Trapper is on a mission

I'm headed back to the Healthcare Experience Design Conference!

Mon, 20 Feb 2012 18:24:04 -0500

Check it out! I have been invited back to the HXD Conference for their 2012 event. Last year I talked about my experience at MeYou Health designing for the first step. This year I am talking about something a little bit different.

2011 at MeYou Health has been all about selling. As we have engaged and started rolling out Daily Challenge to customers, we have gotten a glimpse inside their wellness solutions. The same themes kept coming up over and over again:

“We can get people to sign up but can’t get them to come back.”
“My employees don’t take advantage of any of the programs we offer.”
“We have to offer incentives to get our population to do anything.”

Reading between the lines, I continue to see a lack of credibility given to the attention of the individual. The products that are built try to do too much, too fast, and with too little regard for the attention they are likely to receive from the participant.

So this led me to the topic of my HXD talk this year:

Overcoming indifference - How the attention economy plays a role in health product design

We all know designing online health interventions can be very difficult. Often we are asking participants to do things they know they need to do, but not necessarily things they want to do. We therefore face a huge barrier of indifference. Just because we build it, doesn’t mean they will come.

Whether we know it or not, we all are playing a zero-sum game in the attention economy. Five minutes spent with your website/product is five minutes the individual is not spending somewhere else. How much attention are you asking for? What are you asking them to choose between?

In this talk I will highlight the key principles we learned while working on Daily Challenge (http://dailychallenge.com) that can help you streamline your online health product and become a celebrated steward of attention.

As I have started putting this talk together, I have found it to be a bit of a challenge. The reading that has informed my thinking on this is a lot more organic and scattered than my previous work on topics like gamification and behavior change. After all, I am not a researcher on this stuff. I read and utilize whatever I can to get to a product I can ship and a story that makes sense in the market.

The other challenge is I have a completely different talk to do at the beginning of the month, so my attention is currently split!

It is going to be a busy March! Wish me luck!

Are you a queue person?

Sat, 11 Feb 2012 13:00:00 -0500

I find that my life is somewhat dominated by working various queues. I actually like it this way… but it made me curious if I am the only one like this? What for some is a box in which things are held, I see everything as a queue-or-to-do-list of items to be acknowledged, acted upon, or filed. Some of the queues in my life:

My Gmail Inboxes (Personal and Work) - These are the most important queues. I always make sure they hover around 5-10 messages. Any more than that and I find the time to get it cleaned up.
GQueues - This is a task management system integrated into Google Apps at work. The design could use some improvement, but it is built in a way to fit how I think about managing my professional tasks. I’ve started mapping out how to build my own version inspired by this tool with better design.
LinkedIN - My messaging box at LinkedIN fills up with job inquires, networking requests, etc. I try and make sure everyone gets a response in a timely fashion.
Google Reader RSS - On average I probably read 400-500 items a day in here… I don’t really read them all, but I scan them and “star” the ones that look good to review/beta test/blog about/tweet later.
Google Reader Stars - As mentioned above, this is where I file away interesting articles to read completely when I have the moment to focus. This normally happens in the late afternoons as the work day winds down.
Facebook messages/notifications - Just another place where people ask questions, leave notes, and therefore need a response. I get the least amount of messages here, so it is the easiest queue to work.
iPhone tokens - I can’t believe there are people out there that never clear the notification tokens off their apps. If the AppStore is telling me to upgrade, I upgrade. if Foursquare has new friend requests, I answer them. I hate seeing those little red tokens on my apps, so I clear them out almost as immediately as I see them.

So those are my queues. When they are empty (like they are right now as I type this!), I am a happy camper! What queues do you work on a regular basis? Or am I just crazy? :)

Re-living Ernest Shackleton’s Whisky! (I thought it was...

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 12:20:00 -0500

Re-living Ernest Shackleton’s Whisky!

(I thought it was spelled Whiskey?)

After finding cases of 100-year old whisky under the floor boards of the Shackleton’s base camp on first attempt to reach the south pole, master blender Richard Paterson was hired to recreate the whisky’s lost recipe. For the full experience, I purchased a DVD of the National Geographic documentary Expedition Whisky and me, my Dad and my brother Andy all followed along at home… tasting the whisky as we were instructed by its creator.

