Vaccine Chat
An interactive solution to COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy and misinformation.
Target audience
Vaccine hesitant general audience
Supervisor
Prof. Brendan Polley
Roles
Content creation
UX design
Project management
Duration
3 months
Goal
To address common questions about the COVID-19 vaccine at a high level and to give users curated resources for in-depth learning. The overarching aim is to educate users rather than convince them to get the vaccine.
Problem
The overload of information following the vaccines’ release is overwhelming
Differentiating misinformation from credible sources can be difficult
There is a lack of visually supported sources that address common concerns in an easily digestible yet comprehensive way
Low tech and science fluency might exacerbate this already daunting process
Solution
A chat application format was chosen to progressively disclose information in an organic and user-controlled way
The content is developed by a biomedical communication student, based on trustworthy sources
Light-hearted images and visual metaphors are leveraged
This project mimics a basic chat application to ease users in the platform from their ubiquitous mobile experiences, thus lowering the barrier of use
My contributions
Research
Identifying the common misconceptions and pain points regarding the vaccines by
Reading aggregated data by communication organizations (ex: Frist Draft, Association of medical illustrators)
Searching through social media trends
Speaking with who are Covid19 vaccine-hesitant
Drawing from the pain points from my first-hand experience of researching vaccine info in February
Creating personas
Extensive research into the science of COVID-19 vaccines by
Looking at existing visual communication surrounding the vaccines
Reading existing articles that explain different concerns at high and low levels
Deep diving into government reports (NACI and CDC) and peer-reviewed journals
Content creation
Written assets
Formulating answers to demystify these pain points in accessible language
Create universally understandable metaphors to illustrate complex concepts
Copy editing and revision with plain writing expert (Dr. Wall)
Adjusting the script to fit the interactive and conversational nature of this project
Figure 1a. Research boards (white) and drafts of answers to common concerns (purple) organized for quick visual navigation.
Figure 1b. Structure of each draft answer; organized for quick assess by teammates and proper referencing
Figure 1c. After the draft has been reviewed for tone, content, and level of accessibility, the dialogue portion was re-organized in Word to make the flow and dialogue options more apparent to Willow for web development.
Visual assets
Picking an appropriately friendly style for lay audience education
Character creation and concept art
Figure 2a. Sketches for vaccine side effects; to be made into a gif
Figure 2b. Sketches for the conclusion portion of the chat, where Dr. Joy dons PPE
Figure 2c. Concept art (Ren)
Figure 2d. Line work and color (Chloe)
Figure 2e. Final touches (Ren)
Team collaboration
Ideation
Content mapping and Affinity Mapping
Sketch ideas - 15mins
Audio bank of health care workers answering common questions.
Scrollytelling of an interactive comic that makes key distinctions between the vaccine and the virus.
A chatbot like website where users can have a conversation about common questions.
Game where users accumulate vaccine making components and make a vaccine.
Impact Mapping
We grouped together again and graphed our individual sketch ideas with respect to the amount of effort involved and the potential impact that would result.
UI/UX design
Clipart from https://www.irasutoya.com/
Low-fidelity wireframe: Mobile-first design by Willow and Ren
Mid-fidelity wireframe: UI and associated style sheet by Chloe
High-fidelity prototype: adaptation and prototyping by Ren
User testing
Zoom interview to gather preference and performance data
Participants: 5 individuals with diverse backgrounds and age
Overall consensus: Vaccine Chat is easy to use and the content helped clarify the question that they had picked
SUS score average: 75
Common pain points arose during user testing, resulting in the following select recommended changes (coding bugs aside):
Revise the dialogue tree to avoid unnatural responses from Dr. Joy based on user choice.
Make the balance of sit back vs lean forward experiences more even across questions.
Revise interaction design to reduce the hesitancy associated with missing.
Make more of a connection between the text and the images that follow, by adding leading words such as “shown in the drawing below”.
Where we struggled
What surprised us
What we learned
This was the first interactive project we’ve ever done, as such parts of the project planning were overly optimistic.
The difficulty in creating comprehensive, digestible, yet concise answers for complex and nuanced questions.
Balancing the time investment distribution at each key project step.
The speed at which everything evolved during the 3 months we worked on this project.
In February when I started my research, only 2 vaccines were approved in North America. By March there were 4.
Public opinion and common concerns shifted once vaccination became widespread, but we did not have time to adjust to this shift within our project timeline.
To be more realistic with project scope (given the time) and aim to develop a proof of concept rather than aiming for a functional final product.
Balancing the “would be nice to have” and the “would be achievable to do” aspects.
Play to our strengths as biomedical communicators and designers.
Special thanks to:
Prof. Brendan Polley
Supervisor
Dr. Shelley Wall
Content editing
Cassie Hillock-Watling
Voice talent
References
How to stop misinformation
#ScienceExplained. (2021, March 1). Retrieved Feb 16, 2021, from https://covid19resources.ca/explained.html
Changing the covid conversation. (2021). Retrieved Feb 06, 2021, from https://www.debeaumont.org/changing-the-covid-conversation/
Eskola, J., Liang, X., Reingold, A., Chaudhuri, M., Dubé, E., Gellin, B., . . . Zhou, Y. (2014, November 12). REPORT OF THE SAGE WORKING GROUP ON VACCINE HESITANCY. Retrieved from https://www.who.int/immunization/sage/meetings/2014/october/SAGE_working_group_revised_report_vaccine_hesitancy.pdf?ua=1
Gallo, C. (2020, December 11). The virologist who created a 'swiss cheese' metaphor to explain the pandemic has a message for educators. Retrieved March 2, 2021, from https://www.forbes.com/sites/carminegallo/2020/12/10/the-virologist-who-created-a-swiss-cheese-metaphor-to-explain-the-pandemic-has-a-message-for-educators/?sh=4e06d3666335
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Covid-19 Vaccine information
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