Photo courtesy of Stanford Medicine X

Community soundings wall

Collaborative mind share experience developed for Medicine X, a non-traditional medical conference. Goal: to prompt the Med X community to surface needs, resources, expertise, and experiences in organic and delightful ways.

Role:

Experience design, design concept, low-fidelity prototype, installation

Year:

2016

Tags:

#community, #soundingboard, #crowdsourced, #interactive

Problem

Medicine X is a non-traditional conference with a mission: To recognize all stakeholders for their expertise in health care, and give traditionally underheard voices—patients and caregivers—the opportunity to lead the conversation about the future of health care.

As a designer, I wondered whether we could develop a conference experience that reflected this mission and game-changing philosophy.

Photo courtesy of Stanford Medicine X

Insight one

Academic medical conferences are known for being exclusive to medical professionals and industry leaders. One-third of the Med X audience is patient or caregiver. They are leaders and experts - but at an academic medical conference, they may not feel that way.

How might we place inclusivity at the center of the conference experience?

Insight two

The conference encourages participants to look for their “next big idea” or next collaborators in unexpected places. But it can be difficult to find those people amidst the hectic schedule and numerous activities and sessions in parallel.

How might we lessen the feeling of “missing out” and increase the number of “aha!” connections?

Insight three

Conferences today are physical and virtual experiences - with plugged-in attendees live tweeting or blogging their experiences.

How might we blend the embodied experience of physical gathering with virtual life?

Concept

Inspired by other examples of open-ended participatory walls as well as the old-school community bulletin board, we developed a set of cards each containing one of three open-ended prompts to the community.

3 cards

Ask cards were open-ended for personalization and interpretation.

Attendees were given personalized stickers to contribute to another’s card, and serve as a reachout point for later

We hoped that users would use the opportunity to mark moments from the conference.

Result

The cards were place on a “sounding wall”, a simple construction of ribbon and clips in a very widely trafficked area of the conference. The installation remained for all days of the conference where attendees were invited to take a moment to pause, reflect and contribute to the wall. We collected the cards and digitized a selection for record-keeping.

blue offering card example

The sounding board was an open invitation to all.

green offering card example

Attendees were given stickers with their twitter handles to add to their own cards or to others’ cards. Viewers could see others interested in similar topics, and could connect directly via social media.

orange offering card example

Attendees could “upload” their contributions to the community wall and view others’ posts across all three days of the conference.

green offering card example

The broad range of responses and requests for help reflected the immense diversity of the Medicine X audience.

orange offering card example

The installation remained across three days of the conference for public contribution and viewing.

blue offering card example

The installation surfaced expertise and interest in under-represented topics in academic medicine that was helpful to the conference organizers. Transgender health was a topic at the subsequent conference in April 2017.

green offering card example

Cardwriters did not take the exercise too seriously. Which we loved! Others used the cards as a way to invite others to connect after conference hours for meals and drinks.

green offering card example

As we hoped, many card writers used the offer for help as a launchpad for new collaborations or to inform others of their existing communities.

green offering card example

Over the course of three days the soundings wall received over 230 contributions.

Organic +physical

Medicine X attendees are incredibly plugged in to social media. As more communities ‐patients to providers to payers‐form and evolve online, it’s increasingly important that physical gatherings like conferences to pose experiences designed with intention.

The aim was to capture the spontaneity and physical discovery of in-person gatherings, AND bring the organic crowd-feel of social media to the medical conference experience.

Broader impact

We may not be able to measure all the new collaborations, projects or ideas our soundings wall sparked. However, we’re excited to see members of the Med X combining art, discussion, and interactivity into their own communities.

Check out this project aimed at creating interactive discussion in MS patient communities.

Going
further

Many contributers asked if the wall would have a life outside of the conference. Going further, I’d be very interested in using data visualization to map relational areas in the responses collected, to relate asks, offers, and gratitude by area, relations between asks, offers, and gratitude in a searchable map.

Lo-fi to hi-fi data visualization to map asks, offers, and gratitude.