Overview

Problem Statement

As COVID-19 vaccines are being developed and tested, online misinformation around the vaccines has increased. While people look for ways to adapt to the new normal, they rely more on the internet to seek health information.

We sought to explore and find a solution to ensure the clarity and validity of health information available to the general public.

Goal

The goal of the design was to explore how a technology-based solution can provide clarity on health information on the internet. The proposed design aimed to help address users' needs when encountering and looking for information through social media and support people's decision-making on covid-19 vaccination.

Users and Audience

• Individuals who view and seek health information online
• People who want to validate information about the COVID-19 vaccine to make informed decisions on whether to get the vaccine

Limitations

• As the COVID-19 vaccine was still in the development phase during this project, the ongoing uncertainty has kept the decision-making process in a loop.
• Recruiting participants during the pandemic in a relatively short time frame may have led to a less-than-ideal-participant selection that could have impacted our testing results.

Design Process

We followed the Double Diamond design process and viewed each phase through the behavioral design lens as Immersion, Problem Reframe, Ideate, and Implement.

Immersion

Secondary review and User interview

We conducted a secondary review on topics around online health information seeking. Then we formed our interview questions to ask participants about their experience on how they seek and evaluate online health information. In addition, we used the Vaccination Attitudes Examination (VAX) survey to learn more about their attitudes toward the COVID-19 vaccination.

After an affinity diagramming session, three themes emerged from our interview:

• People have questions and doubts about the COVID-19 vaccine
• People have trusted sources for health information
• People have developed methods to spot and avoid misinformation

Problem Reframe

According to the VAX survey results, most of our participants showed a positive to neutral attitude towards the vaccine.

We reframed the problem to focus on people with favorable to neutral attitudes toward vaccination of COVID-19 to find solutions that help this audience decide whether to get the vaccine.

Behavioral Archetype

By looking through research findings with the decision-making framework, we created a behavioral archetype called the “Wait and Seer” based on the common behaviors of our participants.

The Wait and Seer are very confident in their search methods and have very high trust levels with vaccines overall. However, they had a low trust level of  COVID-19 vaccines at the time. They are motivated by keeping themselves, their family, and their friends safe, so they want to stay informed on what's happening.

Journey Map

With the behavioral archetype in mind, we created a journey map that describes their process when they view and seek online health information.

The journey map includes seven stages:

1. Killing Time
2. Introduction of Uncertainty
3. Understanding the Issue
4. Source Validation
5. Content Validation
6. Additional Research
7. Wait and See

Due to the ongoing uncertainty, we weren't sure about the next stage after "wait and see”. We wanted to create a solution to support the decision-making while the Wait and Seer go through this journey.

Ideate

Design Strategy

We built a design blueprint based on the journey map by identifying opportunity areas and decision levers.

For the content validation stage, we could reinforce information validation methods. On the other hand, we could surface trusted sources of information for the additional research stage. We prioritized these decision levers and formed our design strategy.

Prototype

Our Prototype objective was to make the correct information easy to find to support decision-making. We aimed at optimizing activities occurring in the two stages by leveraging an existing platform, Bot Sentinel.

Bot Sentinel is an existing browser plugin that fights disinformation and targeted harassment on Twitter. We decided to utilize and build on this existing tool to bring assistance to the Wait and Seer where they already are without interrupting the flow.

Feedback & Future directions

• Feasibility and Suitability The feedback we received shows that the solution targeted the area where it can make the most impact while fitting with the Wait and Seer archetype. Leveraging an existing tool by enhancing the functionality makes it efficient and feasible, which also provides credibility.
• Reworking the labeling and rating system: While people reviewed the solution as having the ability to alleviate the painful fact-finding and fake news identifying process, there were a lot of questions about the scale and labeling system. If we had more time, we would clean up the labels and create an accessible visual indicator of the rating system.
• More testing for future iterations In addition to testing out the new labeling and rating system, more testing are needed to evaluate future iterations. This solution aimed to add a new feature to Bot Sentinel while scaling up the usage across different devices.

Take a look at my other projects here:

HealthPulse DxA

HealthPulse Diagnostic Aide (DxA) is a tool that provides community health workers with assistance in rapid diagnostic test (RDT) administration. The project focused on the Data-enhanced Diagnostic Aide (DeDX) feature where we design for the result presentation and instruction support.

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Growing Habits

Growing Habits is an AR mobile app that simulates a virtual house plant that grows along with habit formation.

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