Once, I had assumed that patients were my primary target website audience. Why should I have ever thought otherwise? Well, you know what happens when you assume things…

Case in point: St. John Health in Detroit discovered that their site visitor composition was different than they expected.

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We’re in the midst of our every-other-year usability testing and it reminded me just how much we learn when we do these. Some of them are tough to figure out, others are extraordinarily simple. My favorite was the last go-round when we discovered patients didn’t really know what we meant by the term “specialty” in the Find a Doc section. We changed that to “kind of doctor you need” and suddenly nobody had any problems.

What’s the craziest or funniest thing you’ve learned through this kind of testing?

Designers, developers, project managers. Writers and editors. Information architects and usability specialists. People who make websites have been at it for more than a dozen years, yet almost nothing is known, statistically, about our profession. Who are we? Where do we live? What are our titles, our skills, our educational backgrounds? Where and with whom do we work? What do we earn? What do we value?

A List Apart is putting on it’s very own first annual Web Design Survey. If nothing else, this will be a great complement to the survey Delia put together for the listserv a couple months back.

Although the listserv survey was a nice overview of the practices in healthsystems and healthcare (and had a smaller population), A List Apart’s survey results will encompass a wider spectrum.

I think this is a great idea, and can’t wait to see the results. I urge everyone to take 10 minutes and help us all gain more insight into our great industry.

By now, it’s probably safe to assume you’ve heard one of the newer jargon words that keeps getting thrown around: RSS. But what is it, and what place does it have in a hospital website?

What is RSS?

As taken from good ol’ wikipedia:

bq. RSS is a family of web feed formats used to publish frequently updated digital content, such as blogs, news feeds or podcasts.

Great, but what does that really mean? [Those of you who are already versed in the delightful benefits of RSS, please bear with me for just a short while longer]

This really opens up a whole new thought process for us webizens. Instead of having to visit your oft-visited sites every day to check up what they’ve been up to, you can instead have their content delivered straight to your computer. Imagine that for every single website that you check on a regular basis. You immediately become more efficient in your daily news-collection process, and from there can expand your horizons to sites or communities you might not have normally become a part of. The implications of this are astounding and have already started to alter the way people get their information on the internet.

So what does that mean for my hospital’s website?

Although this technology is still on the newer side, I truly believe now is the time to start building the foundation for a couple reasons:

• It allows easy syndication for those already collecting web feeds.
• By laying the groundwork now, not only will we be ready for when RSS becomes mainstream and it’s faux pas not to have a web feed, but we will have the opportunity to help promote its adoption.

Has your website implemented RSS? If so, what were some of the major issues or holdups? If not, what’s stopping you? Put your response in the comments.

Welcome to WebiScope.com, a blog and companion forum for healthcare web professionals. This site has roots in the Healthcare Web Developers’ listserv (HCwebD) where members wanted to expand the list beyond the e-mail format that often proves cumbersome to navigate in different mail systems. So here you have the benefits of the listserv—you can reach out to colleagues across the country—with an added avenue to be a guest blogger. Happy writing!

What’s so great about blogs anyways?

A consultant once mentioned to us that the popularity of blogs doesn’t have longevity. Information theory—specifically Information Foraging Theory— asserts otherwise. Here’s how:

RSS (otherwise known as feeds) is one of the major components of blogs nowadays. RSS allows for easy and simple syndication of content to readers. Using RSS, it is possible to easily keep track of multiple sites which may be constantly updated.

RSS feeds work in tandem with a main premise of the theory (as outlined in HCI Models, Theories, and Frameworks by John M. Carroll)— that “people prefer…and select technology designs that improve returns on information foraging.” By pulling together information on a chosen topic from different blogs into one spot on a person’s desktop, RSS feeds/readers increase the amount of relevant information that can be compiled in a short time in an easy manner.

We know that “people prefer information-seeking strategies that yield more useful information per unit cost.” This theory asserts that user choices are based upon cost-benefit (value) analysis. And, given that users can have relevant information delivered to them with the click of a button, RSS feeds and blogs will remain beneficial and become an increasingly popular medium.

So what does that mean for me?

Simply put: RSS and blogs are not only here to stay, but they have the potential to help us develop and synergize globally with one another.