By Giorgio Baresi - November 26, 2012
The boundaries between design and psychology are progressively blurring. With designers increasingly facing high stakes challenges and more psychologists jumping off the academic pedestal to get their hands dirty with real people in real contexts, the two disciplines are more intertwined than ever before.
About a decade ago, the job of the designer was making the path from A to B as easy and streamlined as possible. During this “usability” golden age, the main focus was to remove any type of cognitive friction along a predefined path to a predefined goal. Anyone interested in buying a book online, for example, only needed to know where they were in the process and what steps were necessary to ensure the right product was delivered to the right address. Other key elements of the experience, such as where the need for the book originated or how reading the book would enrich a person’s life, were given little to no consideration.
Today’s landscape is quite different. Designing highly usable products and services to help people buy books online is still significant but designers also have the chance to influence people’s lives and decisions on a much deeper level.
By Ernest Beck - November 6, 2012
As technology disrupts established healthcare systems and the traditional patient-provider dynamic, frog introduces a prototype Connected Care Solution (CCS) that seamlessly connects doctors and patients and supportive communities. Based on a new patient-centered healthcare paradigm, CCS fosters a collaborative relationship between the patient, providers, and a social network to improve health outcomes and help achieve lifestyle goals. With a deep knowledge and expertise in the healthcare sector, frog designers, technologists, and strategists are exploring innovative and systemic solutions for the future of healthcare—today.
By Hanna Wickholm - October 18, 2011
The Innovation Learning Network meet twice a year and brings together the most innovative healthcare organizations in the country to share the joys and pains of innovation. Earlier this year frog hosted the ILN in the Space Needle in Seattle. The front-line innovators and leaders in healthcare explored how to take advantage of gaming ideas and principles to inspire innovation in the serious world of healthcare.
By Jaleen Francois - September 21, 2011
As part of our Mobile Mandate initiative, frog hosted a two-day gathering that brought together key stakeholders across UNICEF and its partners to look at how mobile technology for development can help deliver, monitor and mange results for the world’s most disadvantaged children. The first-day workshop was concentrated on Community Case Management, an emerging healthcare model that enlists a new tier of healthcare provider—the Community Health Worker—to provide basic services to rural communities. How can we find ways to integrate mobile technologies, remarkably and increasingly more available in rural Africa, into these programs so that they improve Community Healthcare Workers' abilities to offer care, and simultaneously allow better data tracking, supply distribution, and general program management?
By Giorgio Baresi - August 25, 2011
New ways to think about how to create emotional bonds and lasting meaning in behavior change.
Let me start this blog post with a bold statement: I’m a happy man. I love my work at frog and all of the challenges that come with it. I love to share my knowledge with other fellow designers and learn from them. I love my family and my friends who make my life special and always support me during the difficult moments. I love to stay fit and I do everything I can to have a healthy lifestyle. And finally, I love to travel, to experience new cultures and to visit new places.
By Montana Cherney - July 13, 2011
It’s not too often that I experience something that makes me want to tell everyone I know.
By Eric Bailey, Aimee Jungman, and Thomas Sutton - June 28, 2011
When Google announced Friday that it was pulling the plug on Google Health, we received dozens of calls asking, “If Google can’t make it in health, who can?” But we actually think we should be looking at Google’s failure as a strong sign of where the electronic medical record (EMR) and personal health record (PHR) space is headed. To use the Gartner Hype Cycle reference we are in the “Trough of Disillusionment,” where technology fails to meet expectations and is abandoned. But, some businesses will persist and continue through the “Slope of Enlightenment” and experiment to understand the true benefits and practical application of the technology for the consumer. We also think Google’s failure is a confirmation that consumers are finally expecting healthcare products and services to rise to the same level as other industries. frog finds this in our healthcare research all the time; patients and physicians now expect their PHR/EMR to provide all the intuitive functionality and connectivity as their smart phones and tablets. If they don’t, they won’t adopt these technologies. Google Health failed on two primary dimensions: failure to create a connected and meaningful solution.
By Thomas Sutton - June 10, 2011
Editor’s Note: frog Creative Director Thomas Sutton presented at the Open Mobile Summit this week in London. The conference is one of the global top tier gatherings for the mobile, media, and Internet industries, with speakers like CEO of Nokia Stephen Elop and EVP of Orange Olaf Swantee present. Thomas joined the “Business of mHealth" panel to discuss what an effective mobile health ecosystem looks like, what market opportunities it will bring for operators and how to innovate in health services and apps. Below are some of his thoughts on how to improve the current mHealth system.
By Varioius frogs - May 5, 2011
A majority of the first two days at the ILN summit has been focused on how games can motivate and make visible our behaviors around health. In this sense, we’ve been learning about how games can teach us knew ways of being, but one of the most provocative talks of the summit explored how we can inform (and educate) games.
By Various frogs - May 4, 2011
Today at Seattle’s Space Needle, frog design kicked off “Changing the Game,” a health conference in partnership with the Innovation Learning Network, where front-line innovators and leaders in healthcare will explore how to take advantage of gaming ideas and principles to inspire innovation in the serious world of healthcare. The morning was about breaking in the skeptics and getting them to expand their understanding of how gaming can be used to actually create change. frog’s Director of Business Development Teaque Lenahan coaxed the apprehensive luddites critics , with a nod from the Journal of American Medicine that states, “Health games represent an emerging tool that must be considered by community health centers, accountable care organizations, and patient centered medical homes.”
