Staffing Robot - Healthcare Staffing, Marketing and Technology Blog

Largest Healthcare Staffing Firm in the Nation Rebrands - AMN Healthcare

AMN, the largest healthcare staffing company in the nation launched a major rebranding campaign yesterday. According to AMN the effort was put forth to more accurately reflect their interconnected service offerings. The branding campaign has created a new visual identity across all of their divisions including a new logo and design on all AMN Web sites and materials.

"The AMN Healthcare of today has evolved significantly since our inception 25 years ago. During 2009, in particular, we made significant enhancements to our client-focused processes and re-aligned our brands and service offerings to ensure we are focused on what our clients need and value most from us," said Susan Nowakowski, president and chief executive officer (CEO) of AMN.

Right now is perhaps the best time to focus your company efforts or your brand. The heatlhcare staffing industry has seen several changes in the last year so coming out with an improved identity, renewed focus and new service offerings can go along way toward getting clients to notice you.

It's always a risky move to go through a rebranding effort, especially when you have such an established and well known brand as AMN. Further, there's more to a brand than a new logo and website. However, from the looks of it, AMN has done it right and will continue to improve upon their well respected brand.

The Fun Theory

I came across a site called The Fun Theory. It's an initiative of Volkswagen, dedicated to the thought that making things simple and fun is the best way to change people’s behavior for the better. No matter what it is - yourself, your company, the environment, etc., the only thing that matters is change for the better. Essentially, it's a contest to have people create things that accomplish the goal of the initiative. 

It's an interesting concept. How often in your workday or when you're creating something are you thinking about keeping things simple and fun? When you're creating a form, designing a web page, making a new feature, presenting to a new client - are you just going through the standard motions? Or are you thinking about how to get people more engaged - how to grab their attention - to connect with them - to have fun? What  would be different if you did?

Something to think about.

This is my favorite one:

Building good software - Lessons learned. [Pt.1 - Design]

I recently had a conversation with a friend about the things I’ve learned in regard to building software over the last 7 years.  She found them to be helpful so I thought I’d post them here as well.  I’ve organized them into two posts – Design & Usability Testing.

 

Design

1. Users are not designers.  Don't let them be.

If you knew as much as your doctor would you bother making a visit?  There is a reason you’re making software and your users are doing their job.  Each user will have a different experience level when it comes to using software.  Many users will offer suggestions and some of them will be good.  It’s important to listen to all of them but also to be cautious and not take the suggestions literally.  Instead, figure out what it is they’re trying to accomplish.  A user telling you they want a new page with a purple button that does “X” is not helpful.  Understanding the objective of “X” is. 

2. Take the Vegas out of it.

Cascade Web Development, a great partner we worked with to make the ShiftWise web site has a phrase that I’ve adopted  – “Take the Vegas out of it.”  Basically it means that not everything can be a big glowing button in the middle of the screen.  You have to balance things out.  If everything stands out then really – nothing stands out. 

People get carried away wanting to highlight all the components of their application.  There isn’t always a perfect solution for highlighting all the elements you want to – particularly for a multiple use interface.  Just be as selective as possible with the areas to which you want to drive your users. 

3. Simple applications are for simple things.

Today, software is all about simplicity. Some companies build very successful business models making simple applications.  The predominating thought in software design right now is that everything needs to be as simple as possible.  Let me be clear that I completely agree with this thinking.  However, if you simplify things too much you can run the risk of your application not allowing users to complete their objectives. 

I’ve seen users make “simple” apps very complex because of the workarounds they create in order to achieve their objective.  Not only is this painful for the user, it becomes hard on the business end to understand your customers and your data when there are so many inconsistencies in usage of your application.  Further, if the application is too simple it may create the necessity for users to work with multiple applications to achieve their goals.  If this happens you run a significant risk of being displaced by a competitive product with a broader offering that adds similar/same functionality of your application.

If done correctly, users can tolerate a little complexity and multiple features if it means they can accomplish their goal and do so with one product.

4. It’s not a zero/sum game.

Some functions within a feature may have more friction points than others.  Focus on identifying and fixing each of these friction points as opposed to scrapping the entire feature.

