an organization of any size who doesn't "get" what UX is all about and why their business should invest in it. This talk was inspiring for any of us who work with these groups or aspire to do so.

Let's talk food. All sorts of fast food companies out there are pushing their iceberg lettuce salads and cardboard tomato slices in an effort to convince you they are healthy. However, there are other companies, sometimes known as Gourmet Fast Food companies, that take healthy choices seriously. Gema was working with one such company as they analyzed and re-designed their web presence. What this company learned was that not only were many customers going to their website and looking at the menus in search of healthy options, but customers really wanted to be able to search and filter based upon specific dietary choices.

Hmmm...I don't know how prescient the executives at that particular company were, but I certainly wouldn't have anticipated that a fast food place, even a "gourmet" fast food place, would have a dedicated audience of super healthy eaters. (Fast food? Healthy? Oxymoron?). Lo and behold, after some effective efficient and creative UX work, it turned out that gluten free  food choices were the Number 1 filter selection on the new online menu! In addition, this company learned that they could and should more actively promote the fact that the majority of their seafood comes from sustainable sources. They were doing the right thing already - they just needed to let people know more clearly. The UX data demonstrated that their customers really cared - it made good business sense to put this information front and center!

They learned, I learned, that healthy eating is on the rise in the most surprising of places! Fast food can be healthy and tasty food (bye bye iceberg lettuce) and it will sell if you make it easy for people to learn about it. Thank You UX Research!

I looked down and observed the greasy cheesy thing in one hand and the diet coke in the other hand. I could almost hear the little army of chortling fat globules making a beeline for my waistline. The miniature grease bombs had been the only vegetarian food available - not a raw carrot in sight.

Medical Smart Phone Apps Used Smartly

National Public Radio's Science Friday ran a story last week about a new twist on technology and healthcare: the development of medical apps that will interface with your Smart Phone. The idea is that there will be apps that will collect and display data (through various means) that you can read on the cell display. Sleep patterns, nutritional patterns, changes in subtle bodily systems over time.

Most of the conversation focused not on the apps themselves but on the larger picture of what such personalized medical tools mean for the future of medicine.  It is a shame that sometimes the comments seemed to imply that the situation was a zero-sum game. The wisest comments seemed to come from those who pointed out that appropriate use and balance was key. Common sense needs to apply.

The development of medical apps should come as no surprise. Mobile device apps are popping up for just about everything. Interfacing an app with a device such as a wireless headband that transmits brain wave data, or that tracks and analyzes blood sugar levels over the course of the day could be incredibly useful. The application possibilities are enormous.

A large proportion of the population has some form of periodic or regular heart murmur; sometimes so mild that it operates below awareness. Let's say you have such a murmur and it is detected on a routine office visit. Today, if  you and your doctor want to learn more about it, the first thing to do is to make an appointment to go in and get tested with an electrocardiogram. A short office visit, you get to see the graphical readout of your heartbeat. An expensive office visit. Perhaps your heart murmur decides not to put in an appearance during your visit. No useful data. Do you repeat this test at regular intervals hoping to catch the murmur in action?

If you want to know more, with a higher chance of success, you can get outfitted with a harness that you wear around for a day or so while it gathers all sorts of data as you go through your normal routine. Even more expensive and several more office visits. What if after all this you and your doctor determine you have a perfectly normal heart and there is nothing to worry about? Fine, if you had the time and the health insurance to accommodate. A great example where those who have financial resources,  insurance and access, can benefit from superb healthcare technology. The rapidly growing population who do not have these resources lose out.

With current technology an app could be developed that would gather this same data and send it to your Smart Phone. The app would most likely cost less than one office visit. You could then take this data in to see your physician and together discuss its meanings and implications. Findings ways to gather more thorough, personalized and reliable medical data could be a win-win.

Of course, there is all sorts of room for concerns about the dangers of faulty self diagnosis and inappropriate healthcare behavior. These are not concerns new to Smart Phone medical apps; the valid concern has existed as long as we have had online medical websites. Longer. The dangers of self diagnosis from insufficient data and depth of knowledge need to be addressed. However, at least in this situation people would be looking at their own data rather than aggregate data from some remote database. This brings us back to the need for collaboration and balance.

These apps are not going to fundamentally change our current structurally defective healthcare system in the United States. But, used appropriately, with, as the Science Friday guests said, compassion and judgement, apps can provide personally relevant information that is often lacking these days. I also see medical apps as an opportunity for well trained cross disciplinary computing professionals to put their skills to work in a cutting edge way and address some of our most pressing healthcare issues. After all, the app developers will be the ones who decide what to code up. Personalized medical apps have the potential to be empowering.

