You are super busy designing and building great things. Spring conference season is in full swing. There are too many choices and not enough time.

But, you are committed to the profession and passionate about improving the state of healthcare through design and innovation.

And you have this feeling. That things are starting to change. They are getting better. They are moving forward. You want the momentum to build. You want to be a part of it. This is why you need to be at the first-ever Healthcare Experience Design Conference.

Whether you’re trying to convince your manager -- or your significant other  -- to let you join us, we thought we’d give you some compelling arguments in favor of your attendance. (Who knows, they might even decide to come too!).

Come to Boston for the day or make it a long weekend! Ten reasons to join us:

1.    It’s your chance to meet Tim Kieschnick, the guy behind the EMR with the highest adoption rate of all time – 3,000,000 Kaiser Permanente members.

2.    The Red Sox and Fenway Park.

3.    Our list of presenters is a “Who’s Who” of Healthcare Experience Design, bringing together the best and brightest from all facets of the healthcare delivery system: hospitals, insurance providers, and physicians, and the people who design and develop the products and solutions that they use every day.

4.    Quincy Market, Faneuil Hall and Newbury Street.

5.    You’ll get how-to’s – and how-not-to’s -- from health-technology entrepreneurs like Marston Alfred of SugarStats, Jen McCabe of Contagion Health, Trapper Markelz of MeYouHealth, and Sutha Kamal of MassiveHealth.

6.    The food: Lobster. Chowd’ah. The North End. Yum.

7.    Mayo Clinic’s Matt Diamanti and Cleveland Clinic’s Mary Curran will share the strategies, policies, and systems that have made their institutions the gold standard of patient care experience.

8.    Enjoying a run along the Charles River or by the Boston Waterfront.

9.    In addition to BJ Fogg, a pioneer in the field of persuasive design, you’ll hear insights from Lisa Nugent, Global Creative Director at Johnson & Johnson, Jeroen Raijmakers, Senior Global Creative Director Healthcare at Philips, and John Bahl, Head of Digital Media Strategy & Communications at Aetna.

10.    Connecting with professionals who are facing the same challenges you are.

We have the power to change healthcare, one small step at a time. This April, in Boston, we can take that first step together.

Facebook is a cultural phenomenon and the key conversation in social business. Its role in design is also changing strategies and approaches across experiences, offline and online. Of particular significance is that cute little thumb icon and those four little letters, “like”. People like lots of things. According to AllFacebook.com, over 70 million people “like” things every day. Ironically, one of the most “liked” things is actually Facebook itself, with over 35 million fans. Data is still rolling in on the effectiveness of a “like”, especially with regard to ROI. Facebook continues to introduce innovative ways for business to measure success, including an updated Insights dashboard last year.

We know that Facebook “likes” business and business “likes” Facebook, but what about design? Mark Cuban had a fantastic post last year on design and the “like” button. Mashable also had its own perspective recently on the impact the “like” button is having across the Web. Here’s my own spin… The buttons that Facebook needs, but doesn’t currently have. Here's a few:


Dislike. This one is pretty obvious but is really needed. Even a simple thumbs down as an alternative to the thumbs up. I’m not trying to spread Hatorade across the Internets, it’s more of providing a forum for the other side of positive feedback, especially for businesses.


Love. Anyone who has checked out Seth Godin’s work on permission marketing, knows there’s levels of engagement, especially between a brand and a consumer. Like may be a good measure in that relationship, but there are those consumers as you move up the engagement curve that want more. Godin refers to these at the “Intravenous” level. Their chips are all in. For those consumers, it’s not about like, it is about love. I may “like” Camping World and TaylorMade Golf but I “love” the Budos Band and Adriana Lima, nice.


Terminator. We know an important role of YouTube, Facebook and other social resources is to introduce new ways to destroy time throughout the day. What better way to help out your network than calling it out in advance by marking it with the “terminator”. This way you can aggregate all of your time-destroying resources into a single feed. I realize it may just be easier to follow Charlie Sheen’s Twitter feed, yet this would be a great complement.


Skittles. This one has two strategies. One, “skittles” is one of my favorite words. I see the opportunities for a “skittles” button in showing your appreciation for things that are cool or different in interesting ways. Tag that cool photo or piece of digital art from Huck Gee with some “skittles”. Two, let the brands create their own buttons. Facebook embraces open-source, so why not open it up to the very brands that using it as a platform. The idea of integrating Facebook deeper into existing Web experiences continues to be a focus for Facebook. Maybe this is a next step to explore.

We can’t get too crazy here. The user experience of Facebook is already challenging at times and we don’t want to make it more unusable. Still, a little can go a long way toward more engagement and integration of Facebook into the Web.

So there’s a few buttons to consider. What do you think? Any buttons you’d like to see added to the mix?

Didn’t win the last Healthcare Experience Design Conference pass giveaway? Well my dear friend, fear not, you now have the opportunity to win a free pass for the Healthcare Experience Design Conference in Boston on 4/11/11 (a $595 value) ! On Wednesday, March 23rd, we will be selecting a winner from the list of tweets that mention both @hxdconf and #health2con. Attending the Health 2.0 Conference in San Diego on March 21-22? Great! Stop by the booth and drop off your business card to be entered TWICE into the contest! 

Still not sure what to do? It's ok, check out this example:

@hxdconf and #health2con, excited to have a chance to win a pass to take part in this event and learn more!

We hope to see you there!