In this debut episode of our new podcast, Moving Digital Health, MindSea CEO Reuben Hall spoke with Alexis Moses of FCB Health. As Senior Creative Engineer, Alexis applies his nearly 10-year history of working with emerging technologies to create deeply engaging user experiences for his clients’ patients.
Alexis shared a few of the exciting projects his FCB team currently has in the works, such as implementing conversational design to create guided but natural-feeling user experiences. He discussed the flexibility that can be designed into conversational UI to meet diverse user needs and illuminated the vital importance of this work—the critical role interactivity plays in patient education.
He also gave us a glimpse into the inner workings of his team: why they begin creating prototypes as early as the brainstorming stage, why they partner with their clients in a collaborative templating process, and why it’s so important for patients and engineering teams to be closely connected.
It was fascinating to hear how Alexis draws on his experience as a creative technologist to delve into the potential which current, emerging, and even outdated technologies hold for healthcare. He and Reuben discussed challenges around tech adoption in the healthcare industry, key barriers preventing healthcare organizations from moving ahead with new technologies, and how his team at FCB handles these challenges for their clients.
A self-described geek, Alexis stays informed about leading and bleeding-edge technologies. He shared his favorite resources for industry developments as well as his top picks for promising innovations from the Propelify 2021 conference. He has a particular appreciation for technological applications designed to make life easier or provide healthier choices for consumers, which may help account for his transition from the non-profit sector to the pharmaceutical market.
Finally, Alexis shared the innovations that have him optimistic about the future of digital healthcare, and a timely reminder that it’s important for engineers to remember that pandemic measures are temporary.
Alexis’s clear passion for his work and his ability to find joy even while engineering solutions for suffering patients is inspirational. We thank Alexis for joining us to share his experience and his insight, and we hope you’ll enjoy this episode of Moving Digital Health.
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Read Transcript:
Reuben (00:00:00)
Hello and welcome to the MindSea Upstairs movie in digital Health. Our guest today is Alexis Moses, senior creative engineer at FCB Health. Thanks for joining us today, Alexis.
Alexis Moses (00:00.17)
Hey, great to be here, Reuben I’m really excited.
Reuben (00:00.21)
Awesome. So we’re going to start, could you briefly describe your background and role at FCB Health?
Alexis Moses (00:00.29)
Oh, yes, sure. Just to kind of summarize my career as a creative technologist, I’ll start kind of where I started before I entered into the market, which was I was a teacher at Harlem Children’s Zone as a teaching artist where I taught kids journalism. And as well as video game development and programming. And then from there, I moved into the private sector where I worked at three the eye for four and a half years.
And I was a creative technologist, you know, working on all types of emerging technologies. And then I graduated to FCB Health, where I was where, of course, there is a focus on pharmaceuticals and marketing in that market. What’s really great about being a creative engineer and what we do is that we bring some clarity and creative opportunities with technologies in terms of campaigns, as well as how technology can solve problems specifically for patients or health care providers.
And we do this all probably with a smile on their face, even though in a world where it’s probably grim when you’re dealing with sickness as the core issue of the problems we’re trying to solve. But since we are a function of the creative department, we get a chance to think outside of the box on how to solve these solutions with all these emerging technologies, even if it’s regarding starting from robots to to apps, to chat bots to all to all various technologies.
And if you’re a geek like I like my department as a whole, you’re going to have a lot of fun, a lot of growth that comes with the part that comes with the job.
Reuben (00:02.22)
Yeah, it really does sound like a really interesting scene and a fun role. So tell me about some of the specific technologies that you’re working with right now.
Alexis Moses (00:02.34)
All right. Sure. I’m going to go down with one of my favorites. To me, I’m going to break down the technologies that if we do a lot of we research a lot of technology and we play with a lot of technologies. But I think I’m going to come out from the perspective of technology that I think we’re going to be highly effective and the technologies that are just like really cool because sky’s the limit in my mind.
So the first right now is conversational technology technologies like chat bots, Alexa, any of any of those things that deal with conversational use in user interfaces, interfaces, I, I really enjoy those and I’ve been working with that technology for a while because even at 360 I we, we did some, we did some campaigns for HBO, Westworld, we done some for a, for Roto-Rooter and really thinking outside the box.
