Week 7 — Midterm Presentation + Next Steps

(Oct 19–23)

Midterm Presentation Takeaways

This week our team presented our midterm progress and got helpful feedback from Matt, Daphne, and Gretchen to move forward with our project. Here is some feedback we received and our takeaways to consider for prototyping and sketching our concept:

The scale of typography needs to be large for printed material (example: Holly Stants redesigned her business card to include large scale print for accessibility)

• For our type system, we are exploring ADA accessible typography that is large and high contrast for people with low vision. Because we are inspired by cataracts patients who may experience blurriness and changes in color perception, we see the importance of working with large scale print and being careful with color choices. In order to accommodate large scale print, we are interested in exploring ways to change the form of a conventional booklet to make it more accessible. One of our ideas is to explore ways the booklet can be folded so that it remains compact and portable but can be unfolded to reveal more readable text. For instance, the calendar included in the booklet can be unfolded into a wall calendar with large scale print to be used at home, while the rest of the booklet can remain at a portable size.

Choose to intervene when questions are highest — before, during, and after procedure

• In our midterm presentation, we proposed that our accessible booklet would include a section for patients to jot down notes and questions. We mentioned that these booklets would be provided during the patient’s first appointment so that they can take it home and use it between recurring appointments. Because our booklet is meant to improve preparedness, it could make sense to provide the booklet when older adult patients check in for their appointments. If they are provided this booklet at the start of the appointment, they can write down questions while they are in the waiting room, which may be a time where they have the most questions. Another option is to provide the booklet with the post-appointment documents that patients have to take home. (with doctor’s instructions, prescriptions, etc.) This point of entry could work because they can start the interaction with the booklet at home where they might have questions they do not want to forget to ask for their next appointment.

For the journey tracking, be careful with the approach because tracking a negative vision journey may be discouraging for patients.

• We would like to focus on allowing patients to track their vision journeys in a way that is reassuring. Consider using prompts or benchmarks to allow patients to see progress over time in a way that is focused and encouraging. We also want to remind patients that as their vision becomes more impacted, they become closer to a state where they will be able to complete their surgery. There could be potential to focus on the fact that their symptoms are temporary.

Next Steps

• Flesh out our main 3 sections — notes, calendar, vision journey
• Explore scale and ways to use foldable printed material to accommodate large scale type
• What kind of typeface(s) we want to use
• Explore patterns and colors (colors might not be that useful)
• Focus on a specific type of visual impairment that have multiple appointments before having surgery (most likely cataracts)

Schedule / Planning

By Next Week:

• Explore form of the booklet — moodboard, sketches, storyboard
• Decide on what type of content we want to put into this booklet