Creative specs for Veeva CLM and Engage
Before we begin designing an IVA, it's absolutely critical we that find out exactly how the sales reps will be showing the IVA. Will they be in-person in the HCP's office with an iPad 100% of the time? If so, which model of iPad? Or will they be 100% remote, presenting to HCPs through Engage Meeting? Or will they maybe sometimes be in-person and sometimes remote?
All of this information must inform our creative specs for the IVA. I'm using a lot of italics here because this is important! The paragraph above describes a very wide potential range of large screen sizes to small screen sizes. If we don't target the correct screen size(s) when we're designing, we may create something that's difficult or impossible for our audience of HCPs to easily engage with.
When I talk about how screen size will dictate creative specs, I am mainly talking about font size. I'm sure this isn't hard to imagine: the font sizes that are likely to create good engagement on a huge iPad Pro are not the same font sizes that are likely to create good engagement for an HCP looking at their small laptop in the office.
iPad and distance
If we know the reps will be 100% in-person and using Veeva CLM on iPads, and we know which size iPad it will be, then we can make good decisions about what minimum font sizes will be needed for legibility. Another critical thing that we must consider is distance. Remember, the rep is driving, but it's the HCP who needs to be able to read the screen. Are they likely to be standing two feet away? Three? We had to think about a distance of six feet during the height of covid, due to social distancing. Could another serious covid wave put us back at that distance again? Should we design for that just in case? All of these things should be considered, and discussed with our clients.
Will the rep hand the iPad to the HCP for certain slides? It's very unlikely they'd let the HCP hold the iPad for the entire conversation, and from what I hear from colleagues and clients these days the reps very rarely hand over the iPad. (TMI here, in the early days of Veeva, the iPad itself was still pretty new, and a good strategy for engagement was to design features that the HCP could interact with themselves, because they were just excited to mess around on an iPad. This really worked; reps reported that they'd get more minutes with the HCP because they were enjoying using the iPad — and hopefully absorbing some of our content at the same time. Nowadays the HCPs are obviously no longer wowed by the iPad, so there's really no longer a reason to design these kinds of interactions.)
So what font sizes are good for in-person visits? The best way to determine this is to get info on the actual iPad model that the reps will be using, and do a real-world test. Ideally this would be with a range of volunteer test subjects, but it's also perfectly doable with just a couple friends or colleagues, standing at different distances from the tablet. Imagine HCPs who maybe left their glasses at their desk, or are somewhat distracted, or have a headache. Bigger text, less text, will always be more engaging. If you do this real-world test, I promise you the results will be eye-opening.
Font sizes for Veeva Engage
For Engage (Meeting and Portal), we must assume the absolute worst case scenario: that the HCP is viewing our IVA on a small Windows laptop, set to maybe 1366 x 768 pixels. It is critical that we preview our IVA layouts at that size to gauge how readable they really are. We should do a real-world test of this; export the layout as a pdf and review it on a small laptop. Is everything readable? Even the footnotes? Even the little labeled elements on charts?
Remember, legibility is a requirement. If we're required to put certain text on screen, we're required to make it readable for the user; if any fair balance text or footnotes/references are not legible on the HCP's small laptop, then we're not working in a way that is ethical, and we're not doing our best to represent our clients. The client's med-legal team probably doesn't know to check for this or call this out — we know, and so we must do better.
Okay, some actual creative specs
Dimensions, font size: There's no black and white rule on what pixel dimensions an IVA should be designed at. My recommendation is to keep it very simple: Design at 1024 x 768; you'll export everything at higher-res for dev later. These pixel dimensions will allow you to work with font sizes that sound like normal, reasonable sizes that we deal with all the time, e.g. 20 px for body copy, maybe 30 px for headlines, etc. Those are the font sizes that the devs will use later when they're programming the piece. Of course, you're going to check your work on a real device for readability, as described above.
Non-scrolling slides: Although it is possible to create taller slides that scroll like a website, this is not the typical behavior for slides in Veeva. Normally you you want to design each screen to be fixed and non-scrolling. If content won't fit on one side, then it should become two (or more) slides.
Accessibility: Follow WCAG rules for color contrast and meaningful link text. But wait, this piece won't be viewed by the public; is ADA compliance important? Always. Accessibility should be imperative in everything we do.
Fonts: Google fonts and web-safe fonts are best. It's also possible to embed brand fonts right in the piece.
Content: Less text, bigger text, wherever possible. Keep in mind the rep will probably only have time to show maybe five slides, and if you give them fifty, they'll probably still just use the same five every time. The IVA is the conversation starter; a quick overview, hitting the high points. Any leave-behinds, and of course the brand website, can go into much more detail.
Veeva's reserved areas: It's important to plan with your client which of Veeva's native elements will be visible/available in the IVA. These days the only one that is mandatory of the "Action" button; the three dots in the upper-left corner. All of the other elements — back/forward buttons, laser pointer, highlighter, swim lane, voting (sentiment) buttons, etc — are all optional, and can be either displayed or hidden by the developer. Whichever native elements will be visible, we must design around them. Keep in mind, we cannot change the appearance or placement of these native elements. They're automatically inserted over top of our creative by Veeva (if we choose to have them).
ISI (Important Safety Information): This can be anywhere we want, any size, but typically it's placed either at the bottom or on the right. The ISI area can scroll, or it can expand with a tap. The ISI font size should be equal to or greater than the main body content font size.
Video: If you're including any video, it's very important to keep the video(s) small on screen (not full-screen), and short in duration; no more than 60 seconds. My very strong recommendation is that video in a Veeva presentation should not contain any audio; let the rep talk through it. And my general recommendation is to not include video at all. The rep is putting on a show! Let them be the center of it.
All of the above is a good starting place for designing Veeva presentations that are engaging on all screen sizes and devices.
– Manning
Questions/comments? Feel free to contact me at manning@manningkrull.com. I update these articles pretty frequently — best practices evolve over time as the world of digital quickly changes, and I always welcome insights from others.