How does it taste? Very peaty. Some oak. Some butter. A very big kick up front with a nice lingering after taste. I can’t say my tastes are sophisticated enough to fully appreciate the expense of this bottle, but it was worth it for the education about whisky blending and tasting, and opportunity to experience a bit of history.

To claim your own bottle of history, check out their website.

Upcoming speaking opportunity: Healthcare (R)evolution March 7th, 2012

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 12:02:02 -0500

I found out recently that I will be speaking at the Healthcare (R)evolution conference in Florida on March 7th hosted by the Florida Healthcare Coalition. Given they have specifically requested I talk about “Gamification”, here is the title and topic I am working on:

Gamification is here to stay

Our industry is full of many powerful products built with strong intentions, but fail to achieve scalable outcomes because they lack one thing: Engagement. One possible solution, is gamification.

Gamification is more than a buzzword. It is the use of game dynamics, mechanics and aesthetics to solve real problems and engage audiences in a measurable way. If you peel back the hype, you will find an assortment of techniques that can greatly enhance the journey towards health.

This talk will focus on defining the term, outlining how gamification works, and walking you through 20 ways you might apply it to your health products.

Gamification is obviously soaring through the hype cycle. Some people are pulling back from the term… not me. I love neologisms like this. Why do people have to be haters? :)

The plan is to walk the audience through some of these concepts given their light exposure. Since I am more of a “gamification applier” than a researcher, I plan to start off introducing them people who I rely on as key thought leaders in the space (Amy Jo Kim, Jon Radoff, Gabe Zichermann, Jane McGonigal), key resources they can follow up on, and then illustrate 20 ways that we are using gamification in MeYou Health’s Daily Challenge to drive engagement. The hope is that by showing 20 specific examples, they can start thinking about how to apply similar patterns to their own products. It is a 40 minute talk with 20 minutes of Q/A at the end. I have never given a talk that long so it should be a challenge!

Stay tuned for updates on how it all shakes out.

Reading Y:The Last Man

Wed, 01 Feb 2012 09:19:00 -0500

I am not big into graphic novels, but I heard so many good things about Y: The Last Man in my circle of friends that I had to give it a try. My plan was to buy and read the comics on my Kindle, but they were $2 a piece! It was much cheaper just to borrow the five anthology books from my friend Stephen. :)

The story follows the “last man” on earth… who mysteriously survives some epidemic (along with his pet monkey) that causes every other creature on the planet with a Y chromosome to suddenly drop dead.

What follows is an adventure around the world as the last man Yorick, his body guard and a scientist try to piece together what happened and why he is special. There are many exciting moments, many more confusing ones… but I finished the story satisfied if not a little sad.

While I was looking up information about this book, there is mention of a Mary Shelley book written in 1826 called The Last Man as well that is based on a plague. I don’t know how related this all is…

I highly suggest the graphic novel Y:The Last Man. Maybe try a few $2 episodes first to see if it is your thing.

What are my small actions?

Fri, 13 Jan 2012 10:17:21 -0500

As you know, I work at MeYou Health. We are feaverishly working to bring Daily Challenge to companies and health plans far and wide based on the success we are seeing improving Well-Being in a measurable way using the delivery of daily small actions.

I’ve worked at the company for over two years now… and I have come across thousands of small actions. Here are the ones I have learned and have manged to cement into my life for the better:

Small Action #1: Don’t eat after 8pm, with reminders!

Every day at 8pm, I get a text message from myself asking me a simple question. Did you eat after 8pm? It turns out that is enough to make me mindful enough to make a choice. I’ve been getting that reminder for over two months now, and I can firmly say that as soon as it hits 8pm… my brain starts telling me to do something else… read… play video games… anything but WATCH TV because that is the TRIGGER! :)

Small Action #2: Weight myself every day

I bought a Withings scale back in October and have been using it every day. There are all sorts of studies out there (and studies of studies) that being away of your weight at least once a week is enough to have a huge impact. For myself, I find that just knowing my weight is enough to help me make all sorts of micro-choices during the day. If I am starting to get to my 180 BMI limit, I start to make subtle changes that help drive it back down.