But at that time the technology was a little earlier and it’s really it was really self-contained in terms of you can do you can ask a question, receive an answer, you can make a query and receive answer from that from that particular query. But what we can do with the technologies now, we can actually integrate it into other technology.
So having a chat bot that can launch games or a chat bot that has experiences that deal with quizzes or, or chat box that feel like they’re everywhere and always have presence and terms of answering a question. So chat bots are really chat bots and I mean actually say conversational uses really I think one of the big untapped and quickly growing AI technologies, I would say the second the second technology that we’re really fond of is WebGL, where we’re actually, you know, doing a lot of 3D graphics in the browser.
I think one of the most important aspects of the technology is that it integrates easily. It’s like you go to a website and then you have this incredible experience. There’s no downloads or installations. It’s something that feels like a natural progression of the web and what you can do with that, that’s kind of different than just having an ordinary 2D canvas is we can make these experiences that are extremely more engaging by making these virtual worlds.
So if we’re doing an emoji for for a client, you can actually instead of just seeing a still image or just a video, you can actually interact with emoji, the molecular structures or, or the drug itself, and we can easily gamify it and it just all works. So there’s these technologies that are built behind making these experiences.
One of one of our fallback technologies is something called Play Canvas, which is what Game Engine is just beautiful. So we can do quick prototyping and and, and make any experience that we want. So it’s kind of like a video game, video games you can make specifically for this particular market. But I don’t really like to see video games.
It kind of scares people away is like I don’t want to make I want to make our I don’t want to make our pharmaceutical company look like we’re making light of the situation. No, but it’s it’s really just these extremely interactive experiences that just work well and and can really engage any user, I think deeper than our previous technologies.
Reuben (00:06.03)
Well, that’s really, really interesting. How do you solve the problem with conversation? Conversational UI as kind of out of sight, out of mind, where sometimes like the user has to know the right question to ask to, you know, to interact with that experience? Is there ways that you coach or kind of guide them to be able to get started with that?
Alexis Moses (00:06.32)
Now, that’s a great question too, because I think the consensus is that when someone hears about a chat bot or any conversational UI that you can ask it anything and then go anywhere with it, right? But in actuality, it’s a very guided and targeted experience. So we’re always guiding the user on the next logical step in the experience.
Or it could be or it could be a it could be an A, or it can be something where we actually add some visual aspect to it. So we kind of have buttons and images and video that kind of goes along with, with, with the chat bot experience as well. So it’s it’s not, it’s not, it’s not, it’s not something that, that we leave an open ended area for where the user can go.
Not saying that it doesn’t include that we do want the conversations to feel as natural as possible, but we always want to make sure that this experience is guided in the chat bot is given feedback of and suggestions of where what it’s going to help the user the most. And that all comes down to that conversational design and the manuscript that we we build to make these experience, these experiences happen.
So, so collaborating, collaborating with the copy department and, and strategy is like a big aspect of that, of understanding what the user is looking for in the first place. And then from there just taking that, taking it, taking, taking those ideas and implementing them to make sure the user is never lost or stuck and getting the answers that they need.
And I would also like to add that the technology is also really great for bringing that feedback to improve for the future. Pretty easy, pretty easy to update a lot of experiences. So if a user is asking a particular question and at the current time we don’t have an answer for it, it’s like, okay, well, you know, we get that feedback and then, you know, feed Phoebe the A.I. or machine learning algorithm or we just like to say conversational.
You have the conversational intelligence of how to handle that particular situation for the next time. So, so young technologies still growing, but we can have quick turnarounds to make sure that the experience improves over time. But I think we do a pretty good job of making sure that we cover all our bases in the first in the first experience.
Reuben (00:08.53)
Interesting. And can conversational UI be more accessible for some people who might have like motor skill challenges or visual impairments?
Alexis Moses (00:09.05)
Absolutely. Absolutely. And it’s and I think that’s what’s so beautiful about the technology is just another avenue. It’s not made to replace a website. It’s not and it’s not made to replace human agents as either. It’s just another option. And specifically for people that might have that might have accessibility issues. So so if you’re instead of instead of saying, hey, it’s going to be hard for me to call someone up if I if everything’s all attached into my lexicon, simply say, Alexa, open X, Y, Z, and then I’m going to get an answer pretty quickly back with with with very little friction.
