Category: We Heart Health Literacy

If you’re anything like us, dear readers, you still shudder thinking about the awkward videos from 7th grade health class. You remember them: cheesy tales of peer pressure on prom night that left everyone sweaty palmed and wondering how to apply these lessons in real life.

Thankfully, videos about health have come a long way since those days. And, when done well, they can be effective tools for sharing your health messages online.

Videos command attention in search results, boost email click-through rates, and increase conversion rates (the number of visitors to your website who take action on the site). Plus, by sharing videos through social media, you can get even more eyes on your content.

But before you buy a black beret and join the Screen Actors Guild, first things first — since video is a visual medium, it works best when you have something to show.

Consider using video to:

• Illustrate a process, like how climate change affects health
• Model good behavior, like how to talk to kids about sex
• Share testimonials, like about the Affordable Care Act’s impact on Americans
• Provide expertise, like from scientists or government officials
• Tell a story, like about a school gardening project

In terms of budget, a big one gives you a lot of options — for example, you can hire a crew or an animator. But remember, we ❤︎ a good shoestring project. If you’re tight on resources, use your phone to shoot an interview or partner with a local clinic to serve as your set.

We must, of course, remind you that health literacy best practices apply to videos — so be sure to:

• Write dialogue that’s conversational and snappy
• Opt for plain language instead of jargon
• Keep it short and to the point

Finally, as with everything you put online, it’s important to make videos accessible to everyone. Add closed captions (visible text that captures dialogue) so people who are deaf or hard of hearing will get the message — and consider adding audio description (narration that describes the action) for users who are blind or visually impaired.

The bottom line: Video isn’t just a thing of health classes past — it’s a great tool for communicating important health information online.

Have you ever wished you could spend 2 whole days learning about plain language, health literacy, and design principles? (It’s been our dream since childhood, obviously.) If that sounds like you, please join us for Plain Language for Health: A Writing and Design Workshop on March 16–17, 2017 in Boston, MA. The workshop is co-sponsored by CommunicateHealth and the Tufts Health Literacy Leadership Institute.

In this workshop, you’ll learn new skills, gain valuable tools, and make lasting connections with other motivated individuals and teams who are committed to communicating health information in ways that people can understand. Visit the website to learn more.

Here’s what some of last year’s participants had to say:

• “Loved this workshop! Very informative and practical for everyday use.”
• “Very helpful and interactive. The group activities were great for collaborating and building up ideas.”
• “This workshop was great! It was obvious that the presenters put a lot of effort into understanding their audience. Thank you!”

Here’s a completely unsurprising statement: at We ❤︎ Health Literacy Headquarters, we’re big fans of catering to users’ needs. But here’s where things can get tricky: if you’re building something complex, like a new health website, you might have several audiences with different goals.

How can you be sure you’re meeting all of their needs? That’s where personas come in.

Personas are composite users — in other words, they’re fictional characters based on insights from real users. They’re very useful for keeping the focus on your audience(s). Here’s what personas can do:

• Creating web content? Personas can remind writers to tailor health content for readers.
• Working on layout? Designers can use personas to develop a look and feel that will resonate with all audiences.
• Thinking about site structure? Personas can help your team organize the site according to users’ priorities.

You get the picture: personas are useful for the whole team. So put them to use, dear readers!

Here are some tips for developing great personas:

• Create personas to represent your main audiences — for example, if you’re building a website that will have vaccine information for parents and pediatricians, make a persona for each of those groups.
• Base your personas on research with actual users — like usability testing, interviews, and focus groups.
• Include each audience’s goals for the website and what they’ll expect when they land on your site.
• Make ’em short, sweet, and realistic — and include photos to help bring your personas to life.

The bottom line: The next time you’re building a website, use personas to keep your team on track and your users’ goals in mind.

