About this project

Design thinking and process

The U.S. has distributed at least 200 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines so far until April. 17 - at least 20% of the U.S. population has been fully vaccinated. This also made the U.S. one of the countries with the highest vaccination rate. However, misconceptions about vaccines, untrust of the new technology of mRNA that Pfzier and Moderna use, as well as concerns about side effects, are still some major reasons that people refuse to take the vaccines. Recently, the federal government has paused Johnson & Johnson’s single-shot vaccine in the U.S. because of six rare blood clot cases, which further worried some people that they believe the vaccines are dangerous to humans.

Not everyone is a biologist or epidemiologist that understand the science behind vaccine research and development, and certainly, people do not have to. While getting to know how these COVID-19 vaccines (or at large all vaccines) work to protect our bodies help to demystify some misconceptions about vaccines, and recognize the efforts of scientists all over the world contributed to world health during this public health crisis.

By using the ADDIE model, I have broken my design thinking and process into “analysis, design, development, implementation, evaluation”:

Design rationales

Mayer's Cognitive Theory of Multimedia Learning (CTML)

The design of this project follows a number of Mayer’s CTML design principles and visual design principles in order to create a clean and effective design to reduce the extraneous load and maximize germane load when users are using the app. Here is a list of CTML principles I used for this prototype:

• Multimedia Principle: humans learn best from words and pictures than just words alone.

  • The simple illustration of how the vaccine works inside of the human body visualizes what the text explainer means, which provides a second presentation of the same information that can enhance people’s learning outcomes.

• Segmenting Principle: humans learn best when information is presented in segments, rather than one long continuous stream.

  • The three different vaccine technologies are broken into three separate infographics instead of one single long piece, for the fact that the information presented here is relatively complicated to understand for novice learners.

• Spatial Contiguity Principle: humans learn best when relevant text and visuals are physically close together.

  • The text explanation and call-outs are next to the visuals corresponding to them so it saves time and energy for the learners to scan through and process.

Allan Paivio’s Dual Coding Theory

The Dual Coding Theory proposed by Paivio attempts to give equal weight to verbal and non-verbal processing. The theory assumes that there are two cognitive subsystems, one specialized for the representation and processing of nonverbal objects/events (i.e., imagery), and the other specialized for dealing with language. According to DCT, recall and recognition can be enhanced by presenting information in both visual and verbal form, which in my infographics - the process of how the vaccine works is presented in visuals and explained in text. In this way, the knowledge can be processed at the same time in the verbal and non-verbal channel as logogens (text explanations) and imagens (visuals), which can enhance the learning outcome and knowledge transfer by providing the opportunity for the learners to make referential connections of the information between the two channels. This is also reflected in the application of The Multimedia Principle in CTML in the previous section.

Visual design principles: “CRAP” - Contrast, Repetition, Alignment, Proximity

• Contrast:

  • The color contrast between the visual elements and the text

  • Size contrast for the text of different purposes

  • Position contrast for the text and explanation blurbs

• Repetition: Size repetitions and color repetitions for text that serves the same purposes

• Alignment: Left or right alignment for text on the corresponding side for better reading.

• Proximity: Related visuals are being placed next to each other.

Limitations and future work

Due to the lack of time, I did not have a chance to talk with a SME to check the small visualization I have for how the vaccines work in the human body is 100% accurate, even though they meant to be an oversimplification of the complex reactions. I would consult a biologist or epidemiologist if I have the time.

There is another approach called “protein subunit” which is similar to inactivated virus approach in a way but contains only the antigenic parts of the pathogen. These parts are necessary to elicit a protective immune response. Novavax is working through this approach and it is still on Phase 3 trial - ideally, when a COVID-19 vaccine of this approach goes approved by FDA, I will make a fourth infographic of it too.