Designing the Community Health Poster
A student team must produce a one-page poster for a community health centre on 'reducing sugar-sweetened drinks'. The centre's clients include many older residents with low English literacy and some vision impairment. The team's draft uses a bar chart of sugar content per drink, a slogan ('Cut the sugar, cut the risk'), and a QR code linking to a government website. A Health student says the bar chart is the strongest evidence. A Design student says the poster is too text-heavy. An English teacher notes the slogan implies a guaranteed outcome. The centre has asked for the poster in three weeks and will print 500 copies at A$1.20 each; a reprint would cost the same again. There is no budget for translation, but two staff members speak the dominant community language.
1. Identify the competing design criteria and explain how the team should resolve the tension before printing.
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The criteria conflict on several axes:
- Evidence vs. comprehension: the Health student wants the bar chart because it quantifies sugar. But a bar chart requires numeracy and visual acuity; for low-literacy and vision-impaired readers it may communicate nothing. Evidence that cannot be read is not evidence in this context.
- Persuasion vs. accuracy: 'Cut the sugar, cut the risk' overstates certainty. Reducing sugar intake is associated with lower risk, but the slogan promises an outcome the evidence does not guarantee. Accuracy must win; a revised line such as 'Less sugar in drinks - one change you can make' is defensible.
- Reach vs. budget: the QR code assumes a smartphone and data. Many older clients may lack both. With 500 copies at A$1.20 and no reprint budget, the team cannot afford a failed first print.
Resolution: test the draft with a small group of actual clients (5–8 people) before printing. That is cheap and directly addresses the comprehension criterion. Replace the bar chart with a simple visual comparison (e.g., spoonfuls of sugar shown as icons) that carries the same information without requiring graph literacy. Keep the QR code but add a plain-language alternative (a phone number, or the two bilingual staff as named contacts).
2. The team cannot afford translation. Propose how the bilingual staff could be used, and evaluate the limits of that solution.
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Use the two bilingual staff as a co-design and delivery resource rather than as translators of finished text. Concretely: have them review the plain-language draft for meaning and tone, record a short spoken version that can be played at the centre, and be named on the poster as people clients can ask for. This costs staff time, not print budget.
Limits: two staff cannot cover all languages or all hours, and relying on them creates a bottleneck and a fairness problem - clients who speak other languages are unserved. Spoken delivery is not equivalent to a printed translation for people who take the poster home. And if the staff are not trained interpreters, nuance (especially around risk language) may drift.
The team should state these limits explicitly to the centre rather than presenting the workaround as a full solution. A defensible recommendation names what it does not fix: 'This reaches speakers of [language] during staffed hours; other language groups need a funded translation in the next print run.' That honesty is part of the judgement being assessed.