Bilingual UX Research
& Content Strategy
U.S. Digital Response (USDR) is an organization of people who volunteer their time helping city, county, and state governments improve their services. Partners come to USDR with an urgent problem, and they want a solution a year ago. They are county election officials, city program administrators, or nonprofits, helping individuals access healthcare or refugees connect with resources—just to mention some examples. The goal is to help them work more efficiently, so they can optimize their efforts in serving diverse communities.
Some of USDR’s solutions are no code or low code tools (like Airtable, Zapier, and Jotform). In this case, the partners were Pueblo County and the State of Colorado. The “rapid response” was creating a new User Experience for their Community Health Assessment Program in two months. Below you can learn about the design process.
Why Does This Matter? Teen pregnancy rates in Pueblo are higher, in the past 20 years the STI rate has increased. A study from JSI in 2011 showed that this issue is generational and that the youth didn’t have long term goals and reliable sources for STIs. This project is part of the Community Health Assessment Program from the State of Colorado.
The Challenge: Pueblo County wants to revamp goasktara.com, a platform about sexual health and STI prevention, to align messaging and visuals to the primary audience, achieving an easy-to-use platform for the community. The original website was hard to navigate, it included outdated resources and branding, it was difficult to find the information, and the audience didn’t know this website existed.
The Goal: To create a new website for USDR and Pueblo County within 4-8 weeks timeframe so that youth aged 13-24 years old can get access to information and resources about sexual health.
The Team: Team lead specializing in sexual and reproductive health; UX designer; UX researcher; bilingual UX researcher; bilingual content strategist.
My Role: I supported the team as a bilingual UX researcher and content strategist. We interviewed teenagers, doctors, parents, and professors that are part of the community in Pueblo County. I conducted content research, created a copywriting style guide, created the information architecture with the designer, and produced a new UXW for the website. I also selected open-source media for each web page and supported the designer with UI examples from competitors.
Internal Presentations:
• Competitive audit
• User journey
• User actions tested on macOS
• Personas
• Affinity map
• Research interview coding
Deliverables:
• Summary report
• Information architecture
• Copywriting style guide
• Design system
• New UXW copy
• Folder with open-source media
• Prototype in Figma
The Results: In 2 months we conducted 10+ UX research interviews including community members, teenagers, parents, doctors, and educators. The new content strategy achieved a tone that was more approachable for teens, while still using the voice of a knowledgeable source in health keeping the vital information. Using an inclusive vocabulary that was consistent in every article and providing the information in an easy way to read was key. The prototype was tested and improved by conducting 5 interviews.
Insights, Research Coding, Competitors, Affinity Map
For the re-design, the information had to be accessible through multiple corners of the website. This helped us prevent friction and guarantee that users could find their answers without leavening the website. Everything is connected for the sake of health :)
The following are some of the topics that were developed for the platform. I applied technical writing principles and organized them as questions that could easily be found through the platform's new design. As a content designer, another important task was finding open-source illustrations to support the copy and make the learning experience more accessible.
Prototype
Next Steps: The implementation is in progress. The plan is to impact high adolescent pregnancy, family planning, and STI prevention. Below are the 2022 goals:
- By December 31, 2022, PDPHE will educate 1,400 youth on sexual/reproductive health topics and available resources through direct, confidential communication and passive information sharing.
- By December 31, 2023, PDPHE will reduce the rate of STIs (syphilis, gonorrhea, chlamydia) within Pueblo County by 3%.