I think that’s a very, very powerful tool. And even when it comes to people with ocular issues, that it’s turning that chat bot into something that’s just completely automated can really help out. But I would definitely not not being transparent, but I would say that that is an option.
So sometimes we might have to lead someone back to, to an to an experience where you have to use visuals and that’s where chat bots actually really excel about where we can we can have someone even talk to a chat bot or type into a chat bot, but, and usually a chat bot has very little real estate. It’s in the corner.
They have all this text and it works well. But, what happens if you need to show. So a a bigger like a video or Amway or, or really take someone to a part of a website that that might need a lot more real estate space except for this chat bot that’s in the corner. So through that particular integration we can be smart enough to say, Hey, let’s just switch you over to this and the chat bot can control that parent page and get the user to have the experience that’s outside of the chat bot while the chat bot still being present.
So it’s about designing a flow that can really meet everyone’s needs in order for them to find the solutions they were initially looking for.
Reuben (00:11.11)
Cool. And maybe tell me a little bit more about Glow as well and like how that can apply to a digital health context.
Alexis Moses (00:11.23)
Oh, absolutely. So Web know what I think the power behind WebGL is are two things. One, it’s education. You just going to get a deeper education because the experience is a lot more interactive and therefore there’s a lot more design space and a lot more creative space. So, if we want someone to really get to the core of an experience and to understand that experience, we’re going to increase that interactivity.
And the best way to remember something is to make something as interactive as possible and getting that feedback directly. So I think I believe 3D does a great job of doing that. So it’s. So if you’re if you’re thinking about it, it’s almost the equivalent of playing a video game where where you get into a game and you’re in, the more you play it and depending on how well designed it is, it just feels like it just feels like a natural or a natural event that or I was a I don’t want to use the word event.
I would say, let’s say a natural experience or interactivity, that that is naturally going to educate you almost without you knowing you’re being educated because it just feels maybe a little fine or just maybe, or maybe it strikes or it feeds your curiosity because of the maybe the unexpected things that you can do inside of it, especially traversing these interactive worlds.
And that’s attached to the second part, which is that a lot of these experiences don’t have to feel clinical because the world is like the limit is like extremely the limit in terms of creativity. It varies so much inside of the 3D space, especially when you’re getting real time, when you’re getting that real time feedback back to the user.
So for, for example, if I in order to make something feel a bit more to make to feel a bit more personal, we can follow around a digital avatar and that digital avatar and really see what how his life is like and click around in that experience of of clicking on stakeholders in his life that are also represented by digital avatars and really get an experience back of through extended media such as video and images and then say, Hey, but what’s going on in his body?
Like zoom inside of his body and see what’s happening at that moment in time. So. And that’s, of course, just like an idea out of a million variations that can come up creatively, that not only raises the emotional intelligence of the user, but also that the intelligence in terms of the science itself. And I think that WebGL does a great it gives us the tools to create those experiences that I think work well in 2D as well.
If you were doing a flat surface but it’s not about it’s not only just about saying, hey, let’s just keep it 2D, but it’s about evolving, sometimes being unexpected. I think WebGL is just a natural. Is the natural extension almost kind of like the kind of the new hotness that we have to learn that’s always going to grab the attention of the user in a different, unexpected way.
You know, the bigger the canvas, the bigger the picture. So I think what Jelly’s the natural extension of these web experiences.
Reuben (00:14.56)
Cool. So where do you go to to keep up with emerging technology and ideas to inspire you for this you know digital health solutions.
Alexis Moses (00:15.11)
That’s a great question as well. A lot of times it’s weird sometimes. Sometimes I’ll just be on in LinkedIn and next thing you know, someone’s just posting about a new technology or sometimes on one venture, B, maybe. TechCrunch One of my favorite podcast video, I would say YouTube series is two minute papers. That is a it’s a great I’ve learned a lot about technology’s.
And in terms of really emerging technologies that probably won’t be available for us in and won’t be available for us in maybe 3 to 5 years in terms of the primary market that we exist in. Like those technologies are all but but it inspires us to, to look at what we can do with technologies, to look forward to and how and where those technologies currently are.
So they kind of spark our imagination, our curiosity to investigate and maybe and definitely last but not least, but sometimes it’s just looking at contemporary technology and just looking at it in a different perspective that inspires us because an old technology is it’s not necessarily it’s an option. It might be obsolete in its functionality, but it’s not particularly obsolete in its cultural relevance.
