Emergency content design

Task

A university student health center had to quickly and effectively deal with COVID-19. As the remote communications specialist and website manager, my role was to develop COVID-19 content (web, mobile, and email) about the fast-moving pandemic and university response.

Challenges

• The speed of the pandemic left little time to create a thoughtful information architecture or content strategy plan. What we knew changed daily.
• Conflicting information from the university, the larger university statewide system, the county, the state, and the CDC.
• The consequences of outdated information on the website could have serious health consequences.
• For much of 2020, there was no established communications group across campus.
• The health center’s leadership was new or interim.
• My clinical colleagues were often unavailable to answer questions until after 10pm.
• Our website’s CMS was limited and designed for academic departments with static pages, not medical clinics dealing with a pandemic.
• 2020 saw tension between the advice of politicians and medical professionals.
• Like everyone on the planet, my colleagues and I were stressed. We worked long hours and on the weekends. The clinicians treated sick, scared people directly. Some staff worked remotely for the first time.

Tools

Cascade CMS, Photoshop, positive attitude, gratitude, collaboration

Process

Adapted to a stressful environment

• Prioritized my work. Anything related to the safety and treatment of patients and staff took top priority. My plans for other website improvements derailed, but there was no arguing with a pandemic.
• Got comfortable with ambiguity. Often I asked questions that had no answer yet. “The State Health Department hasn’t finalized that yet” was a common response. Sometimes all I could do was to add to our website, “More information is coming soon” and then update the site the instant I got the information.

Worked with CMS limitations

• Created flexible information architecture. The page quickly grew too large and some web visitors couldn’t find essential content. I created the content for specialized pages for testing, vaccines, FAQs, news, students, staff, campus guests, residents, etc. Because of the limited functionality of the CMS, I used a lot of anchor links, redirects, and a content document of which information was on what page.

Evaluated my work regularly

• Reviewed all COVID-19 pages daily. I knew the content by heart so that I could quickly make edits.
• Asked, “Is this content working?” I didn’t have great access to our end users (patients) so I went to the next best group: the customer service team and other staff who worked directly with patients. If patients were contacting support because the website content wasn’t clear, the staff knew to let me know.

Met emerging needs with new strategies

• Put the critical info front and center. Adding a few buttons to the homepage made a vast difference. Web visitors felt panicked about the pandemic and frightened people don’t always think clearly. If the information they wanted wasn’t front and center, they got frustrated and called for help. I solved the problem by adding big, bright buttons on the home page that said “COVID-19 Testing” and “Vaccine Information.”
• Addressed pain points. The customer support team got bogged down by calls from the public. Callers hoped we could give them vaccines or tests, but unfortunately we could only offer those to university people. I created some pointers for the public and listed alternative sites for vaccines so staff. Vaccine eligibility was a huge debate. When creating content I was careful in my wording about vaccine eligibility and enlisted the advice of the medical/COVID supervisors.
• Careful review of popular news sources. Although it had never been in my job description, I began scouring the news daily so that I could suggest recent information to add to the website. The medical director didn’t have time to review the popular news sources that patients based their questions and assumptions on. The daily reviews also helped me know when to remove outdated COVID-19 information from the site.
• Collaborated cross-functionally. When the campus put together a group of communicators from different departments, I jumped at the chance to join! My new connections informed my work.
• Provided drafting and editing services outside my realm. With a pandemic raging, the interim executive director needed my content creation help. I often didn’t know the right clinical terms or policy language to use, but if I could get a good draft going, they would then fill in the medical details quickly.
• Worked closely with IT staff. The vaccine appointments filled up quickly, often within 30 minutes after opening. To reduce frustration, I created a process to shift the vaccine website information quickly from “open” to “closed.” This involved close communication with the systems analyst, who could tell me the instant appointments filled up.
• Helped colleagues with Zoom. Not everyone understood how to mute their microphones, record to video, adjust their sound, etc. Some nurses told me they weren’t “computer people.” I let them know it was OK to ask me questions, and I created a departmental Zoom guide.

Results

Takeaway

Like everyone I worked with, I had to pivot quickly while dealing with chaos and ambiguity. I am honored to work with these brilliant, dedicated healthcare professional and IT staff during the wildest year of my professional life. The hard work was bearable because I knew I was making a difference in keeping our campus safe.