To build upon user-centered design methods, we used a collaborative and multi-modal approach to involve users early in the design process for a website. This article presents our methods and results and addresses the benefits and limitations of the Collaborative Prototype Design Process (CPDP), including ways in which this new method can be implemented. The CPDP is an innovative approach to user-centered website design that emphasizes collaboration, iterative testing, and data-driven design. The CPDP balances the power and needs of users with those of designers and, thus, enables design teams to test more tasks and involve more users. We divided our initial team into three independent design teams to separately profile users, test usability of low-fidelity paper prototypes, and then create and test usability of resulting wireframes. After completing the user-centered design and usability testing, the three teams merged to analyze their diverse findings and create a final prototype.

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Hospitals have encountered significant changes since implementing the hospitalist model. The changes have been most prevalent in the communication between patients, primary care physicians, specialists, and hospitalists. This comparative case study examines hospitalists’ and patients’ perceptions of communication challenges. During interviews, hospitalists reported that most of their communication challenges related to patients and their families. But during group sessions, hospitalists reported that less than one third of their communication challenges related to patients and their families. A comparison of patients’ and hospitalists’ perceptions demonstrates that there are critical gaps in patient education that affect patients’ care and their trust in their caregivers.

The literature on technology, cognitive training, and social network of older adults are reviewed through the lens of social inclusion. Technology has enhanced the lives of children to older adults with training, information, and social connections over the internet. Yet, as technology has advanced, those born before the significance of the internet of things (IoT) have minimal exposure to enhance the quality of their lives. Older adults are digital immigrants, those born before personal computers and the IoT became part of everyday life. One might propose that with equal instruction and access to technology, digital immigrants are able to navigate technology regardless of their age. However, research shows that the aging population faces significant training, device, and technical obstacles, which are different from those of digital natives. This review is a foundation for how interventions in older adult speed of processing and social network might support future experimental research.

Workplace communication is changing exponentially, and these changes have directly impacted employees. Employees, who learned more traditional face-to-face practices, have had to adapt to a global mindset. In 2014, 3,000 managers surveyed from more than 100 countries reported that 40% of their employees spent at least half of their time on virtual teams, and over 77% of the teams were multicultural. Preparing employees and students for a global workplace that uses digital tools is challenging. The authors developed resources and tools for a 3-week virtual team project with students at universities in the US and Europe. Resources include details about assigning teams, preparing students for the virtual team experience, launching the project, and providing context for the cultural and spatial differences that students may experience.