So a lot of times as creative engineers, we want to lean also on that creative part and understand what certain technologies mean to our users, what they mean to so our stakeholders and mean to our clients. And sometimes there is and sometimes there’s value in that. So even even looking at WebGL, a big portion of a big portion of understanding design, you know, I’m still a little bit of a gamer at heart and I’m oldest.
I don’t get the time to really put in there, but I’ll look back and say, Look at the way they’re implementing these user interfaces. Look at the technologies that they have that are communicating with the Internet. Look at how they’re there. They’re making these experience, multiplayer and multi-user, all that stuff. It’s all that all, all of those, all of those features can be integrated in the technologies that we’re using and they’re becoming commonplace.
And there’s tools that are supporting the development of this that makes it much easier than it was ten years ago, where you needed a gigantic team of maybe 50 people to get a multiplayer experience working. Now you probably don’t need as many, maybe two or three, but even just using one person to get the whole infrastructure up but probably need more than one just to do the testing, of course.
But it’s about the contemporary technologies that are very influential because things that might exist in one market, it’s totally new to another market. And I feel that way when it comes to the market of medicine. Sometimes it’s like, hey, what is this is this feels so new. What is this all about? Yeah, it’s been out for five years, but I new you and now that we’re implementing it in this particular context, it feels fresh, it feels new, and there’s new ideas and creative ideas that are using these technologies for these particular purposes.
And therefore, it’s making that technology relevant and more importantly, very effective.
Reuben (00:18.22)
Yeah, that totally makes sense because you see a lot of the education technology geared towards kids in schools these days very much comes from gaming, right? It was you know, there’s lessons learned from the gaming industry, as you know, that they’re using to help kind of make learning fun and keep kids engaged, especially, you know, when the remote.
But a lot of that translates to the health care setting where, you know, you are trying to educate a patient about their condition or about how to follow their prescription properly. And you can use those same techniques to make it feel more digestible and more interactive so they have a better chance of absorbing and retaining that information than just reading a pamphlet well.
Alexis Moses (00:19.22)
Absolutely. It’s funny that you said pamphlet, too, because one of the technologies I’m always interested in I love is actually print and everything looks like print. And oh, my team is great. And we love taking those dives in, in things that don’t seem like technology can be infused in it. And so I’m obsessed with print because I’m just like, hey, you know what?
Let’s kind of dig out some tech, let’s dig out some print. And so, yeah, so we’re using technologies as like NFC and near field communication where we’re embedding the these chips inside of print understanding how to use air inside a print, and then making the structure of the print, even even even more interactive, like making turning into a pop up book or infusing it with conductive ink.
So when you actually touch the print or a print piece or poster, it actually gives a response. So I always tell everyone, don’t shy away from something that seems like it’s obsolete.
The opportunity is there to evolve that, and I’m there. There isn’t a they the human the human condition is it’s it’s really mostly about reinventing something. It’s not really about making it disappear. There might not be any blockbusters, but we still watch movies, right? So it’s like.
Reuben (00:20.42)
Yeah. And to your point, before, like you said, kind of meeting, meeting the patient, you know where they are, right? You know, if it’s someone who’s more comfortable with the print medium, you know, maybe that is the right medium for that audience in a specific context and that information. Right. So I’m wondering if you’ve have you played around with, like, you know, gestural technology as well, where, you know, a lot of people think there’s a lot of future print out because you don’t have to touch anything and you can interact the screen with the screen just with your gestures.
Alexis Moses (00:21.22)
Oh, absolutely. We’re really fond of ultra sleep, you know, where, you know, you can use your natural hand gestures. And there’s also technologies. There’s also technologies that that, of course, since we’re, you know, going through a pandemic, you know, we’re at society, we’re a little bit more aware of things that we’re touching and things that we don’t want to touch with.
Technology that shifts the interface from the screen to your own personal device, which I believe that company’s called touch free. So you get a chance to turn your phone into the device to control the screen. I think they’re all very interesting. But if even if you go back to like technologies that were out before AI, if you remember the Microsoft Kinect where using your whole body to control these particular experiences and it’s and I guess ultimately these technologies are to make people feel comfortable.