In the past, I've discovered that we had some features in our application no one was using.  We almost removed them from the application completely.  However, after getting some feedback on the features we discovered that most users wanted them, they just had some issues with using the features.  After improving specific components of the features they became widely adopted. 

5. It’s ok to say no.

Sometimes, users are just wrong.  It’s true.  Not you of course.  But other users.  Adding everything your users want can be costly in terms of time and money.  In addition, you risk unnecessarily complicating your interface.  I’ve certainly been involved with situations where adding too many feature requests yielded low feature adoption and overly complicated other useful features.  Sometimes, “no” is the best answer. 

6. Build and test in short iterations.

You can’t design perfectly from the get-go so don't over analyze and don’t over code.   My theory is this – you can spend months planning and analyzing in an attempt to get the feature or new product perfect.  However, aside from being expensive, you significantly delay time to market and most likely aren't going to get everything right anyway.  This delay can produce competition as well as cost you revenue and create unhappy customers who become impatient waiting for upgrades or new products.

Instead, layout the general functions of the feature and the design, code these specific functions, test, release, get feedback, refine, and repeat.  As you gain insight generated from testing with each new iteration, you’ll find the magic if you’re willing to hang in there.  In addition, you’ll get easier to analyze results if you limit your tasks to only a few and your users will feel they’re being heard as they see their requested changes being added faster.

7. Users hate change.

I’ve found it rare that users really want change.  Look at how much flack Facebook gets every time they change their interface.  Whole groups form to protest (real and virtual) and apps have even been built allowing people to vote on the changes.

I’ve been in situations where we released a feature that was a dramatic improvement over the previous version.  However, we had major user push back post release.  After tracking down the issues we discovered the real problem was that our users simply didn’t like the fact that the feature was different and we didn’t do a good enough job preparing them for the change.

I’ve found the best way to avoid this is to inform your users of the upcoming changes previous to the release.  Post images, hold training sessions, send email blasts or communicate however you can in order to get word out of the upcoming changes.  Doing so keeps the users from being surprised the next time they log in to your application.

Further, if possible, beta test everything.  Often times you will receive major push back from users if you don’t.  Users start to feel that they own your product and if you don't communicate with them about changes or provide them with feedback channels they can become quite upset.  Quickly. 

8.  It’s never “just a checkbox”

Or “just a dropdown”, or “just a text field” or “just a report.”  Again, most users know very little about software.  I constantly hear things like – “It’s just a field/text box/report – it can’t be that hard to add.”  It’s important to be honest with your users so their expectations are properly set and to help educate them on the process of building software.

I like to use house analogies.  It might look like “just a sink” but believe me, there is a whole lot required to properly put in that sink.  Adding something like “just a checkbox” can come with other functionality that touches multiple pages, requires user rights, notifications, event logs and new information on a report.  Further, in addition to designing and coding it needs to be tested and the changes need to be communicated internally and externally.  All of these things take time – just like putting in a new sink.

9. Modularize

If you’re going to build a large application capable of handling multiple functions and processes, don’t build it as one big application.  Instead, build each section as a separate, stand alone module that integrates with all the other modules.  Doing so allows for more flexibility and better revenue opportunities down the road.

If all of your customers have to use the same large application, invariably there will be some features or components of it that some users won’t like or need.  This will cause friction and dissatisfaction with the product.  It could even cost you some sales.

In addition, by modularizing your application you have the option of continuing to add new features and functions in the same way.  This will allow clients to pick and chose the components that work best for them.  Adding components can afford you opportunities of pricing each modular separately, dramatically improving your revenue. 

10. You get what you design for. 

Many companies make the mistake of overlooking design and usability.  They see it as a luxury that matters only after the code is written and the function perform as specified.  This leads to one thing – horrible software that no one wants to use.

The companies I’ve seen skimp on design and usability end up paying more for training, support and the loss of revenue from unsatisfied customers.  Of course the software needs to work and be bug free as much as possible.  However, it’s all for nothing if you can’t get people to use it or go broke hiring support and training employees.

Design and usability should be the place you start with and constantly improve upon.