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case study 11 • IdeO: servIce desIgn (a) 435
Figure 6 “TimeSlice” design principle (note the phone display as well)

developing content for the mMode service. The user interface developed by IDEO for the
mMode service was based around the design principles and style guide it had itself created.
For every screen IDEO would mock up several variations using a cardboard cutout
phone and printed pieces of paper depicting the screen. The IDEO team would story-
board the navigation and user interface through the use of these screens, quickly and
cheaply, without the need for expensive programming. IDEO would create several vari-
ations for each screen and test the variations with users to see which ones worked best.
The final user interface implementation was based on the selected prototypes.
In the two months after the launch of the new and improved mMode service, AT&T
Wireless realised initial success around three critical measures: an increase in page-
views-per-visit (a good indicator of the time users are spending online), an increase
in m- commerce (a good indicator of the overall sales of premium content for content
partners), and compliance by an overwhelming majority of third party developers with
the newly issued style guide, a testament to the quality of work done by IDEO, especially
considering that the developers themselves had to bear the costs of changing their
existing designs to conform.

The Portland general Health Center project
Coughlan ruminated about the Portland General Health Center project. The healthcare
industry was not completely unknown to IDEO though: a significant number of its projects
and a large share of its revenues came from the design and engineering of medical devices
– products such as Lilly’s insulin pens, the Heartstream ForeRunner defibrillator, and the
Oral-B Gripper toothbrush. Even so, IDEO had no direct experience in the design of health-
care services, and that made the project even more challenging. Coughlan was confident
that the IDEO process could be easily transposed to healthcare services, just as it had to the
other service design projects in the past. Besides, IDEO was always eager to expand into new
practice areas and expand its design process by exposure to new industries.
Coughlan had been asked by Becker to focus on the patient experience at the hospital
and suggest steps for improving the quality of the healthcare service. Additionally, the

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