What do you do when you can’t go to the doctor’s office? As the COVID-19 pandemic has forced people around the world to stay at home and avoid crowded and possibly contaminated areas, this has become a big concern.

The pandemic has spurred a new wave of innovation, shedding new light on online diagnosis and remote care technologies that have been around for a while but have been limited to the doctor’s office.

The Dutch startup community, one of the fastest-growing technology hubs in Europe, has played a key role in developing new tools and facilities to make sure doctors can monitor and care for patients remotely. Techleal , a non-profit responsible for accelerating the Dutch startup ecosystem, has helped nurture and grow health-tech startups that are now providing remote care services in the Netherlands and beyond.

Here are just a few areas of medicine where startups are making doctor’s office visits a thing of the past.

Remote eye care

Poor vision is a 4.3-billion-person problem across the world. And access to eyecare was already challenging before the COVID-19 situation. “In many countries, there’s limited access to eye care, which results in long wait times,” says Yves Prevoo, founder and CEO of Easee , a startup based in the Netherlands. Even in Europe, patients might have to wait up to 12 months before they can see an ophthalmologist.

The state of emergency caused by COVID-19 only made things worse. With the eyes being among the key body parts where a person can contract coronavirus, ophthalmologist clinics became among the first places to be shut down or put on notice to reduce congestion in order to contain the spread of the virus.

“The problem is that to examine someone’s eyes, you have to come really close, face to face,” Prevoo says. “It’s a field that is deeply affected by the COVID-19 crisis and you can tell that by the fact that the first person to die of the virus was an ophthalmologist in China.”

Easee, which is part of Techleal Rise , a program to help grow promising Dutch startups, has helped alleviate the problem to a degree by providing a clinically proven online eye examination. The company’s web application can be accessed through the browser. The patient goes through several steps with a computer and a smartphone to perform the self-examination of visual acuity and refractive error. The tool was tested and approved by a group of specialists at the University of Utrecht.

During the COVID-19 lockdown, remote online testing has considerably reduced congestion at eye clinics by slashing unnecessary patient visits. Already, many ophthalmologists are using videoconferencing tools to visit their patients. Easee’s application has become a tool of choice for many clinicians in their remote triaging sessions.

“It gives them additional data points for their decision-making,” Prevoo says.

The test will not replace eyecare specialists, Prevoo stresses. “We don’t look into the eye. For some conditions, this is not the best way to see what’s going on,” he says.

But a reliable, online self-testing system can make sure the limited human resources of eyecare are directed in the right places, during and after the COVID-19 lockdown. “For some patients, a simple visual acuity test is all you need to decide whether or not they need to come into the hospital,” Prevoo says. “The numbers are so big that this frees up substantial time for ophthalmologists to focus on the patients who really need in-person visits.”

Are you a Dutch founder looking to grow your business? The Techleal Rise Program might be for you:

Beyond the lockdown

Remote care can also have life-changing impacts that will move beyond the current limitations imposed by the COVID-19 situation. And the key is a model that expands from requiring a presence in hospitals to providing anytime-anywhere access to patient information and care.

An example is stroke patients, who constitute a considerable percent of populations. Strokes are the leading cause of long-term disabilities, and in the EU alone account for €45 billion in annual healthcare costs.

“In stroke care ‘Time=Brain’ and treating a patient just 30 minutes sooner can save almost two years in healthy life, or make the difference between patients being severely disabled or living an independent life,” says Kate Backhouse, Chief Commercial Officer at Netherlands-based Nico.lab , another Techleal Rise startup.

To reduce response times, Nico.lab has developed StrokeViewer, a software system that supports radiologists through the workflow of stroke patient care. “Our portfolio of artificial intelligence algorithms that automatically analyze CT scans combined with a user-friendly system architecture ensure physicians can focus on the care that matters, making faster and better decisions that ultimately result in better patient care,” Backhouse says.

Upon arrival at the hospital stroke patients go through a CT scan, and the scans are sent to StrokeViewer to be analyzed by the AI. StrokeViewer immediately notifies physicians who can log in from any location through any device to see the results of the AI. Based on these results, physicians decide the best course of treatment, at times transferring a patient to a larger hospital for specialized intervention. In these cases, they can instantly forward patient images in a secure manner to the treating team who can already start with treatment planning.

