How to drive collective action against Covid with visual and verbal language?

Project and article by Wen Linda and Claudia Shay Steiner

Since the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, governments across the world have created their own digital apps to conduct contact tracing, manage vaccination and enforce Covid measures. In this design discovery, we analyzed the Covid apps from three countries: the UK (NHS Test and Trace), France (Tous Anti Covid) and Singapore (Trace Together). By dissecting the objectives of these apps, their visual and verbal language and the user experience, we shed light on how three different governments use their digital apps to mobilize collective action against Covid. Which approach do you think is the most effective in encouraging people to continue following Covid measures? Tell us by creating a Covid app for your own community with this link.

We created two 2x2 matrices to compare and contrast these three apps. The first one evaluates the objective of the apps (informing the public about Covid vs. enforcing Covid measures) and the approach to enforcing Covid measures (respectful of individual agency vs. coercive).

The second matrix evaluates the tone of the visual and verbal language in the app (friendly vs. indifferent) and the rationale the app uses to mobilize collective action (appeal to collective duty vs. protect individual health).

Lastly, we contrasted the privacy control that the three apps have over user data.