Blog Thursday November 20
Eric Gundersen
strategizer

Eric co-founded Development Seed more than five years ago and leads our communications strategy. One of Eric’s talents is seeing the big picture. This, combined with his ability to spot trends and shifts before practically everyone else, helps him come up with many of our brilliant ideas. His leadership and motivational skills turn many of these ideas into real communication tools that enable our clients to do more.

Archive
Interactive Public Health Website in Peru: Cool and Educational
Jan 12, 2004
by Eric Gundersen

Has anyone gone to a website recently to find an answer to a heath related question? What were you looking, other than the answer? Why did you like or not like your experience on the site?

We are looking for examples of sites that people enjoy so we can duplicate what made it a positive experience for a website that we are designing in Peru. In the coming days Ian will be meeting with the Director of Public Health for the Department of Ayacucho to present Development Seed’s ideas on how to launch a public health information campaign targeted at young Ayacuchans.

Making the website for young Ayacuchans really work is going to take months of site design. Maybe not to get it off the ground right away but to make it look “really cool”, to make people not realize they are learning something technical but rather enjoying what they are learning. Yes of course someone that chooses to go to a public health site will want to learn but the trick with this site is to make learning as easy and stimulating so that users get the most out of it, without getting bored.

I really like the site Go Ask Alice by Columbia University, talking about everyday issues that sometimes are embarrassing and answering traditionally awkward questions with humor backed with hard medicine. However this approach is definitely targeted at university students. I also really like the Planned Parenthood site http://www.teenwire.com. To all the critics: yes it is targeting young kids. And to Planned Parenthood’s credit they have made their site as comfortable as possible for kids who are not in a very comfortable position.

As we begin to move forward with some ideas of site architecture and interface we continue to keep looking for more ideas so please post any you might have. Thanks!

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1 Comment
Health Questions
Jan 12, 2004
Seed Friend

When I was youger I often went to the planned parenthood for basic information and found it very helpful.

I often go to WebMD to look up everything from headaches cures to disease questions etc. I think the format is really useful and it's great you can get general information as well as articles and debate on the topic.

It would be great to have a site which incorporated the basics - general information, statistics and then (in a more organized way than webmd) listed articles and links. That at least would be what I would consider ideal.