Use Your Audience Feedback to Drive the Design of Your Website

In Medco Health’s persona-based design, characters based on audience research (such as the four below) influence everything from font and type size to product-ordering architecture

Name: Maude Baruso

Age: 75

Ailments: Glaucoma, arthritis

Degree of Web savviness: Low

Design considerations: Provide large, easy-to-read fonts; clear, definitive color contrasts; large buttons; plain language. Streamline processes for ordering prescriptions. Provide clear directions. Name: Frank Anderson

Age: 63

Ailments: Heart disease, high blood pressure, high cholesterol

Degree of Web savviness: Low

Design considerations: Find ways to motivate him to take his medications; explain processes using plain language; provide info on medical conditions. Name:Sandra Reizler

Age: 56

Ailments: Osteoporosis

Degree of Web savviness: High

Design considerations: Provide people like Sandra, who care for themselves as well as another person, with online tools to manage all their prescriptions. Name: Chris Bell

Age: 33

Ailments: Diabetes

Degree of Web savviness: High

Design considerations: Provide customers like Chris with information about his condition and new treatments; make ordering prescriptions fast and efficient.

Before

Medcohealth.com’s homepage was cluttered with small type, making it hard for users (especially the elderly) to find information?instead they called the help desk.

After

Today, the fonts are large, there’s plenty of white space to navigate around, and buttons and tabs are easier to see.

Chris Bell, representing the savvy Web user, would appreciate the sophistication of the drug information and ordering pages.

Note: Like the personas used to create Medco Health’s website, the webpages shown here are fictitious.