Small Action #3: Carry a pedometer

We have been doing some work on a fitness prototype experience at the office which has been extremely educational and fun. For me, I have found that much like weighing everyday, this small data vector empowers you with enough information to make deliberate choices about your behavior. For me 5,000 steps a day is sort of a realistic milestone. If I don’t get 5,000 I feel super lazy and can take steps to just get up and walk around the house holding my daughter, or go out for a walk with the kids. Small amounts of additional information lead to the ability to make small choices throughout the day.

Small Action #4: Force yourself to smile

This is one of those small actions that I never considered until I found out about it through Daily Challenge. It works like this: If you are feeling angry, stressed, sad, just FORCE yourself to smile. You will feel funny when you first start, but push through. I find myself doing this all the time in my car during my commute. It amazingly helps turn your mood around.

Summary
Four easy things you too can do!

Don’t eat after 8pm
Weigh yourself every day
Wear a pedometer
Smile through it!

Give some of em a try! :)

Goodbye Words with Friends! It's been fun!

Tue, 10 Jan 2012 09:09:27 -0500

Well that’s it. I have officially uninstalled Words with Friends from my phone. I have been playing this game (with friends!) for almost a year now. At one point recently I had over 10 games going at once. It was sort of obsessive. I found myself almost every moment of the day, looking down at this word board frantically plotting my strategy to success.

So in an effort to simplify and reclaim some valuable attention currency, I am backing away from the friending of words. Thank you everyone for playing! Some of the highlights included games against my aunts in Illinois. They gave me a proper Scrabble thrashing from time to time!

If you have never played Words with Friends, I highly recommend it. But beware of the obsession! :)

The only thing I wish is that Zynga provided some API to access your game stats. I would love to know what the highest score word I ever played was… or what my total win/loss record was. That would make a fun infographic!

My current anthem: Tomahawk

Mon, 09 Jan 2012 21:08:59 -0500

This is my current anthem recently: Tomahawk by Adam K & BT. I can’t stop rocking out to it in my car. If you are into Trance music, give it a listen. If you can’t stand Trance music, LOOK AWAY! LOOK AWAY NOW! :)

Listen on Spotify here

Geeks vs Nerds simplified

Sun, 08 Jan 2012 08:58:00 -0500

(photo credit: KillerInfoGraphics)

There is an infographic going around the web that “tries” to explain the difference between Geeks and Nerds in a very stereotypical (Nerds use PCS!!!!) and complicated way. I have come up with my own simple definition between Geek and Nerd.

Geek
A person who displays intelligence and passion about a topic.

Nerd
A person who displays intelligence and passion about a topic, but lacks the social intelligence to know when it is appropriate to express that passion.

Simple example
A Geek really likes Star Trek. A Nerd has a Star Trek wedding.

I hope this helps you as you travel the internet.

What am I reading? A science fiction story extravaganza!

Fri, 06 Jan 2012 10:21:38 -0500

I’ve been tearing up the words with my new Kindle Fire. I really like it. Cheap. Useful. Integrated. Here are some quick looks at four shorter books I ripped through in the last two months.

Wool - by Hugh Howey - What happens when you grow up underground? What is it like when everything you know is from a bunker where you are hiding from a completely hopeless and decimated outside world? What strange rituals and traditions would develop? A great example of a short story that ends too soon.

Anomaly - by Peter Cawdron - What would happen when an alien race discovers there is life on earth? It might send a probe, but due to the millions of years of distance between the civilizations, would we even recognize it? How would we communicate with another civilization so advanced? How will the irrefutable discovery of another intelligence, one FAR superior to our own rock the foundations of our beliefs and society? Hint: it doesn’t go well. :)

Wired - by Douglas E. Richards - This sucker read like a Dan Brown thriller novel. A scientist figures out how to carry out enhancements on the brain that amplify thought and perception to amazingly high degrees such that the person almost becomes a super hero. Throw in some government conspiracy and some pretty awesome twists and this is a very fun read.