And I find those I find those technologies to be very effective in that context. But I also feel I also feel that I try not to focus so much on the fact that people don’t want to touch things because people ultimately want to touch things. People want connection. All right. So, even though we might be planning for pandemic types of experiences currently, just a feedback part of that mental is that inside of everyone’s like on one of platitudes.
But no, but our primary focus is also is to say, hey, you know what, This is going to be temporary because we’re human beings, we’re social. Who I was, I took my daughter into a wrestling match last night and it was pretty back when we had a great time and it was really about that social experience.
And so I’m looking around. I’m things that people in general want to have these experiences that make them feel safe. But we still want to be around everyone. We still kind of want to touch each other, give each other high fives and, and, and so I try not to hold that technology to the standard of saying, hey, this is how we just want to make sure no one’s touching anyone else.
Right? And that’s and it might make clients feel a little safer. Maybe the user at the moment feel a little safer. But to put it in that in that type of box, can my, my, my kind of suffocate the thinking in terms of what you can really do with these technologies and how far we can take it to make sure that this is the best experience we can make.
Reuben (00:23.55)
Yeah. And that’s really insightful because although technology changes really fast and there’s always something like new and exciting coming out, people don’t change that fast. And you know, human nature is still human nature and we are adaptable. But you know, there’s basic, you know, principles that we have to live by. They’re never going to change. And it’s how to.
Yeah, How do you adapt the technology to meet people where they are, too? So I know you recently attended the People’s Conference. Anything stand out there or, you know, surprised or excited you?
Alexis Moses (00:24.35)
Yeah, sure. There were a couple of vendors that we I thought was really cool. One was wonder, which is a which is a service where they use food trucks to deliver meals to customers. But the great thing is that the chef is actually on the bus, so they cook it freshly in front of your house.
So these are just freshly, freshly made meals way that reflect particular restaurants that they have partnerships with. So you’re getting the most you’re getting like a great experience that is kind of coordinated by multiple technologies that we’re probably kind of aware of. But I just find it really fascinating that they’re really freshly making the food outside of your house.
It just sounds so simple. But I find that the thought of making a business around that particular functionality is it’s really incredible. Be another one, what’s called mindset. And they kind of have these meditation booths that are made for conferences. And what’s really cool is that it can be infused with other technologies so you can add voice inside of it.
Audio and just put anything inside of it. And it’s just another simple take. And I’m just attracted to simple things sometimes like the great big things or like emerging technologies. I never heard it, but pretty exciting. But something that’s as simple as saying, Hey, you know, you’re in this busy conference and we have this little booth for you to take a breather and then we can make these custom experiences inside of it.
I think. I think those are just really awesome. So mindset was pretty cool. Not so high on the tech, but I think there’s but the fact that you can infuse technology it inside of this this physical small booth, I think it’s just really exciting. Another company was a Bowery Farms and they basically reimagine how we can reimagine how we can sustain sustain a farm in terms of crops, in using all types of technologies with greenhouses and using technology to understand where how the product needs to be, needs to be cultivated in terms of watering and getting enough sunlight and the season that it’s created.
So I think I think those are really interesting technologies and they use a lot of machine learning to understand that as well. So just just even having using image recognition to say, Yep, that’s about right. You know, just this over. I’m oversimplifying of course, but I think companies that are using these technologies to make life easier and to give healthier choices, that’s exciting to me.
I think we that why a technology exist to make the world better is something that I’m always going to be pretty attracted to. And the last thing I would say is there was a company called the Black Cube that uses blockchain technology for four trials. That was that was that was pretty interesting. And just to be honest, I was working with one of my associates and we were looking at BLOCK Cube and we were like, Man, this the possibilities are so wide.
It’s like, I fully don’t even grasp every single thing that it can do. But I know that it can do a lot because currently they’re using it for regulatory, regulatory issues and, and also reducing fraud within the trials, within the trial sector. And I’m like, wow, that’s like really interesting to have that. I think it’s varied and maybe even a little complex.
But to see that, but to see that the health market is are getting these new and imaginative and innovative technologies and really exploring within it. It’s an exciting time. And just for all geeks sake, there is a there’s a company called Exo Valor, which has a flight suit. I just think that was cool.
Reuben (00:28.57)
I thought that was cool. That sounds awesome.
