To design digital health information and tools that are easy to understand and use, you need a solid understanding of what your users want, expect, and need from your website or product. This type of understanding and deep empathy with your audience comes when you involve them in the design and development process. This is called human-centered design (or user-centered design), and it’s the key to creating useful, usable, and accessible digital products.
There’s no surefire way to control who comes to your website — and why would you want to? The web is for everyone. As mentioned previously in this guide, as many as half of U.S. adults have limited literacy skills13 — and nearly 9 in 10 have limited health literacy skills.12, 33 Furthermore, up to 1 in 4 U.S. adults have some type of disability.34 And while the information in this guide is a good place to start when designing for users with varying skills and abilities, it can’t predict user behavior on a specific tool or website.
That’s why it’s so important to involve your end users — the people who will actually be using your website or product — in the design and development process.
Design research
Design research (or user research) can take many forms. In general, it involves “watching people try to use what you’re creating/designing/building (or something you've already created/designed/built), with the intention of making it easier for people to use.”35
The goal is to get feedback from users to develop a true understanding of their online motivations and behaviors. You can do this through a variety of qualitative and quantitative methods, ranging from interviews to collaging and card sorting to prototyping and usability testing. Read about the human-centered user research process that informed the first edition of Health Literacy Online.
For example, conducting interviews with members of your audience at the beginning of a project can help you answer questions like:
- What type of health information are people looking for?
- What types of tools and features are important to them?
- When and where are people searching for information — and on what types of devices?
A note on terminology: quantitative and qualitative research
Quantitative research collects numerical or measurable data. For example, researchers may measure how many participants were able to successfully complete a task during user testing, or they may gather user feedback on a website using close-ended questions (e.g., multiple choice, rating scale) in a web survey.
Qualitative research collects open-ended feedback. For example, researchers may ask interview participants to share their thoughts on the design or content of a website, or share what makes it easy or difficult to find information. Additionally, researchers may gather user feedback on a website using open-ended questions in a web survey.
Usability testing
Once you’ve designed your health website or tool, conducting usability testing will help you answer important questions like:
- Can our users find the information they’re looking for?
- Can our users understand and act on this information?
- Are user interface elements intuitive and easy to use?
The specific approach you choose will depend on the goals of your research, how much access you have to your users, and the details of your project, timeline, and budget. Learn more about usability.
Below we outline important strategies to consider when involving users in the human-centered design process.