“Previously physicians had to assess images with the naked eye, which at times is very challenging, especially when no specialized radiologists are present in the hospital during night shifts,” Backhouse says. StrokeViewer streamlines the workflow by allowing radiologists to securely log in and intervene from anywhere without the need to drive to the hospital, which can cause delays the patient can’t afford.

During the COVID-19 lockdown, StrokeViewer has enabled radiologists to assist hospitals from home. This has been especially useful for radiologists who themselves are at high risk of contracting the virus. But the long term benefit is the faster response time the seamless connectivity and remote care features provide.

The COVID-19 pandemic has spurred us to rethink our models of care and innovate in ways that were previously dismissed or unthinkable. The slate of technologies being created today will help us weather the pandemic storm. But the transformation it brings to the doctor’s office will stay long after we’ve beaten the virus.

How to avoid stereotypes when designing for global markets

Did you know we have an online conference about product design coming up? SPRINT will cover how designers and product owners can stay ahead of the curve in these unprecedented times.

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Designers at global companies frequently work with geographically distributed teams. We also regularly work on digital products designed for global consumption for clients located all over the world. Yet designers, forgetting there’s a wider world out there, continue to live in a bubble and tend to focus only on their local culture, traditions, and language.

Cross-cultural design indisputably presents complex challenges—both linguistic and cultural. Nevertheless, most designers wrongly assume that designing products for different cultures simply requires language translation (localization), switching currencies, and updating a few images to represent the local culture. The road to successful cross-cultural design with great UX is far more complicated and rife with pitfalls.

Who can forget the seminal cautionary tale of why Chevrolet’s “Nova” failed in Latin America? The story claims the branding failed because the name “Nova” means “no go” in Spanish. This tale of substandard branding has been recounted to generations of business students as an object lesson in the failure to do reliable, in-depth cross-cultural research. There’s only one problem with the story: It’s not true .

When launched in India in late 2018, Amazon was faced with a serious problem caused by a lack of cultural insight and comprehensive UX research. They couldn’t figure out why customers in India weren’t using one of their primary drivers for revenue: searching for products to buy on the homepage of the mobile site. It turned out that the magnifying glass icon was not something people associated with search in India. It made no sense at all to them.

When the UI was tested, most people thought the icon represented a ping-pong paddle! As a solution, Amazon kept the magnifying glass but added a search field with a Hindi text label to let people know this was where they could initiate a search.

When designing cross-cultural products, designers not only have to contend with different languages, dialects, and dimensions of national culture but also cultural differences in color psychology and mental models . Furthermore, reading direction from culture to culture adds another layer of complexity as text can be written left-to-right (LTR), right-to-left (RTL), and top-to-bottom.

With some languages, “mirroring designs” is something designers need to consider when designing for both LTR and RTL languages. Consideration should be given to everything from text to images, to navigation patterns and CTAs (calls-to-action).

Here’s Facebook’s homepage in English:

And here’s Facebook’s homepage in Arabic where the layout is reversed (mirrored):

Using culturally appropriate imagery in products reaching across cultures is also something designers need to be aware of. An image that may be perfectly acceptable in Western cultures may be considered inappropriate in some Middle Eastern countries. Varying attitudes towards gender, clothing, and religion in different parts of the world call for designers to be extra careful when working with images.

If a designer is not familiar with a particular culture, it’s crucial that they dedicate some time to researching what is appropriate in tone from culture to culture, being sure to include every element in the UI: text, imagery, iconography, microcopy, and more.

Designers also have to account for text in different languages, known as “text expansion.” Working with English, German, and Japanese for the same piece of text will yield very different results. Going from English to Italian phrases will at times cause text expansion of around 300%! Not accounting for differences in word lengths in a variety of languages or giving UI elements ample padding will create a boatload of work down the line because a tsunami of screens will need to be adjusted to accommodate the switch to another language.

The seven dimensions of cross-cultural design

Designing for global markets has been around for a long time and predates designing for digital products. Cross-cultural design research is rooted in the work of two individuals: Fons Trompenaars and Geert Hofstede .

Trompenaars is widely known for “ The Seven Dimensions of Culture ,” a model he published in “ Riding the Waves of Culture .” The model is the result of interviews with more than 46,000 managers in 40 countries.

Rather than distinguishing cultures simply by language, Trompenaars established seven differentiating qualities:

Universalism versus particularism. Do people place value on rules, laws, and dogma? Or do they believe the world to be circumstantial?

Individualism versus communitarianism. Do people believe in personal freedom and achievement? Or is the group greater than the individual?

