Information Design in Healthcare: Cognition and Graphic Design

William G. Cole, PhD
Information Design, Seattle, Washington, WA, USA

ABSTRACT:

For a Web site to attract attention, effectively guide navigation, and deliver information useful to the user, it must somehow meet two very different challenges. It must fit with the way humans perceive, remember, understand, and it must be sophisticated in its graphic design. The same is true of human-computer interfaces such as data displays, and of a host of other healthcare communication materials such as patient education brochures, even Power Point slide shows. All must meet the twin challenges of human cognition and graphic design.

How are we to design effective presentations, displays,Web sites? Most of us are experts in some healthcare field. We are content experts. But how many of us are experts in human cognition and/or graphic design? This workshop is intended to raise your awareness of principles of Information Design (ID). It will present an overview of the history of ID in healthcare so that you can learn from the successes and failures of others, then follow with a careful examination of the principles of human cognition and graphic design that determine why one work is a success and another work a failure. Human attention, perception, understanding and memory are the four vital stages of cognition. Designing well means designing to fit these stages. Graphic design principles include such things as how to use color well and the effective use of white space.

The workshop will be composed of four sections.

Section One: Overview and History will explain what ID is, looks briefly at some ways it is used in the general world around us, then look at a history of ID in healthcare.

Section Two: Cognition vs. Graphic Design will carefully explain creating an information display. It will explain the four stages of cognition and the most useful principles of graphic design, then go deeper, toward a theory of why some things work and others do not.

Section Three: Pragmatics will present clear and concrete principles developed in Section Two. How to attract and guide attention (e.g. for navigation). How to use color. How to understand white space by a technique called boxing analysis and how the use of a grid can keep you from white space disasters.

Section Four: You Be The Designer will open with examples of ID challenges encountered by the presenter during his career as a consultant to the healthcare industry and governmental agencies. It will then move on to example challenges for the audience to struggle with, giving you an opportunity to put into practice the principles you have learned in this workshop.

BENEFIT TO PARTICIPANTS ATTENDING SESSION:

For those interested in the theory and pragmatics of making more understandable slides or web pages from their own material.

William G. Cole, PhD
Information Design Seattle
4218 50th Ave NE
Seattle WA 98105
Phone: (206) 527-4786
Fax: none
Email: wcole@nwlink.com