Background
While collaborating with local and state governments to design vaccine webpages, we have learned that our partners are inundated with a high volume of calls and emails to their call centers. The most frequently asked questions from their residents include, but are not limited to: Where can I get vaccinated? and When am I eligible to get the COVID-19 vaccine?
“We need help with an overwhelming amount of phone calls and public health emails.”
“We receive on average 3,000 calls to our call center per day. In one week, we’ve received 30k from residents. Many questions can be answered on our website.”
As such, content managers and developers of COVID-19 digital health information tools are faced with the difficult task of imagining what your end-users will find understandable and actionable.
Although there are a number of strategies from personas to use cases to make your vaccine webpages more user-friendly, many do not account for the everyday changes in residents’ attitudes, behaviors, and wayfinding efforts related to vaccines and testing.
This toolkit aims to close the gap that exists between writers and developers and their end-users. It provides actionable steps for creating more accessible and equitable consumer-centric digital tools that have the potential to ease the burden of navigating complex digital health information.
In a short qualitative research study with a sample of six residents with varying backgrounds, demographics, and vaccination eligibility phases, we learned that, on average, residents do not know where to get vaccinated and when they will be eligible for the vaccine.
When can I get the covid vaccine?
“When am i scheduled to get the covid vaccine massachusetts”
“When do Americans get vaccines?”
“When will 1b group get vaccine”
In addition, anecdotal resident stories from our partners and web analytics confirm how residents are frustrated and are experiencing information navigation challenges. Elderly residents call first for vaccine appointment scheduling due to poor information architecture on county and state websites.
Bilingual residents receive support from their children, as translated content does not accommodate for their dialects and health literacy levels. This toolkit reduces these literacy inequities and improves the user experience of residents navigating for COVID-19 information on government digital tools.
