Colors and Imagery in Tailored Infographics for Communicating Health Information to Patients and Research Participants

Abstract

Information visualizations, such as infographics, can be used to support comprehension of health information, but they must be well designed to be effective. Although a known best practice is to select colors and imagery that are culturally appropriate to the target audience, few specifics are offered in the literature, necessitating empirical studies. This article represents a synthesis across three studies to describe our lessons learned about the colors and imagery that supported comprehension of health information among urban Hispanic and African American adult research participants and patients in the Northeast, the majority of whom had low health literacy. Familiar palettes such as stoplight colors were effective for conveying value judgments. We saw a strong tendency toward strictly literal interpretation such that images were successful only if they were intended to be interpreted literally or if they were clearly meant to be metaphorical in nature. Images that included people were preferred over those that featured only objects. Patients strongly preferred imagery that reflected the subjective experience of their health condition over images that used abstract metaphors.