Transcript User Engagement and Online Prevention Information

Health Literacy Online:
Writing and Designing Easy-To-Use
Health Web sites
Sandra Williams Hilfiker, MA
Office of Disease Prevention & Health Promotion, HHS
healthfinder.gov: Before
Literature
Review
Mental Models Study
How do users think
about prevention?
In-depth Interviews
Motives for seeking
prevention info.—
audience segmentation
Card Sort
How to organize
information
within a topic
Prototype Study:
paper and clickable
Usability Test 1
Usability Test 2
In-depth Interviews
How can intermediaries
use healthfinder?
Usability Test 3
Usability Test 4
Card Sort
How should topics be
categorized?
Next Step:
Repeat portion of
Process for Spanish
healthfinder.gov: After
7 Lessons Learned from Limited
Literacy Web Users
1.
2.
3.
4.
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6.
7.
Willing and Able!
Skipping instead of scanning
Difficulty searching
Narrow field of view
Easily overwhelmed
Limited working memory
Prefer simple navigation
Skipping Instead of Scanning
• Read every word on the page
• Skip over entire chunks of dense text
– < 3 lines of text triggered skipping
– Numbers, %, big words triggered skipping
• Start clicking on links instead of reading
the content
• May land in the middle of the page
Example
Users did read this
Users didn’t read this
Difficulty Searching
• Avoid searching
• Prefer to browse topics using an
alphabetical or topic list (even if the list
is long)
– Provide multiple ways to browse (by A-Z
and by topic)
– List topics under multiple categories
• Struggle with spelling when using the
search function
Example
Narrow Field of View & Easily
Overwhelmed
• Focus on the center of the screen
• Content in right hand margin mistaken
for ads and/or ignored
• Rarely scroll
• Even content written in plain language
can look overwhelming
Example
Limited Working Memory
• Information Overload – takes
concentration and effort to read the text on
the page
• Less likely to remember content from
previous pages and are rarely looking
ahead or back on a page
• Difficulty making the connection between
the results page and the data they entered
on the previous screen
Example
Prefer Simple Navigation
• Unfamiliar with – and often ignore –
common navigational elements like dropdown menus and breadcrumbs
• Success with simple tabbed navigation
with linear (numbered) pages
• Need to be able to use the back button
Example
Coming Soon:
“Health Literacy Online: A Guide to Writing
and Designing Easy-to-Use Health Web
sites”
Thank you!
[email protected]