Case Study – Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

The client

CDC conducts and applies critical science and provides health information that protects our nation against expensive and dangerous health threats, and responds when these arise.

The challenge

CDC relies on a complex ecosystem of digital, physical and voice touch-points to communicate critical insights, opportunities, processes and regulations to both citizens and scientists. CDC’s digital team must translate complex and often emotional medical research findings, government polices and regulations into designs that convey the right information in the right channel and voice so that different communities are engaged and persuaded to act.

CDC designers want to stay abreast of UX research to optimize their interaction and communication design. However, they don’t have time to peruse, analyze and assimilate the various literatures that publish emerging UX/CS research.

The solution

Usability.org worked with CDC to identify common interaction design challenges, nagging research questions and repetitive design debates that would be obviated–if only there was data. Research themes included 

Emerging design and evaluation methods
Mobile / responsive design
Cross-device information seeking 
Hero boxes 
Form design 
Improving readability and retention, particularly for patients 
Best practices for graphs, charts and supporting visuals

We conducted an extensive, cross-disciplinary literature review to identify a library of relevant research. Then we critically analyzed and summarize the well-executed, peer-reviewed studies that provided insights or innovation relevant to CDC’s mission and challenges. We distilled each paper into easy to read easy-to-read summaries that include concrete practitioner take-aways and a strength of evidence rating, and enough experimental detail for readers to understand the limits of the study design and generalizability of the findings.

Finally, we identified the most important papers, and presented those in a custom training session. The session was recoded for anytime/anywhere access. Our custom research service helped the CDC UX team to update their awareness and understanding of emerging UX/CX research quickly and cost effectively so that they can apply the most recent strategies to disseminate and communicate their key information clearly and effectively.

Strength of evidence ratings

★★★★★ | Multiple, controlled, converging experiments reported in a peer-reviewed journal

★★★★★ | A single controlled experiment reported in a peer reviewed journal

★★★★★ | Multiple, controlled, converging studies reported in an industry publication or research report, without peer review

★★★★★ | A single controlled experiment reported in an industry publication or research report, without peer review

★★★★★ | Studies described in a research report or blog, without enough detail to evaluate reliability or validity

★★★★★ | Best guesses or opinions, with no empirical support

Can we help you?

Is your team frustrated by their lack of time or access to emerging literature and conferences? Do you find yourself having the same design arguments over and over, within your team or with your developers? Does your already advanced UX team want training that will challenge their assumptions and offers something new?

Usability.org’s research service offers 

Literature summaries: State-of-the -science answers specific, critical CX questions as reports, training or both 
Emerging research subscriptions: Receive regular research “digests” with clear summaries of important papers and 
Research in Practice training: Customized, hands-on workshops exploring the emerging peer-reviewed CX research that applies to your work

Study summary excerpt

Question: Does the icon you use affect readers risk perceptions and recall of pictographs?

Practitioner Take-away: Yes, restroom figures” support better interpretation of risk arrays than ovals or squares. Gender specific figures are better than non-specific figures.

Strength of Evidence: ★★★★★

Citation: Zikmund-Fisher, B. J., Witteman, H. O., Dickson, M., Fuhrel-Forbis, A., Kahn, V. C., Exe, N. L.,Fagerlin, A. (2014). Blocks, ovals, or people? Icon type affects risk perceptions and recall of pictographs. Medical Decision Making: An International Journal of the Society for Medical Decision Making, 34(4), 443–53. Retrieved from http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24246564