Specific versus diffuse. Are work and personal lives kept separate or do they overlap?

Neutral versus emotional. Do people make great efforts to express their emotions or are they kept in control?

Achievement versus ascription. Are people valued for what they do or who they are?

Sequential time versus synchronous time. Some people like events to happen in a striated sequence. Others believe that the past, present, and future are an interwoven continuum.

Internal direction versus outer direction. Some cultures profess to control nature and the environment, while others believe the opposite.

Hofstede also contests conventionally narrow views of language and culture. Everyone knows that our spoken accents develop based on where we grew up. Less talked about, though, is that how we feel and act is also a type of accent influenced by our locale.

The cultural dimensions represent cultural tendencies that distinguish countries (rather than individuals) from each other. The country scores on the dimensions are relative, as we are all human, and simultaneously we are all unique. In other words, culture can be only used meaningfully by comparison.

How cultural dimensions may influence design

Let’s look at three examples in cultural differences with regard to how people respond to authority, whether people see themselves as individuals or a part of a group, and how comfortable people in different cultures are with uncertainty. The examples cross into cross-cultural user experience design and behavioral design and are all aspects to consider when designing for different cultures.

How do users respond to authority?

Hofstede placed every country somewhere on his power distance index (PDI), which measured how societies accept power inequality. Some cultures expect information to come from an authoritative position, whereas others put less stock in expertise and certification.

The implications of this for digital design are that authoritative language or imagery may perform well in high-power distance cultures, but users in low-power distance cultures may respond negatively to the same and would prefer to see something closer to the less informal popular imagery of everyday life.

Do people see themselves as individuals or as part of a group?

How do we motivate people in an individualistic culture versus a collectivist one? Does our product promote individual or collective success? How do we reward users? Some societies place importance on youth, whereas wisdom and experience are valued elsewhere. Hofstede measures this on the individualism vs. collectivism index (IDV). Countries with high numbers on the index are more individualistic.

How comfortable are people with uncertainty?

When it comes to the uncertainty avoidance ( UAI ) dimension, cultures that rely less on rules and rationality respond to more emotional indicators. Conversely, a society that is uncomfortable with uncertainty prefers clear and distinct choices. How do these different cultures react to something unexpected, unknown, or away from the status quo?

For example, Germany scores high on the IDV index; therefore, it typically avoids uncertainty. Accordingly, products designed for Germany, for example, should give people a rational sequence of decisions to make. Countries that are lower on the scale can provide people with more freedom and a relaxed exploration of the product with more emphasis on emotion.

What about risk aversion in a culture? For instance, if acutely risk-averse Japanese customers are required to submit their credit card information immediately during registration for an eCommerce site, it will most likely result in a high rate of abandonment.

The importance of user research in cross-cultural design

Gaining micro-level insights through direct observation is at the center of human-centered design thinking methodology. When engaging in cross-cultural design projects, proper user research is vital for achieving frictionless digital user experiences across borders. Typically, this means getting out into the field to meet people where they live and work, which helps designers understand particular needs and imagine pertinent future possibilities.

People in diverse cultures interact with information in different ways. People in Russia are used to different cultural conventions when using digital products, as opposed to people in Egypt. The need for designers to thoroughly research and understand local customs, cultural dimensions, cross-cultural psychology , and local UI patterns cannot be understated as it will either lead to success or result in failure.

Research may involve looking into the primary devices used by the target market and potential challenges with internet connectivity. With less powerful devices on poor network connections, designers could take advantage of AMP technology ( accelerated mobile pages ), use adaptive design , or use progressive web apps to speed up mobile sites. They can also design mobile apps in a way that detect poor network connections and subsequently serve up stripped-down core functionalities, allowing them to work offline or with spotty connections.

Additionally, not only is it essential to have a local native speaker check appropriate language, it’s equally important to have a content specialist perform cultural checks. This includes checking images, colors, abbreviations, phrases, and idioms to make sure they’re culturally appropriate and resonate with the local audience.

To dig deep into local customs, behaviors, and attitudes, it’s best to do both qualitative and quantitative research. Qualitative UX research may involve interviews, intercepts , and contextual observations, ethnographic studies, and field studies; quantitative research may include competitive analysis, secondary research, and surveys.

Qualitative user research is a direct assessment of behavior based on observation. It’s about understanding people’s beliefs and practices on their terms. For example, observing people in their natural environment gives designers a better understanding of the way people live and use digital products, which helps them design products that are genuinely relevant to them.