Computing Technology in My Courtroom

Many people have been asking me about the jury trial I spent most of the last two weeks on. Two weeks of being able to say only "I'm on a jury trial", especially as the trial was pretty intense, was challenging. Interestingly enough, this particular trial was trying out the use of computing technology in a way they hadn't done before so we were guinea pigs. What was most interesting to me was that the technology itself wasn't particularly unusual or radical, but the people in the court were using it for the first time and I got to see how they chose to use it, what worked and didn't work, how it contributed (or not) to the trial process, and how everyone (jurors, judge, lawyers, witnesses, plaintiffs, defendant) reacted to it. There was a tech guy in charge and I wasn't supposed to talk to him (or anyone else). I wanted to find him after the trial was over and pick his brains but he had vanished by the time we were out of deliberations. Too bad.

The trial was a messy complex personal injury lawsuit (now I am allowed to say anything I want). The "facts" were not at all clear. Enormous sums of money were at stake and people's lives on all sides hung in part, in great part, on the credibility of witnesses and the technology they worked with.

A key issue was whether or not one of the plaintiffs had suffered a particular back injury, and what options (surgical or otherwise) were warranted if he had. Spinal injuries are very complex, more than I ever could have imagined. Surgery can involve pulling out all your innards and laying them...somewhere... in order to get access to the spine. Ew. We the jury heard DAYS of testimony from doctors and surgeons about the spine and soft tissue injuries and viewed shot after shot of digital imaging tests including MRIs, X-Rays, Discograms... The courtroom set up a system whereby there was a giant screen TV in front of the jury box; the judge had a monitor, the witness on the stand had a monitor, the plaintiff and lawyer tables had their own monitors and there was a tech guy in the back controlling who could see what and when. Sometimes control was given over to either of the lawyers. Cables ran around across the floor.

Sometimes they wanted all of us to see a Discogram image for example (a somewhat controversial procedure where they stick 8 inch long needles into your spine and ask if it hurts). Other times they wanted all of us to watch a 3D MRI or a simple document display (usually of endless spreadsheets of mind numbing medical or financial data). The images were pretty interesting actually, especially as I have done research into digital image use in medicine and now got to see it put to use in a legal setting. Other times they wanted the witness to see something along with the judge and lawyers but not the jury. Basically, pick your combination, and at some point in the trial any given subset of people were supposed to see it.

Sounds easy right? By the end of the trial they more or less had it down. Here are some interesting highlights of their learning curve from a usability perspective in the juror box.

The giant TV was on a stand about 6 feet high. Hard to move, trailed a long cable and had to be shoved around the room without tripping over other cables. One of the lawyers tripped on a cable early on. (not badly, but it threw him momentarily off stride). The TV blocked some of the jury from seeing the witnesses (not good) and blocked the judge from seeing some of the jurors (not good). We paused while they figured out where to best put the TV. The lawyers and judge could not see what displayed on the juror TV without walking around in front of it. This led to some early significant "oops" moments. For example, one witness was looking at his screen (along with the lawyers and judge at theirs) describing in great detail something about the spine and we jurors were completely in the dark about what was being referred to. Eventually they figured this out and some time was taken to figure out why the connection wasn't working. We started over again.

In another case, the plaintiffs' lawyer thought we were all looking at some emotionally laden photographs the witness was describing, however we couldn't see them. There were quite a few photographs and it went on a while. It turned out that our not being able to see the photographs was a good thing because the lawyer hadn't requested and obtained permission to show them as exhibits (not good). Near the end one picture momentarily flashed on the screen. Our generally genial judge looked rather annoyed when all this came to light moments later. A backroom huddle between the judge and the lawyers took place and I suspect some strong words were exchanged.  In the end we saw none of the photographs and ignored the one we had seen. Had we been shown all those photos which were eventually ruled as inadmissible I suspect there would have been some truly severe backroom lecturing by the judge. As it was, both lawyers were pissed off from what I could tell from their faces, though nary another word was spoken on the matter.

Then there was the witness whose monitor on the stand stopped working and was asked to come down to the big TV. He stood smack in front of it, back to the audience (ever had a teacher do that? :) and had to be gently and repeatedly asked by the lawyer to move out of the way so we could see what he was talking about. The lawyer actually helped him move at one point.

One time the judge's monitor stopped working and they tried to swap it out with the witness monitor which was a few feet away. The cord wasn't long enough. Our very cheerful and friendly judge disappeared under his bench - one moment he was there and the next moment  he was gone. I had glanced away at the tech guy and when I looked back - no judge. Huh? Moments later he popped up, in black robe, happily holding a cable and cheerfully announcing he had figured it out. It was an amusing moment in another wise not at all happy trial situation. We appreciated every rare light moment that came our way.

