Blue Cross Blue Shield came to Xi with a fundamental problem: the process of applying for a Blue Distinction Certification, awarded to qualified hospitals, was a long, confusing paper process prone to error and extensive time delays. Enter going digital.

Per normal, the Xi team went above and beyond immersing themselves in this healthcare process flow, not only to solve the issue at hand, but to truly understand the best possible solution for this group. After all, if you want to talk the talk you’ve got to walk the walk. Xi held extensive interviews with leading healthcare figures, executed user experience testing and ultimately ironed out the entire process flow.

The result, an intuitive, navigable application system that met both the user’s and BCBSA’s needs. “Xi did a wonderful job, not just in the area of usability, but also in helping BCBSA better understand business requirements”. – Boris Vaysburg, Director of Software Engineering, BCBSA

The Xi team is currently in final development phases for mobile apps with several other world renowned pharmaceutical companies, including TEVA Pharmaceutical and Kimberly-Clark. Stay tuned for more details as Xi continues to expand their footprint of healthcare expertise.

Over the years I’ve had the opportunity to look at numerous compositions and actual web pages. One of the terms I’ve often found myself saying is”More Buttony.” “More Buttony” is powerful stuff. I’ve seen it dramatically increase click-through and reduce abandonment. It’s amazing how often it’s overlooked and ignored. Here’s a great example I found that prompted me to write this. It’s a screenshot from the California Court Info Ask Now Service. The primary goal of any user on this page is to access the Ask Now Service.

The user is directed to click the Ask Now button. Do you see it? I have to admit I clicked on the links first because I just assumed they would take me to the service too. Didn’t happen. The way to access the service is to click the Ask Now logo. C’mon that’s not a a button! A button has depth,boundary, maybe a shadow. And most important of all it looks clickable! This definitely needs to be more buttony. There’s a lot more that can be improved with this page such as reducing text, improving scanability, and layout, but the primary issue is asking the user to find a button that simply is not there.

So take a look at your sites and your buttons and ask yourself, “Can this be more buttony?” If the answer is yes, you’ve probably found one of the best ways to increase click-through.

The nomination is recognition for a long, productive career spent as a business leader – helping raise the profile of top brands geared towards both the Latino community and a mass world-wide audience.

“I am so proud to have been nominated for this honor,” says the Colombia-born Jimenez.“In my lifetime I have seen the Latino business community grow and thrive thanks to the Latino Business Chamber and to be recognized by this outstanding organization is both thrilling and humbling.”

ABOUT THE AWARD

The Latino Business Awards recognizes outstanding Latino Businesses that are leading the charge for excellence within the Los Angeles Business Community. Nominations can be submitted for Public Company, Small Private Company, Large Private Company and Non- Profit Organization.

Winners will be announced for this year’s awards at a luncheon to be held on January 27^th, 2011.

3D is Hot:

The big story was by far the new advancements in 3D displays and games. The hi-def plasmas in the Sony booth had people lined up to put on the shiny glasses and stare deep into center field, but it was a smaller screen that stole the show. A chance to see Nintendo’s 3DS had people running through the halls when they opened the doors each morning. You would have thought we were going to an open seating concert in what was a rush to get in line and get your hands on a device, along with a private demo from one of the dozens of the awaiting attendants. The official word from those that got a demo is that it’s ‘awesome’ – we attribute that to not only the way it looks, but that you don’t need special glasses to experience it.

Get Moving:

Fitness may be an unexpected theme for a video game show, but many devices and games aimed at getting you off the couch. Around every corner there were people dancing, singing, stretching, or running in place as their onscreen avatar hustled down the sidelines. Microsoft gave an update on their Kinect device (formerly Project Natal), where your body becomes the controller. While the figure mapping technology is pretty impressive, we were just as excited about voice control: ‘XBOX, pause DVD’. Sony put their Move controller in people’s hands, their answer to the Wii remote uses a camera to track the glowing ball atop the handheld controller and translate the movements onscreen. While both Kinect and Move are interesting technologies that open up more possibilities to interact with games, the chatter on the showroom floor seemed to think it was going to take that must-have game to get people to buy.

Wrap Up:

This year’s show had an attendance of more that 45,000 people, slightly up from last year and in line with what organizers say they were expecting. Everyone seemed to enjoy the show, whether they were getting a touch of nostalgia by playing the 4-man tabletop Pac Man, or looking toward the future by interacting with a new set of games and activities for the iPad and iPhone. And yes, regardless of gender everyone seemed to like checking out the booth babes that were  in full force ready to hand out free stuff. It’s an event like none other, with a crowd somewhere between CES and ComicCon. Now that the show is behind us, there is one thing that’s for sure – we can’t wait for next year…

Talk about an excuse to setup important “lunch meetings” with colleagues and friends. Heck, I’m already planning on hitting up a couple of truck stops. Keep up with the trucks on the micro-site Xperience Interactive developed in partnership with Civic Entertainment Group, or follow the lunch trucks on Twitter – LA & NY.

Checkout Grubstreet for details on the menu served by the trucks.

Have you noticed how much brands and organizations are turning to their customers for product, marketing, and improvement ideas? Doritos’s commercials in recent years come to mind, including Super Bowl 2010 ads, which featured consumer-generated commercial contest winners. This idea of crowdsourcing, or the act of outsourcing to a crowd what an employee would typically do through an open call, has been spreading and reaching places like our government with Republicans seeking Americans’ ideas for governing and The Great Anaheim Apps Challenge.

