- COVID-19 Printables - Habiba Soliman's Portfolio

The COVID-19 Printables Project

The project was created during the COVID-19 pandemic crisis and aimed to design and develop rapidly deployable icons and communication tools in sheets form to spread understanding and awareness across diverse communities and populations about COVID-19 precautions and responses.

Project's Process and Methods

The project used an iterative design method throughout the project's development to align the information and icons with public health announcements and use data collected from an inclusive participatory approach, community-based testing, surveys and metrics monitoring.

Goals

Several goals were set as guidance:

making public health information more understandable and accessible for varied literacy levels, minority and marginalized groups, such as immigrant and refugee communities
increase the awareness about the virus and what relates to it as types of masks, social distancing etc by creating infographics
creating +40 languages that could be shared in different settings, such as emergency departments and refugees' services and community health centers, to break the language barriers

Engagements

Due to the nature of the topic and its importance in public health and the public eye, the engagement of community members and frontline physicians was guided by information behaviour and social inclusion frameworks.

The project took an iterative design approach, which consisted of 8 steps, to ensure that icons and the information represented were easily understood and intuitive to connect to the audience. The steps were structured using an information design strategy based on the idea of experience (ex. Leaving your apartment), place (ex. Isolating at home), or state (ex. Feeling worse). Along the process, content was reviewed and refined to ensure that it was simple, consistent, supportive, and reassuring. Once the first finalized draft was complete, the project through a review by multidisciplinary team that included physicians, public health and patient experience specialists.

Collaboration and Flexibility

Due to the non-linear process of the project and the cross-disciplinary team members involved, the project was generally created on Google Documents to allow ease of workflow, up-to-date edits, comparing changes through checking the history and the option of commenting feature for feedback. Designers created icons on Adobe Illustrator, and then uploaded them to their designated sections.

Design Direction

Layouts and icons were designed in black, white and grey to create contrast when printing using color or black and white ink, as it is the most accessible and budget-friendly option. Silhouette illustrations were commonly used to balance the negative space with the addition of solid illustrations to assist the messaging of the overall concept.

Design, Collaboration and Flexibility

Due to the non-linear process of the project and the cross-deciplinary team members involved, the project was generally created on google documents to allow ease of work flow, up to date edits, comparing changes through checking the history and the option of commenting feature for feedback. Designers created icons on adobe illustration then uploaded them to their designated sections.

Open Access and Adoptability

The Printables project was designed based on accessibility (ease of use and navigation) and adaptability (ease of adjusting and updating). Therefore, we limited each request/topic to be presented in page only. This allowed us to highlight the most important aspects in each sheet without overwhelming the user. All sheets are open access, downloadable and partially adaptable for the public and editable for the team members and some SMEs only.

Setting the Base

The team receives requests from healthcare workers and other community leaders on points or questions which they see frequently asked, misunderstood or not given into consideration by the public. Then participatory and community-first approaches were used to engage community members and subject matter experts (SMEs) in developing the content that needs to be delivered. This includes how to simplify medical terminologies, and what could be further explained using icons.

The figure shows the layout of the paper of 'Wearing a Mask' before icons were added. Information is written with the purpose of being simple, easily comprehended, in low literacy and could accompany the translation of different languages.

Creating Icons

Icons were created using the information design strategy, which structured the Printable, applied evidence-based guidance, and determined the style of language, style of graphics, and content.

The basic figures were created as a base and guidance to more illustrations to maintain consistency.

Iteration and Engagements

After adding the content to guide the layout, testing rounds of the icons took place with SMEs and community members, using an inclusive participatory approach.

A weekly virtual participatory design workshop with collaborative online editing took place to ensure the accuracy of information, all information as aligned with public health announcements, adaptation to local guidelines, contacts, or resources and checking if there is a possibility of inaccurate interruptions due to cultural or language differences and intuitive comprehension of the icons were low to none. Moreover, feedbacks on how to further enhance the icons were highly considered.