Quantitative research is primarily exploratory research and is used to quantify the problem by way of generating data that can be transformed into useful statistics. Some conventional data collection methods include various forms of surveys, longitudinal studies, website interceptors, online polls, and product usage analytics.

Cross-cultural design tools, workflows, and fonts

Looking at the practical side of a cross-cultural design project, designers need to dedicate a considerable amount of time to select the best design tools. Many design tools don’t offer full support of fonts, or certain characters for a variety of languages; for example, Russian Cyrillic, Japanese, Arabic, or Chinese. Designers need to carefully consider their design tools and workflow (especially if using multiple design tools) and their final deliverables. Testing the cross-cultural design workflow during the early stages of the project is crucial.

Some foreign language fonts may work on the desktop in a design tool but will not render as intended on the web with the web font version. Web fonts include support for many different languages, but not all, therefore, designers will need to carefully select fonts that support a particular language or script. Consulting with developers early about character encodings, using web fonts, and font embedding depending on the type of digital product (site or app) will later pay off in spades, as will extensive testing and QA.

Cross-cultural design is not a walk in the park. Designers not only have to contend with various cross-cultural design challenges but also often have to bridge the cultural divide with clients in terms of communication styles, wrestle with design tools and web browsers not rendering fonts or foreign language characters correctly, text expansion in various languages, and issues using their keyboards to input and edit a variety of languages.

Working across borders between designers and clients may present another set of challenges. For example, the author (a Brazilian designer) worked on a project with a Russian client and had to actively engage the cultural divide between the client and himself throughout the design process to avoid any misunderstandings.

When it came to working on the project, issues occurred with Cyrillic fonts in different design tools not rendering correctly. Without a Cyrillic keyboard for text input and edits, an on-screen Cyrillic keyboard had to be used, which slowed things down dramatically.

Cross-cultural design needs special attention

As many companies continue to explore global business opportunities, they will be challenged to adapt to the local characteristics of various new markets, the sociopolitical environment, and the cultural system. Understandably, global business leaders want to get their products to the market as quickly as possible, but in order to offer best-in-class user experiences, cross-cultural design requires special attention. Great UX is rooted in the careful examination of social and cultural context, and often it’s up to the designers to put the brakes on and call for a slowdown.

An essential part of the design thinking process is performing in-depth UX research : exploring what people say, think, do, and feel to uncover fresh insights that help design human-centered solutions. Expert UX designers know design projects that cross borders need to be researched and tested thoroughly.

Designers have always risen to the challenge as they work at the intersection of cultural and technological trends, whether in digital or physical products. When done well, a carefully executed product design will resonate with the culture of the audience that it was intended for.

Cross-cultural design invites designers to embark on a road less traveled. At times it may become a little bumpy. As long as designers understand the seven cultural dimensions, seek an informed perspective, and investigate the best workflows, tools, and processes, they will complete the journey successfully.

The Toptal Design Blog is a hub for advanced design studies by professional designers in the Toptal network on all facets of digital design, ranging from detailed design tutorials to in-depth coverage of new design trends, tools, and techniques. You can read the original piece written by Jon Vieira here . Follow the Toptal Design Blog on Twitter , Dribbble , Behance , LinkedIn , Facebook , and Instagram .

Why sustainable startups should consider corporate venture capital first

Urgent issues like the climate crisis, environmental degradation threatening millions of species, social inequality and other challenges mean that the global economy needs to immediately transform itself to become sustainable .

Sustainable startups are showing us the way with smart business models having economic, social, and environmental value.

Toronto’s Ripple Farms is an example demonstrating the power of aquaponics to sustainably produce organic greens and seafood throughout the year. To connect urbanites with the land, the company’s business model combines product offerings with education on urban agriculture.

Similarly, Waterloo Energy Products sells a full range of residential and commercial renewable energy designs including geothermal, solar, LED lighting equipment, water treatment solutions and much more. By offering a one-stop shop at its Sustainable Living Centre, they have made renewable energy choices much easier for consumers.

Both firms bundle products and services in different ways with a potential to expand internationally .

Many companies in Canada’s sustainable sector have similar potential to export Canadian products and expertise around the world.

Finding the right investor

But Canada needs these firms to grow rapidly and substantially so they can create jobs that other unsustainable businesses are shedding as they become obsolete. Investors are key to accelerating this urgently needed startup growth in Canada’s sustainable sector.

