An Almost Perfect Storm: Content Marginalized Again

An Almost Perfect Storm: Content Marginalized Again:

I first published this post on my personal blog in 2009. I haven't seen much improvement in consideration of content for this type of research, so I'm including this post here. Note that Interactions originally made the article publicly available, and now it's available only in the ACM Digital Library.

A Revolution Clearing the Way to Better Health

If you care about persuasion, technology, and health, read "Catalyzing a Perfect Storm" in the November 2009 issue of Interactions. To quote, "We are on the cusp of a persuasion revolution..."

The article lays out this revolution's promise by describing technology-based interventions to change health behavior (e.g., preventing HIV) and calling for their support. From ALIVE! to UbiFit, the article highlights several examples of digital health interventions with good results. The combination of change in the health industry, pervasiveness of technology, and advanced understanding of human-computer interaction are swirling together into a storm of positive health persuasion. This storm has immense potential to destroy medical costs and clear the way to better health.

Content Will Make the Storm Perfect

However, the storm will never be "perfect" without considering content. Content is a hidden but necessary force to these interventions. A few reasons why:

Technology creates the context for persuasion, but content persuades.

Technology helps get content to the right people at the right time. The content still has to influence. Delivering the wrong content at the right time is as bad as delivering the right content at the wrong time.

These health interventions are rich with content, which requires planning. For instance, "group-targeted interventions contain content that has been developed with a particular group in mind." Where exactly does this content come from? Who will create and maintain it?

Designing the interaction of these health interventions requires understanding the content.

The nature of the content affects major design decisions, such as choosing the channel / platform (kiosk, mobile application, etc.), and detailed design decisions, such as choosing the basic interaction pattern.

Evaluating these health interventions completely requires evaluating the content.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, for example, has laid a solid foundation with its efforts in communication science and evaluating health communication / marketing campaigns. We need to build on that foundation and evaluate content as part of health interventions that are more than campaigns. What's more, evaluation needs to explore not only variations in design but also variations in content to understand what combination works best. Despite the importance of content, it is missing from the article's proposed research needs (included in the print version). Usability, design, notification systems, evaluation—yes. Content—no?

A Plea: Stop Marginalizing Content from Health Innovation

The Interactions editors introduce the issue as a "a push toward social, authentic, and interdisciplinary design." Well, I'm pushing back. A discipline, content strategy, is missing.

At this defining moment in health, we can't afford to marginalize the content. The discipline of content strategy could be the difference between a health intervention's success or failure—and, quite literally, the difference between life and death.