Information Design Journal - Volume 26, Issue 1, 2021

Health-related information design has made a difference to people’s lives through clear explanation of procedures, processes, disease prevention and maintenance. This paper provides an example of user-centered design being applied to engage people with the prevention of drug-resistant infection. In particular, we focus on antibiotic resistance in the specific location of a community pharmacy in Rwanda. We describe an information campaign, Beat Bad Microbes, and summarize the challenges and opportunities of working in Rwanda on a cross-disciplinary project in which design research and practice are closely integrated.

This article argues that supporting conceptual information design should be a priority as it could better equip design practitioners for their jobs. Findings from a longitudinal evaluation of a tool – MapCI Cards – using multiple methods to assess the impact of supporting conceptual design in professional practice are reported here. Internal and external factors emerged as having an adverse influence on information designers’ responses to conceptual design. Increased conceptual design awareness and more confident decisions resulted from working with a support tool. Structure, flexibility, and externalizations are indicated as possible ways to effectively support conceptual information design. The article ends with recommendations for future support tools.

This study investigates the legibility of China’s high-speed railway map through eye-tracking measurement. The information searching process was identified by conducting: (1) Scoping stage – a user performance test and interview to inform the design of the eye-tracking study; (2) In-depth stage – an eye-tracking study. A number of visual design problems with the map have been identified. This research explores user-centered design map solutions and provides detailed design guidance for transit maps. It also demonstrates that eye-tracking is an effective method of evaluating the design quality of a transit map as it can identify design limitations and user needs.

Low vision readers depend on magnification, but magnification reduces the amount of text that can be overviewed and hampers text navigation. In this study, we evaluate the effects that font variations letter spacing, letter width, and letter boldness have on low vision reading. We tested 20 low-vision patients with age-related macular degeneration (AMD) and used the Radner Reading Chart, which measures reading acuity (logRAD), maximum reading speed, and critical print size. The results demonstrated a small, but measurable effect of letter spacing and letter width on reading acuity near critical font sizes.