Persuasive Design
Two years ago, Bryce Li and I worked on a project at CMU for a design course called “Persuasion”. We were tasked to design persuasive artifacts to support and educate about a social cause.
We chose to work with the gender inequities of health research. In brainstorming, we thought about impactful visual metaphors, and began referencing the infamous birth control pill side effect slip. It’s suuuuper long, like when fully unfolded out, longer than the height of most women.
It’s absurd what people who take birth control pills have to compromise. Therefore, we decided to design artifacts using the tagline “What if you could only ever ______ again at the cost of _______ ?” We wanted to showcase the difficult decisions faced by women and the prices they have to pay for healthcare necessities in a welcoming and fun, absurd, and interactive way.
- We decided to create an interactive website where you could “roll” to fill in the blanks, like rolling a dice or pulling on a slot machine. Similar to real life, you don’t get to pick your hardships. The persuasive element was that you also felt like you were making something of your own, as the next page shows you a custom pill bottle of what you’ve been “prescribed”. We wanted to give users a personal take-away artifact that they could download and share around (using a similar tactic to our friend Michelle’s project Receiptify).
- A poster series repeating the same tagline. They are designed to express that same absurdism, and also guide viewers to the website which contained the full PSA.
In summary, this project combined print and web design to brand a campaign, an opinion, and a story. I really enjoyed working between these different media and using both to enhance the experience of each other.