According to the United Nations’ seminal Brundtland Report , sustainable development should meet the needs of current generations without compromising the capacity of future generations, ensuring a balance between economic growth, care for the environment and social well-being.

These three main components of sustainable development are considered together, not as separate goals. Good governance is required to ensure and oversee all three of them.

In this complex business environment, finding investors to scale up new companies and, even more importantly, finding the right investors , is challenging. Startup ventures burn through cash rapidly as they aim for a sale of the company — usually to other larger firms or on the stock market through an initial public offering.

Raising funds to grow startup companies is an ongoing challenge that pulls management away from running the business. By finding knowledgeable, committed investors who understand the business , a firm can ease the constant stress of raising capital while legitimizing the company to consumers, clients and stock markets.

Unfortunately, sustainable ventures face additional challenges when it comes to investors compared to purely for-profit firms because they appear to have multiple competing goals.

Stiff competition

Sustainable firms often face powerful well-established competitors — renewable energy firms, for example, must overcome obstacles in a world entrenched in oil and gas .

People are hesitant about new technology even if it improves their lives. The choice between fossil fuels and renewables is not unlike trading a typewriter in for a laptop. This fear of uncertainty gives traditional firms market advantages that new companies must overcome .

Many sustainable industries still in technological development stages are also capital-intensive , meaning that they need a lot of capital upfront before they can demonstrate viability.

In addition to their unfamiliarity to potential stakeholders, some have experienced highly publicized failures, such as Solyndra , along the way to technological maturity. This can scare off investors .

Advice for sustainable companies

My colleague Dave Valliere and I recently tested a quantitative model using data on 184 entrepreneurial ventures. The analysis found that sustainable startups are better off choosing a different type of investor, one with aligned interests who can lend it legitimacy so that others will have confidence in it.

Perhaps surprisingly, it’s not so much angel investors as corporate venture capital that can help these firms grow. In this model, the corporation usually sets up a separate division that looks for investments of interest to it.

The problem for most investors is that the quality of a new venture is uncertain until after it has grown to a point where it is steadily increasing revenues and generating healthy profits.

A new venture needs to be novel enough to have a competitive advantage while familiar enough to be understood and accepted . As a result, many investors look for signs of the hidden potential of a venture. An example could be the quality of existing stakeholders in the venture, such as successful, high-profile members on the board of directors or the presence of professional investors.

Our study indicates that angel investors, venture capitalists and investment banks do not create confidence in sustainable ventures. It found that investment banks can even have adverse consequences for businesses in the sustainable sector that are seeking legitimacy.

Try a different strategy

A lack of confidence in bankers since the 2008 financial crisis could be playing a part. Usually, new ventures begin with angel investors and move on to venture capital and other types of more sophisticated financiers who can further develop and market the firm. Instead, we advise sustainable firms to use a different strategy and seek out corporate venture capital as it is uniquely more helpful to sustainable ventures.

The usual investment life cycle progression of a new venture — moving from angels to venture capital and then to more sophisticated types of investors — may not always hold.

A venture attracts additional capital by meeting an investor’s screening criteria, but the most recent investors matter too. Current investors can lend legitimacy to attract other investors. According to our findings, the sustainable sector gains that legitimacy with corporate venture capital over other types of investors.

This result suggests that the credibility of corporate venture capital plays an important role in the development of sustainable businesses.

A corporate venture capital firm may choose to invest in a venture with promising technology, even if the company has weak management or an unlikely strategy; sometimes, they just want to learn from another’s technology to help them make strategic choices about future technological options.

Positive reputation

If they’re interested in the venture as a whole, a corporate venture capital firm can replace the management and/or the strategy of the new venture after acquisition. While the corporation offers its target more resources and strategic guidance, it also gains due to the positive reputation of the new venture.

Overall, a corporate venture capital endorsement of a new venture and its potential acquisition suggests to the market that the company is poised to be a disruptive winner in the industry . Corporate venture capital cuts through the noise that often accompanies sustainability goals. Change is in the wind for an industry, and others want to jump on the upward trajectory.

Sustainable ventures can markedly contribute to Canada’s economy and employment with the right investor strategies to help them grow to medium and large size. Some of these startups are exciting in many ways. Most significantly, they will improve Canadians’ lives and ensure we have a healthier environment.

This article is republished from The Conversation by Deborah de Lange , Associate Professor, Global Management Studies, Ryerson University and Dave Valliere , Professor, Entrepreneurship and Strategy, Ryerson University under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article .