Entropy - by Andrew Galvan - This is an amazingly researched and very dense/mind expanding read. The story takes place trillions (yes trillions) of years in the future near the heat-death of the universe. That is the point where the universe has expanded so much that there is not enough clumping of matter to support star formation. The stars are burning out. Even the black holes are running out of steam. When you look out into the nigh sky (from a space ship) there is nothing. The universe is dominated by super advanced intelligent beings and independent AIs piloting space craft as big as planets.

I really enjoyed this book and didn’t really want it to end. When it did end, I had to read the ending three times and am still not quite sure if I understand what happened… but I am a sucker for that kind of stuff. :) So if you are up for a challenge, pick this one up!

NOTE: It is worth mentioning that if you have Amazon Prime you can read all of these books for free I believe.

Best of 2011, a set on Flickr. 2011 was a pretty crazy year. I...

Wed, 04 Jan 2012 15:45:00 -0500

Best of 2011, a set on Flickr.

2011 was a pretty crazy year. I settled in at MeYou Health. Jack grew into a little boy. Maureen got pregnant again! We had an awesome family summer with many adventures and fun weekends with friends. There were lots of smiles, laughs, some tears, all of it culminating with the arrival of Alice Pearl Markelz.

Check out this selection of photos I pulled from the year, my Best of 2011!

Cheers to 2012! May it be the best year yet!

Last night we rolled a new HTML 5 mobile version of Daily...

Thu, 22 Dec 2011 09:40:17 -0500

Last night we rolled a new HTML 5 mobile version of Daily Challenge. We are building this app in parallel with the website. The whole thing is powered by an API of the main site, so as we approach feature parity, we will also have a slamming and well documented API in place.

For the record, mobile development (supporting all these different operating systems and hand sets) makes me feel like I am back in the 90s with browser incompatibilities. Where is the “* html” hack for mobile phone browsers? :)

Check it out by going to http://dcm.meyouhealth.com from your phone… or just click any Daily Challenge email from your phone and you will be directed to it automatically

Check out Antiresolution.com!

Wed, 21 Dec 2011 13:27:04 -0500

Every year, when the new year roles around, over at MeYou Health we start thinking about the tradition of making New Years resolutions. If anything, the New Year is a great time to take a moment and reflect… on ourselves… on what we did… on what we want to do. I actually quite like the turn of the new year and the opportunity to assess my life on a regular basis as our earth circumnavigates the sun.

This year, we whipped up a different way of thinking about new year resolutions… call it an anti-revolution if you will… drawing on the inspiration we find through building Daily Challenge. Instead of pledging to do a big thing, what if you thought of that big thing as a small action instead?

Check out antiresolution.com to see what I mean… Let’s all agree to do something small this year. Forget the big stuff!

The history of the Baby Beard

Tue, 20 Dec 2011 13:23:05 -0500

For all of my children, I started growing a beard the day they were born, and kept growing it for two weeks. After five kids, here is the history of my baby beard.

2005 - Hannah Beard

2007 - Lucy Beard (Why you so angry?)

2009 - June Beard

2010 - Jack Beard

2011 - Alice Beard

There it is! Five kids, five beards! Mission accomplished.

Featured in the Healthways Well-Being Journal

Mon, 12 Dec 2011 10:00:06 -0500

Last week I was featured in the Healthways Well-Being Journal with a little two part article about gamification.

Part 1 talks about social connection and networks:

With Daily Challenge, we can see for the first time how support networks are structured, along with what role high and low well-being play in their formation and influence. We are, in fact, building a one-of-a-kind map of well-being based on the information we have gathered since Daily Challenge’s launch in 2010. This information is leading to a whole set of controlled studies this year and clinically controlled studies next year to quantify the true effects of social mechanics on intervention engagement and improved well-being.

Read part 1

Part 2 brings in my thoughts on using games as a framework for social interaction:

To be clear, using game concepts in Daily Challenge isn’t about making it into an actual game (where there is a winner and a loser); rather, it’s about utilizing the methods that game designers use to make participation, both individually and socially, as clear and effortless as possible.

Read part 2

Special thanks to Alicia for help with the article!

