While most are washing up and thinking about how they forgot to print the agenda, I’m cursing the bathroom sink designer under my breath. It’s not that I can’t wash my hands effectively; it’s more that for an efficiency freak like me it’s extremely frustrating.

The soap dispenser is placed in a way that once you’ve gotten soap on your hands and start to lather up it spits more soap on your hands.

You can tell when someone is not a building regular as they experience the same double soaping. Others have been trained by the bad design to skew their hands and arms to the left. Others try and beat the sensors quickly going in for a rinse and then back out. I’m in the “get out of my way” camp. The dispenser is just loose enough that you can turn it so it doesn’t dose you again.

Bathrooms are one of the key areas that user experience designers look at as it’s something that’s so universal and is often over looked when looking at the whole building project.

In fact there is a whole community devoted to the importance of bathrooms in user design. During the annual bathroom blog fest bloggers from around the globe write about the importance of bathrooms in the customer experience. Their posts come from a wide range of perspectives that include sociology, marketing, research, psychology, environmental, customer experience, and user-experience design.

So what do bathrooms have to do with your website? Hopefully your site was built so that not only the main areas of your site were user-friendly but also the areas that could be considered the “bathroom” of your site. These are important utility pages on your site, but might be over looked because they are boiler plate or an afterthought once live.

Some of these pages might be a custom 404 page, a contact us form or thank you page. Apple has a simple but interesting 404 page that helps users find what they may be looking for.

Other times it might be something that users are doing that just makes sense, but didn’t appear until your site has been real-world tested. Just like when people move the soap dispenser out of the way, people often click on items that they think should be clickable.

One new tool that we’re starting to pilot can tell us this data. It shows where users are clicking, while most tracking tools only let you track things you determined should be clicked on like links in sentences or buttons.

I only wish that a building manger would notice all of the people moving the soap dish and make a change. If they only knew how much each extra dose of wasted soap was costing them.

Other useful tools that are becoming easier to implement are eye tracking studies. At the end, you get a very clear idea of where the majority of users are looking and if they are seeing your key call outs or messages. With their permission, we’re now able to tap into a user’s webcam, calibrate the software and present them with a simple image or webpage for testing.

It’s very important to make sure that you’re not just putting up a site to check it off of your tactics lists as a required need like a bathroom in a building. Taking the time to look at an optimal user experience across your site can make sure that your users view the “bathrooms” of your site like a high-end resort rather than your local dive bar.

This weekend, the iPad will launch with all of the excitement and more of the original iPhone. The device has many critics who point out that its lack of Adobe Flash, multi-tasking and camera will make it Apple’s next failure, similar to its now infamous Newton PDA. Other’s are more optimistic about the device and see it revolutionizing how we consume media.

As an ex-Apple employee and admitted “fan boy” – I’ve already pre-ordered mine and eagerly await its arrival. While I’m very excited about the new product and the catalyst it’s sure to be for the current “tablet” marketplace, I’m wondering how it fits into the Pharma marketing mix.

Whenever new platforms or technologies come along, we get lots of interest from our clients. The question we have to ask back is if it’s right for their target audience. We are not resistant to innovation and change, but sometimes it’s not the right fit for a demographic even if it’s the coolest thing in our minds. For now, I feel that the iPad has a lot of potential in the Healthcare Professionals (HCP) sphere of promotion. I think that in time, Direct to consumer (DTC) marketing will find its place in mobile advertising and the iPad specifically.

For HCPs, there is no doubt that they are aware and interested in using the iPad. In a recent survey by Epocrates, the medical software company found that almost 60% of doctors are considering the iPad for their work, with a third of those ready to buy.

This presents a great opportunity to reach HCP audiences who already have the device, as well as leverage their existing interest in the device. The iPad or devices like it could become the most valuable tool in a Sales Reps detailing kit.

Only a few months ago Pfizer armed their sales force with $1500 tablet PCs. For half of that, they could have purchased the cheapest 3G model at $629. In addition to the hardware costs, imagine the savings of not having to print and drop ship sales aides when a regulatory or marketing change is needed.

Available for download from the Apple iTunes App Store, AT&T WorkBench helps extend existing enterprise application services to iPhone / iPad through secure web apps hosted in a managed environment. It enables companies to deploy enterprise applications in a highly-secure manner – even on mobile devices purchased by an individual. With this tool, a technician can securely update an online interactive sales aide to all reps within just a few hours.

For the physicians that have an iPad, medical reprints might become a thing of the past. Instead, companies could offer a custom ePub version of a journal article for HCPs to load into their iBooks App.

There are plenty of other ways the iPad can help save time and money while putting a far more interactive marketing platform in an HCP or Reps hands.

A few more ways it could be applied include:

• Medical Meeting Booth Touch Points
• In-Office Patient Medical Device Training
• On-Demand Detailing / CME

For patients, there are a few obstacles ahead before the iPad or any other “smart” devices can be utilized fully. The main concern is the open “review” feature for Apps. It’s a regulatory person’s worst nightmare – an open text field. This means potential Adverse Event reports and potentially negative comments in general from consumers.

To place a patient focused “App” on the iPad, Pharma will need to go the “Web App” route. In place of “Native Apps,” more companies are turning to optimized “Web Apps.” Web Apps offer several advantages over Native Apps. Web Apps remove the open review field, as well as cut out the developer channel step of submitting to Apple. This way you gain the ability to instantly update your Web App, just like you would for a brand website.

I’m very excited to see how the iPad will be used among marketing teams across different brands, both Pharma and Consumer. Whether you think the iPad is just another flawed Apple product or the next great thing, it’s sure to spur innovation and creativity in new ways of reaching physicians and patients.