Alexis Moses (00:29.00)
Yes, indeed. And what’s even better is like even taking a step back is this is just like how Amazon right now they currently having drones fly dove fly products to customers. I can see how a exosuit where someone can fly around like Ironman and deliver a package or maybe even or maybe even save someone’s life from a burning building.
And I know it sounds so science fiction. It sounds so out of this world, but it’s but we’re thinking about it. And in order for something to too, in order for something to eventually come true, we have to play in that space. So it was just exciting to see that at the to see that added propeller fly. Unfortunately, they didn’t have a live demo, But but, but you know, hopefully I can see this in real person and in real life it at one at one point and another nice day.
Reuben (00:29.50)
So this is just good All the doctors, you know, flight suits can fly around and give them superpowers to help solve our health care crisis here.
Alexis Moses (00:30.02)
Absolutely.
Reuben (00:30.04)
With all these new technologies you’re seen, what do you think the main barriers are to organizations moving ahead with them?
Alexis Moses (00:30.15)
I will say this is it’s usually a proof that they’re effective. I think every we do a lot of present presenting technologies and not to make it seem glorious but a lot of times when we’re presenting these technologies, it’s great to see everyone’s eyes wide enough because it’s like, I never knew this was possible.
But the second part to that experience is, is does this work? What are the numbers on this? Will we get enough hits? Will we get enough or we make sure that we’re going to make enough impressions with this technology? And the hard part of it is that sometimes implementing make technology in this particular way, you’re probably more you might be one of the first to market.
So it’s not a lot of it’s not a lot of analytics on the effectiveness, effectiveness, effectiveness on these on these on these on these particular strategies and implementing these technologies. So that’s probably the biggest part of it. So it takes a bit of an intrepid to to adopt, to adopt these technologies and say, hey, you know, we’re going to give this a try.
So I think that’s really the biggest roadblock. And of course, you we’re also worried about, you know, medical legal review as well. But it’s not it’s not as big as saying, hey, this looks cool, but is it really effective? And sometimes the biggest challenge is to get them to see past that and say, hey, we want to inspire, but also celebrate how modular these technologies are.
And that’s kind of a big part of our philosophy is that it’s like, hey, this technology, this technology does X, Y and Z, but that’s just the start of it. So taking conversational UI back into a back into effect is like, Hey, you can start off with the chat bot, but that easily integrates into a voice that you can exist on the Alexa or Google assistant market or the we can go, we can actually turn make you a digital avatar using a platform called Soul Machines, where you can actually have a digitized rep, actually speak to your, speak to your brand and just saying, Hey, this is where it starts, but this is where
it’s going to go. And a lot of these technologies are really about that. And it’s sometimes it’s hard to I wouldn’t say it’s hard, but I would say it’s a challenge to to to to make sure that we can present those opportunities to clients and hopefully they can they really get excited about it and and start believing in it and say, yeah, this is this is going to lead us in the right direction and I would say that that that in itself is the most difficult.
Reuben (00:33.05)
Yeah. So maybe walk me through the process of, you know, once you’ve pitched the idea and everyone’s eyes light up and they’re like, yes, we’re on board, but we need to see some sort of evidence or proof that this is going to work. How do you then move into kind of the prototyping or beta phase in a small way before you do the entire thing?
Alexis Moses (00:33.32)
Oh, absolutely. Our team, our team, we are, we try to pride ourselves on being as agile as possible. So the best way to have someone believe in something is for them to actually experience it. So, so, so where our team is a little bit unapologetic in terms of creating things so while we’re in that creative, while we’re in that creative brainstorm, just even in the brainstorming process, we’re just saying, Hey, this is cool and this is an opportunity to use this, to use this technology.
So we’ll just we’ll, we’ll, we’ll go back to our lab right now, our virtual labs, everyone’s lab is at their home. But we’ll collaborate and build a prototype right then and there at the brainstorming. At the brainstorming. At the brainstorming point of the of development and which is extremely early. But we have a belief that, hey, if we’re using these technologies, we’re doing one major, we’re doing two major things.
One, we’re getting a deeper understanding for it for ourselves and for our clients. And number two, we’re actually templating the technologies because for every time that we find an interest or maybe this is a possible solution, we’re just going back into our bag of tricks of of things that we’ve learned about our technologies and evolving it and and customizing it directly for that particular client to get them to envision into play.