I had an opportunity to speak with Ruth Rodriguez, Anaheim’s Public Information Officer, after one of Xperience Interactive’s ideas received honorable mention. Ms. Rodriguez mentioned that the contest was a tremendous success with over 800 apps entered for consideration. These ideas are part of the City Mayor’s Technology Task force, whose purpose is to continually find ways to engage Anaheim residents in relevant and meaningful ways. This certainly took advantage of the appeal of apps at the right time.

The trend continues with our client Activision announcing this morning the launch of the Independent Games Competition offering big cash prizes to teams or individuals in the US with the best in-development game ideas. The contest will be conducted in two rounds with round one application submissions accepted today through August 31st. Think you’ve got the next big game idea like Guitar Hero?

So there you have it, power continues to shift to the consumer to guide brands and organizations to create content that addresses their specific needs. Funny, this is the way we approach our engagements with upfront research and user-testing along the way to ensure we’re creating relevant, engaging digital experiences – we’re always looking to the customer for insights and opportunities.

That said, I’d like to raffle a copy of one of the following XBOX titles:

- How to Train Your Dragon
- Shrek Forever After
- Modern Warfare 2

To enter, simply re-tweet this blogpost (Twitter only)

Or

Enter a comment in this blog post with your idea of ways to improve our website.

A random winner will be picked on Monday, June 7, 2010.

With the site launching this morning, (midnight to be precise), there are high expectations for sizable traffic this weekend as the new movie is released in theaters across the U.S.

Focus now quickly shifts for the Xi team as we prepare to launch the iPhone version and 8 different international versions of the site within the next two weeks.

Special thanks to the Activision team for their continued support and their dedication to launching world class games and hiring world class agencies to market them: Carlson Choi, Joanne Wong, Kevin Cheung, & Delphine Pham.

Not only was the exterior flawless, complete with Fusion Reactor and Flux Capacitor, but the interior housed the controls and digital LED computer that originally sent Marty McFly back to 1955.

It wasn’t long before a group of giddy fans hovered around the vehicle, each of us wearing the same smile that read “this is so cool!” I soon learned the story of the car.

It wasn’t the original. Sadly, the original no longer runs and is rusting out. However, what we were looking at was an exact replica built completely and painstakingly to scale and detail by J. Ryan and the very talented people at Offto55.com.

We learned that the car we were looking at was recently completed and presented to the Back to the Future director Robert Zemeckis. When Zemeckis saw it he couldn’t believe it. When asked if he wanted a tour of the car, Zemeckis replied, “I know the car. I spent 4 years with it!”

For the group whose mission it was to recreate the car, they couldn’t have asked for greater confirmation than the film’s director being “blown away.”

It got me thinking, it wasn’t interactive development, but being able to slide into the driver’s seat beneath the open gull wing door, enter my birth date, and feel like I was getting ready to leave a blazing trail of flame as I approached 88mph, was definitely a customer experience.

At Xi we pride ourselves on delivering measurable results for our clients. I’m sure for the group that created the car there were measurable results they sought to achieve such as designing to scale, and getting the brushed aluminum color exactly right.

But in interactive, just as with the recreation of the Delorean time machine, the best experiences are not measured, but felt. Measurable goals can guide us to delivering great products, but experience is still that magical moment when those measurable goals come in contact with a person and make that quantum leap into emotion and feeling. Just as it did when I slid behind the driver seat of the Delorean Time Machine. And yes, hopefully that emotion, that feeling, we work so hard to achieve, is positive.

I think Dr. Emmett Brown may have said it best when he told Marty McFly:

“The way I see it, if you’re gonna build a time machine into a car, why not do it with some style?”

Here’s to more Delorean Time Machines.

Often times there are opportunities for technical integrators to partner with design agencies with one of the two becoming the primary vendor and the other a subcontractor.  With this model, organizations need to do their due diligence to ensure that the right combination of vendors delivers the best possible solution.

We at Xi have had the privilege of maintaining a symbiotic, on-going partnership with arguably the world’s leading open source integrator – CIGNEX.  Our two companies have successfully partnered on several opportunities to date and are eagerly excited to continue the partnership offering brands and businesses solutions ranging from content management to eCommerce.  Areas of software expertise includes Alfresco, Liferay, Magento Commerce, Drupal, and Compiere. Though each engagement is  different in terms of technology implemented, the clients’ corporate culture, and project location, there are few core elements in our relationship that makes our partnership successful for such engagements.

First and foremost, there is mutual respect for each other’s competencies and clearly defined responsibilities.  With each engagement we review the project’s objectives and assemble the best resources who deliver results as a unified team, always considering the best interest of our client. To ensure this model is successful, CIGNEX and Xi adopts a common trust married with open collaboration.  The result? Our customers benefit from the highest quality technical and creative teams in the industry who are dedicated, determined and devoted to client satisfaction.

We are very proud of our relationship with CIGNEX and are thankful for their partnership. Xi continues to be excited at the prospects of continuing to deliver engaging user experiences with badass technical implementations!

We discussed the movie at length (I’d not seen it yet), and he commented it was a significant accomplishment 2 years in the making. I should say so – after seeing the movie, it speaks volumes about his talents!