It is fun to win things! Daily Challenge wins a MITX award.

Sun, 11 Dec 2011 22:42:09 -0500

A few hours before my daughter Alice was born, I was sitting at a table with all the other cool MeYou Health folks, waiting for our name to be called at the MITX awards. Lo and behold we won!

We rushed the stage like a mob. We weren’t shy about being excited! Our head of marketing Christine Fiske said a few words (I don’t remember what!) and we left the lights of the stage and had a group photo taken in the winners circle.

Great job to the entire team that is making Daily Challenge into something that is really impacting people’s lives.

Here is what the room looks like via Panorama. It’s just like you were there!!!

Welcome Alice Pearl Markelz to the world! She arrived at 4:17am...

Tue, 06 Dec 2011 16:40:00 -0500

Welcome Alice Pearl Markelz to the world! She arrived at 4:17am 8lbs 9oz (our biggest) after an astonishing two hours of labor. We barely made it to the hospital in time! Only 17 minutes of pushing and she was out! So needless to say, that was more excitement than Maureen and I were planning on! Ever seen a movie where the husband and wife are driving in the car and the wife is screaming and it seems like they are going to have to pull over? Yeah that was us. :)

The team of Half Full

Fri, 02 Dec 2011 09:32:13 -0500

I was on a status call with a MeYou Health customer and we were reviewing all the complicated moving pieces that are making up this massive project (of which we are a small part). And the project owner on the customer side asked me point blank: “Trapper what gives you heart burn about this?”

My honest reply was “Nothing really. This is what we do! This is the fun part! We are building stuff that can impact people’s lives in a positive way. Sure there are a lot of unknowns, but we will solve those.”

Her response was “I am glad you are on my team. The team of half full!”

Thank you for NPR

Tue, 29 Nov 2011 09:37:50 -0500

I’ve been really disappointed in the media’s inability to inform our debate, thereby assisting in the creation of under-informed citizens craving and receiving oversimplifications.

However this morning I was listening to WBUR (Boston NPR) and they had a story about Newt Gingrich, and it was some of the most even handed and informative non-partisan reporting I have heard recently… it literally gave me goose bumps and restored my faith in journalism.

You can listen to the story here.

When I got to work, I donated immediately. If you value adult discourse, you should find your local NPR station and donate too!

Look at this list of headlines that WBUR is covering today… Glorious news! Not a sex scandal to be found! Real honest news ZOMG!

Kindle Fire 72 hour impressions

Mon, 21 Nov 2011 09:38:17 -0500

I unboxed my Kindle Fire on Thursday and have been using it fairly heavily for the last four days. Here are my thoughts and observations in no particular order:

It was pretty great that as soon as I unboxed it, all of my information was in there… my name… my shipping and billing info… my credit card info… I was able to get off and running after a short download/update of software.
The easiest way to think of the Kindle Fire is a Kindle, but with the ability to consume every type of media there is… plus a fast web browser.
My iPad is much more responsive and predictable. I find myself having to click twice fairly often on the Kindle.
The ability to watch Netflix, read comic books, play Words With Friends, interact with any flash application, and access all of my web apps makes this thing pretty damn awesome.
The battery life was two solid days of usage. I charged it Thursday and used it all day Friday, all day Saturday, and had to plug it in Sunday morning.
This thing is going to make me buy lots more content. I can already feel it.
The fact that On-Click Amazon purchases came activated has also proved to be dangerous.
I am not a huge fan of the carousel navigation on the main screen. It seems a little hard to scroll through it and land on the icon you want. Clicking the icons instead of scrolling seems to work better.
If you are reading books, comics, watching movies, browsing the web, doing short email and RSS reading, you just can’t beat the $199 price on this sucker.
The number one complaint: There are lots of sites I use that have Android apps, but those apps aren’t available in “Amazon’s” Android market. Therefore I cannot download and install them. This seems really strange…

I am quite happy with the purchase. When integrated with the vast eCommerce and media library of Amazon, this is a slick fun device at a price point you really can’t beat. Don’t try to compare it to the quality UI of the iPad… it isn’t nearly as responsive as that… but at well under half the cost you can’t really expect it to be.