And I think that’s I think that’s a that’s a big part of making sure that I’m making sure that a client, our client teams also adopt it and that’s that is because we don’t want if the client team doesn’t doesn’t believe in it the other creatives in the client won’t believe in it as well. So it’s about, it’s about educating our teams as well as making sure that when the client plays with it, it is going, Oh, I see now and I don’t need no further explanation, you know, and that’s and that’s the that’s the space we’re always trying to get to.
So, so, so edgy. So our job of educating people about technology and showing its effectiveness, it’s it kind of goes hand in hand just strictly with education and then and then play, right. We just want them to play with these technologies to get a chance to to really understand it. And I usually would say it’s almost as simple, as simple as that.
Reuben (00:36.05)
And so you would have that access to the, you know, the users or to to test out the solution with them during the process or before launch or.
Alexis Moses (00:36.20)
Oh, no. Yeah, absolutely. So, we’re not our team isn’t particularly a production team. So what we do is, is when we create these experiences and have clients play around with the experience or in our creative teams play around with these experiences, our whole goal to say, hey, not only do not only is this something that that we can make out what we know can be done, but we’re looking for those partners that can actually bring it to your life our team, where we’re not 100% into production of what we’re primarily not in production, but we do we do we do produce conversation and experiences.
But when it comes to something like, let’s say it’s WebGL, we will quickly create like a video game prototype for it for a client, and then we’ll say, Hey, now that this is something that’s something that’s done. And we kind of pushed it along very fast. We can hand it off to our production team and they can kind of hit the ground running.
So it’s like a we had to do a particular simulator for something, but now we don’t have to kind of waste our time reevaluating the technologies and vetting the technology. And matter of fact, we already we’re starting from a place that reflects what the client wants initially. And they can and they can just kind of move along with it.
And I think that’s where a lot of it, a lot of the testing takes place. And I would also say that our client teams and our account teams, they play with the technologies a lot as well because we want to give them that particular playground to understand, because no one can read everyone’s mind. It’s about making those connections right on the fly and having that dialog.
So it’s like, Oh, is this character looks a little little, a little crazy and can we get from point A to point B easier? Is this interface confusing? Is it you know, so it’s like, okay, cool. And, and making those changes as quick as possible to make sure that we can get to a place that feels that feels like that feels like it’s going to be effective and a great experience and kind of meet the needs and the and the targets that we that we that we hope that it will cool.
Reuben (00:38.36)
So what are you most excited about in digital health care? You know, looking ahead to the next five years let’s say Wow.
Alexis Moses (00:38.46)
I would definitely say, yeah, it’s still conversational marketing. I think that’s going to be adapted a whole lot. It’s going to be adapted adopted, I’m sorry, adopted at a greater at a greater level. I would also say I would also say robotics. Robotics is big. I think robotics is big. I know everyone’s afraid about Skynet in the Terminator type of aspects because it’s so it’s so nebulous in terms of the technology and, you know, a lot of a lot of what we’ve been entertained to think that computers and artificial intelligence is eventually going to turn on us.
But that’s particularly the case. But it’s really about going back to the core experience of these technologies, making life a whole lot easier. And robotics is going to do that for many, especially in a world where, where, where I would say culturally we’re becoming a lot more independent and people are trying to find solutions to make their lives better.
So, you know, we have a growing, aging population and not being able to have other individuals help out with that or fill those particular jobs to help help someone that that’s going to need that’s going to need some type of assistance. Robotics is going to fulfill that demand. I would also say I would also say machine learning, of course, is just going to be it’s going to be big.
And I think that’s infused into the previous technologies I talked about. But it’s really about identifying something in particular. I don’t know what those particular challenges are right now that are going to be in five years. But currently it’s about making life easier to get to answers because machine learning is really mostly about getting a result. But training a computer to training a computer to to understand how to get to that result and making sure that result has is correct in nature.
Right at the end of the day, you can’t just take anything at face value and say, Hey, yeah, that’s right, and go X, Y, and Z. So it takes a lot of it takes a lot of investment to make sure that a computer is going to be accurate as close to 100% of the time as it can be.
But I believe that we’ll get there and it’s going to change our lives and it’s going to change the lives of the world in general in terms of our health, in terms of just in terms of the utility, in terms of our utility utility and just being happy. And technology is going to kind of fulfill that. Those technologies, I think, are going to fulfill that.