There was the first tech guy (not the one referred to above) who fell asleep sitting at his little table at the back of the courtroom. The lawyers had been in the habit of requesting him to do something without turning around and it was only when there was no response that we all noticed the poor guy snoozing. Probably bored to tears by all the talk of the T4, L4-L5 spinal disks, protuding jelly globs of spinal material, endless lists of complicated drugs that I had never heard of (and hope to heck never to have to take after hearing about their side effects) and the gorey details of spinal disk replacement vs. disk fusion vs. inserting tubes around the spine full of pain medication....(there was more but I'll stop). After that we got the second tech guy.

I was pleasantly impressed with the grace and patience with which all the court personnel handled the technical experiment. It must have interfered with their usual mode of doing business and caused them to do some cognitive context switching when they least wanted to. From a juror perspective I wonder how they conducted such a trial before? All those complex digital images, some rotating and zooming. The computing setup was very effective in presenting the information under discussion and made it quite clear why there was lack of medical agreement on various procedures and possible outcomes. One variable at least was made less abstract and easier to evaluate in our deliberations.

As a passing note, I want to comment that this experience, in spite of the time it took up and the emotional stress it induced for all the jurors (we compared notes extensively afterwards) was absolutely worth it. My perspective on our trial system has risen significantly - everyone took it very seriously, worked hard together and we did our very best in deliberations. It was a fair process. If you haven't been on a jury trial I suggest you take advantage of it when given the opportunity.

Computing and a Toothbrush?

I was hunting for something quite different (and far more serious) when I found this unusual toothbrush and it was just too intriguing to pass up. There exists this computer scientist and inventor who got into toothbrushes (among other things). I just had to read on. The CS inventor, Richard Trocino, lives in Austin, Texas one of my favorite cities and former home. That clinched it. My textbook writing project was temporarily diverted.

This toothbrush is pretty slick if you are into gadgets. A gift for the person who has it all (make a note on your holiday or birthday list). Called the OHSO, it is a refillable toothbrush with an oxygen intrusion prevention setup so that the toothpaste will never gum up (so go the marketing materials). You can put your favorite toothpaste in - I wonder if that includes a homeopathic paste made from baking soda and water."Suction technology" makes it easy to fill. That makes me want to see just how much sucking is done and what else could get sucked in.

It self dispenses in different ways depending upon if you twist the little knob or if you tilt it a certain way. There is a little window where you can peer in at the stuff to see how much paste is left. No leaking, airtight all around and with replaceable parts. I am dying to play with one of these.

I have read everything I can find and I don't see where computing technology comes into the OHSO. Unless there is a little microchip hidden in there somewhere. But you'd think they'd advertise it. I would like to take it apart and find out.

Maybe the computer science only comes in via the fact that they don't do formal advertising but rely on word of mouth and social media to generate sales.

Is this a socially useful device? There are testimonials on the site from business travelers to active duty military personnel and everyone in between swearing how much they love this toothbrush.  Clean teeth, the prevention of cavities and recessing gum lines are definitely a good thing. Keeping one's teeth is a good thing. There is something perhaps "green" in a toothbrush that might last for years. I can't tell if it is made primarily from plastic or metal. That would add or subtract from the beneficial environmental aspects. But you have to be the judge on this one.

What I really want is to approach it as a technological device and test it in every way possible, including taking it apart and putting it back together. I know I could put my research design skills to work on coming up with some very creative experiments.

Hopefully I would have better luck than the time back in my 20s when out of curiosity I took the front passenger door off my 1969 Dodge Dart and couldn't put it back on.  (the door was too heavy - those wonderful cars were tanks) I drove 20+ miles down the highway at full highway speeds without a door in order to find another pair of arms. But a toothbrush is a far cry from a solid steel car door. What could possibly go wrong? There is that suction aspect to consider I suppose. Unlike a garbage disposal however I wouldn't have to stick my hand into a dark place full of nasty sharp blades.

But really, the scientist in me hears about something this unusual and drives me to want to take an OHSO toothbrush and put it through some serious paces. Then I can find out or infer if computing plays a role in the device and if the device is socially beneficial.

If someone will provide me an OHSO I promise to take it traveling on business, into the mountains on retreat, to the dentist (just have to see what she'd say about this) and in fact I'd stick it in my pocket, take it everywhere, and brush at random intervals wherever I happened to be. I might even alternate between randomness and statistically planned brushing events.

In between taking it apart  and putting it back together.

I'll devote the full range of my assessment and evaluator experience to the task.

How about it OHSO - want to send me one? Consider it free product testing.