In what ways does user experience design improve printed educational materials?

We report on a series of four studies that investigated how user experience design (UXD) can improve printed educational materials (PEMs). We examined the perceived usability of an existing PEM for breast cancer screening and observed the usability problems associated with it (Study 1). We then compared a breast cancer screening PEM created by user experience designers with two other breast cancer screening PEMS, finding that the PEM based on UXD had higher perceived usability, and lower mentions of usability problems, than the other two PEMs (Study 2). We next examined the impact of individual differences in design expertise on perceived usability, this time including a PEM on cervical cancer screening as well as one on breast cancer screening (Study 3). Our concluding study (Study 4) then examined the impacts of UXD on learnability of PEM content as defined by answers to a knowledge questionnaire about screening administered before and after reading the PEM, and by intention to screen for cancer after reading the PEM. The first three studies showed that the involvement of UXD improved the perceived usability of PEMs, and Study 3 showed that designers differ in their ability to create useable PEMs. Study 4 failed to find a corresponding improvement in learnability or intention to screen when UXD was used to improve perceived usability. We conclude that a user experience design approach that incorporates graphic design can improve the perceived usability of PEMs in some situations (e.g., when the PEM material is not too lengthy or complex, and when the graphic designer is sufficiently skilled). However, we found no evidence that lack of perceived usability accounted for the failure of PEMS (found in previous research) to improve knowledge or intention to screen.

A meta-review of psychological resilience during COVID-19.

Psychological resilience has emerged as a key factor in mental health during the global COVID-19 pandemic. However, no work to date has synthesised findings across review work or assessed the reliability of findings based on review work quality, so as to inform public health policy. We thus conducted a meta-review on all types of review work from the start of the pandemic (January 2020) until the last search date (June 2021). Of an initial 281 papers, 30 were included for review characteristic reporting and 15 were of sufficient review quality for further inclusion in strategy analyses. High-level strategies were identified at the individual, community, organisational, and governmental levels. Several specific training and/or intervention programmes were also identified. However, the quality of findings was insufficient for drawing conclusions. A major gap between measuring the psychological resilience of populations and evaluating the effectiveness of strategies for those populations was revealed. More empirical work, especially randomised controlled trials with diverse populations and rigorous analyses, is strongly recommended for future research.