Today we’re tackling a common question: when writing about sexual health, is it best to use “STD” (sexually transmitted disease) or “STI” (sexually transmitted infection)? Sexual health is one of those sensitive topics that health communicators often encounter, so it’s especially important for us to choose our words carefully when discussing it.

“STI” has gained traction in the medical community because it’s more technically correct. By definition, a disease has a set of symptoms, but many STDs/STIs can exist with or without symptoms. That makes “STI” the clear winner, right?

Not so fast, dear readers. It doesn’t matter how medically accurate a word or phrase is if it leaves your readers scratching their heads. Since “STD” is still a much more familiar term, make it your go-to acronym when you’re writing for a general audience.

Instead of bogging your readers down with a technical term that they don’t really need to understand, get right to what matters:

• Do I need to get tested?
• What symptoms do I need to watch for?
• How can I protect myself and my partners?

The bottom line: Stick with terms people know — for now, that’s “STD.”

Here at We ❤︎ Health Literacy Headquarters, we spend a lot of time talking about how health literacy and clear communication can help us reach our audiences with important health messages. And, as we’re sure you know by now, a key piece of that puzzle is creating accessible web content — content that everyone can access, understand, and use.

That’s why each year on November 30, we join accessibility- and usability-focused web designers and developers in celebrating Blue Beanie Day. (Observe: Yay, it’s Blue Beanie Day!)

This day is a great reminder that when we focus on accessibility, we create web experiences that benefit all users. For example, say you’re committed to building a health website that’s accessible and usable for people with disabilities. (Awesome — go you!) Well, keeping folks with disabilities in mind when building your site also helps it work on a variety of browsers and devices. Bonus!

Additionally, following best practices in accessible web design — like progressive enhancement and performance optimization — means that users with a shoddy internet connection or lower bandwidth (possibly due to their having lower income) can still access your content. Sure, they might lose some of the bells and whistles, but the essentials will be there.

Perhaps web designer and author Jeffrey Zeldman said it best:

“One small thing designers and developers can do is to make accessibility and usability Job 1 on every project. And to take a broad view of what that means. It means taking people’s messy humanity into account and designing for extreme ends of the bell curve, not just following accessibility authoring guidelines.”

The bottom line: Today, we’re putting on our blue hats for web accessibility — and we hope you’ll join us!

What’s the first thing you look at when you land on a webpage — the colorful image? The headers? The blinking advertisement?

At We ❤︎ Health Literacy Headquarters, we often ask this and other similar questions about sites that we work on. And if you’ve ever been involved in creating a website, you’ve almost certainly found yourself wondering, “What do people focus on when they look at my site?”

Fortunately, eye tracking can help answer that question. Eye tracking is a type of research that measures where people look — the visual path they take through a website. While usability testing helps you learn how well (or not well) features of your site work, eye tracking provides a more complete picture of users’ behavior.

There are many ways to conduct eye tracking, but the most common method is to mount a special camera on a user’s computer or mobile device. The camera then records the user while they look at your site, tracking:

• Where they look on each page
• How long they look at each page
• The order in which they look at different areas of the page

Sounds pretty great, right? It totally is!

When you’re ready to try eye tracking, here are a few things to keep in mind.

• Eye tracking equipment can be expensive. Consider partnering with a usability lab at a nearby university or research center that does this type of testing.
• There’s a lot of analysis involved in eye tracking, so it can help to have others watch the study with you. Your team can take notes to help kick start the analysis process.
• Some eye tracking cameras don’t work well when people wear glasses, particularly bifocals — so you may want to recruit folks who don’t wear them (or request that participants wear contacts).
• Eye tracking gives you super useful data that’s hard to get with any other testing method — but on its own, it may not explain why users do what they do. So we suggest pairing it with some qualitative research. (We really, really ❤︎ eye tracking + usability testing. Just sayin’.)

The bottom line: Eye tracking gives you valuable information about how people use your site — and what’s catching their attention.

“Please never stop believing that fighting for what’s right is worth it. It’s always worth it.”

— Hillary Clinton