Making Interactions Seamless

During Jen Levin's visit to class, she talked about the difficulty of getting diabetic patients to log the context when they check their blood sugar. She talked about how the Bayer Contour attempted to make that interaction seamless by taking advantage of the latent time when people were waiting for the reading of their blood sugar to get them to input some context details such as before or after a meal or exercise. Here's a photo of the Contour USB:

My NUvention:Medical Innovation project team has come up against a similar wall. We're hoping to get input from caregivers (doctors, nurses, technicians, etc.) in order to help improve the patient experience in the Emergency Department. However, we've heard over and over again, that you can't design anything that would require input from the doctors and nurses. "Anything that requires more workload will fail." After Jen's presentation though, I'm starting to think that it's completely possible to get input from caregivers, as long as the interaction is seamless. The trouble is finding the opportunities to capture latent moments and getting the caregivers to see the value of inputting information. We'll just have to make sure to make a clear connection between them inputting information and the value of that information to the patient as well as link that back to improved patient satisfaction. Luckily, Press Ganey reports regularly measure satisfaction.

I really like this concept of designing people's interactions with devices seamless. I think it's a great way to lower the bar for new adopters. Making something fit naturally into someone's daily routine seems like the best way to introduce new products that offer a long-term benefit, but don't have clear, short-term value (satisfaction reports lag by 2 months from when a patient was in the hospital).

We've thought of giving them something that's portable that can be interacted with as they walk from room to room or allowing them to input information right alongside when they are "charting" (putting information into the electron medical record).

My question for this audience is: What other clever devices or systems have you seen that capture latent moments in order to get a person to interact in a way that they wouldn't be inclined to normally? What other areas could we draw inspiration from?