Later, the projects were translated into priority languages and launched as open access files for digital spread, downloading, and printing. The figures show two of the many papers that were tested using the same approach.

Community Based Testing

To further validate community/culturally specific factors in the Printable design, we decided to do a Community Based Testing (online), which included short open-ended feedback.

Three handouts, Safety Advice for COVID-19, Wearing a mask, and COVID-19 Vaccine After Care, were chosen as they had different icons and are commonly repetitive in other Printable's handouts. The test aimed to verify whether the visual illustrations and icons were perceived and understood without the text/content or not and if there were any improvements to be made. All of the text was hidden (as shown in the figure), and participants had to explain what they understood by looking at the visuals presented. More than two rounds took place to ensure community members were recruited from high-risk groups with different literacy levels.

Testing rounds were conducted over video conferencing with a facilitator and a notetaker present. This allowed the flexibility of self-expression, elaboration, going back and forth and open feedback. Each session took approximately 30 minutes.

Data Analysis

After the data was collected from the test rounds and page views online, Descriptive statistics and inductive approaches were used. The descriptive statistics assisted in identifying icons that needed more development and refinement. While the metric interpretation was used to identify Printables sheets page views and for basic survey data collection as scaling design criteria.

Qualitative analysis using an inductive approach took place to identify commonalities of responses (content), patterns in responses (themes), and derive meaning from unstructured participant feedback on the Printables during testing and for analysis of open-ended survey data. This helped to gather more data from participants to increase comprehension and refine icons.

Testing Round 1:

In the first testing round we tested the ‘Safety advice for COVID-19’ and ‘Wearing a mask’ Printables sheet and shifted the focus on the icon comprehension by redacting the text. Both of them were perceived positively. One of the Participants said, “If they were taken together they would be a full picture”. Others had particular suggestions to improve specific icons.

Testing Round 2:

The second testing round focused on the 'COVID-19 Vaccine After Care' Printables sheet to assess comprehension and an A/B test to determine preferences in representing skin tone in the iconography. Although the sheet was perceived positively, icon comprehension was low as it presented new concepts related to COVID-19 and Vaccine After Care. The testing clarified that the supporting text was helpful and sometimes necessary when a complex message was presented in a single icon. Therefore, icons were readjusted and/or redesigned.

After the test was complete, participants were asked to determine if they preferred the blank/white or grey-shaded icon. Participants equally selected both options. However, one participant said: “Option B with the shaded and appeals to more groups and people from minority groups or racialized communities. they may feel better". The team leaned to move forward with the saded icon for the purposes of inclusivity.

Survey and Results

To further move forward with the incorporation of the data collected from the testing phases, a qualitative survey targeted health provider and addressed their perspectives on the design and implementation of the Printables. Participants shared their feedback, including concerns about the diverse demographics and their appreciation of creating capsule-like information. It was also expressed that the Printables were more simple compared to public health resources, noting that "too many words or too much info can become a barrier instead of a help". They also shared that the design affordability and accessibility made the printables sheets easier to implement. However, some of the participants reported that it came with the risk of management as they considered it an unofficial source, even though it was created in collaboration with professionals from healthcare organizations such as the Canadian Association of Emergency Physicians and Canadian Institute for Health Information, and collaboration with epidemiologists and frontline physicians.

Website Traffic Results

Another form of data collection was through Metrics monitoring. We tracked the Printables sheets over time through website traffic analytics and social media impressions (views, retweets, likes, and reach) to collect data on which sheets and languages were in demand. The data showed that countries such as Canada, the United States, Australia, France, China, Jordan, Vietnam, and India had the most requests. The requests were identified by the number of visits or clicks on the sheets and the number of actual downloads. We were not able to track the number of times the sheets were printed and shared offline.

These sheets were used in the testing phases. Icons were edited, content/information was adjusted to fit the recently updated protocols and announcements from the public health, and arrangements shifted to make more sense to the audience. On the left is the old version (before applying data collected), and on the right are the newest versions.