Reuben (00:41.29)
Oh, well, yeah, there certainly is a ton of potential and who knows what’s going to come next. I did see a project that really intrigued me. The adapter is on your website, maybe. Could you tell me about that one a little bit?
Alexis Moses (00:41.45)
Oh yeah. Great. Yeah, that was at 360, I guess. You talking about my personal website? Yeah, I think watching.
Reuben (00:41.53)
I was checking you out. I was doing my research.
Alexis Moses (00:41.56)
Oh, yeah, absolutely. That was a great project. A very beautiful project then. And basically we partnered with the Christopher Reeve’s and Dana Foundation where our goal was to understand that people that had limited mobility, they themselves deserve to play, right? They need to have as many opportunities for normalcy as anyone else that might not be facing those particular challenges.
So we said, hey, why don’t we make some toys that why don’t we make some toys that that are used for people with limited with limited mobility? So And just to rewind back a little bit, Lisa, this was an idea from a creative our creative team, and they came to us in the creative tech technology department to see we can have some solutions.
So at first, at first we were thinking about just reading someone’s mind just simply by putting on like a wave cap and, and then using technologies to control a remote control car. And that didn’t work so well. I don’t think that technology’s quite there yet. Where mind control is, is the most effective and dependable. So we settled on using voice technology where we had a voice baseball picture where someone could say pop up or pitch, and then it would just throw out a particular pitch.
So that was really cool. And then we had a spin pop system with the gyroscope and accelerometer where you could you can blow to make a remote control car go forward. You suck in to make it go back, and then you can control it by tilting your head left and right. And I think it was a very a very beautiful and effective project in terms of of just bringing this just bringing eyes to the issue.
Right. And giving those people opportunities to gain a part of their lives that they used to have, you know, or or maybe to some instances that they’ve never had. And so I think that that choice is definitely, I think, a model that a lot of brands and clients should follow. If they’re going to do it, they’re going to contribute back to society as well.
I always recommend I always highly recommend if you if there is a brand to probably invest a little bit of time to to that’s outside of your primary primary product to to make the lives of everyone else better and I think adapt to adapt voice was that was a project that reflected that that notion.
Reuben (00:44.39)
Yeah, yeah. Really cool. You talked about like, you know, some of ideas coming in from the creative team or, you know, brainstorming sessions. Are there any ideas that come to life, you know, bubbled up from, you know, patients or, and users and kind of got through to your team and then you said, hey, you know, we know how to, you know, put together the technology to make that happen.
Alexis Moses (00:45.07)
Yes. And I think our strategy teams, you know, they do a lot of research on patients and patient experiences. So we’re always being fed that information to say, okay, they have a problem. We have to come up with a solution using technology. And that is a that is a very powerful it’s definitely a very powerful to kind of have that connection, to kind of hear the voice of the voice of the voice that really matters.
Right? Yeah, They are passionate. They are the patients and the patients are really why we’re why anyone would make any particular type of product to help someone. So I think I think the but the big challenge usually is trying to narrow down if the technology we come up with and brainstorm is going to be effective for the patient.
So I really wish that that pipeline was a little bit more seamless in terms of, hey, we can we created something, why don’t you test it out? Right. But yeah, yeah. And I think I think that’s where we’re going as well. I think we’ll eventually get there where we’re at a point where that where engineering and understanding someone’s issue as well.
We’ll just will be a lot more interconnected now. But currently we are taking that we are taking that experience of understanding what a patient is going through and brainstorming and say here this technology might that here this technology make it better. And sometimes it feels a little bit more simple because we have solutions that exist on the market that they just might not know about this, you know being that the might being that be the health industry might not be aware that something exist and then there’s and then there’s that and then there is that, that perspective of like maybe we have to create something from scratch just by using our own imaginative, basically
our own imaginations to say, Hey, maybe we can create something that’s not on the market and and bring it to life. And also hopefully it’ll be relevant.
Reuben (00:47.27)
So thank you, Alexis. It’s been really great chatting with you and thanks for sharing your experiences and some really cool thoughts to conversations. So look forward to chatting with you again soon. If you like this episode, please subscribe to the Mindshare newsletter to get notified about future episodes. Thanks a lot.
