Accessible advance directives

Compassion in Dying (CID) is a charity that helps people record their wishes about end-of-life care with an advance decision (AD), also known as advance directive or living will.

It is a legal document in which individuals outline their medical treatment preferences for scenarios where they cannot make decisions themselves.

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Context

Lack of awareness about advance decision is a common problem. But in Scotland, there's an additional challenge with respect to the legal validity of advance directives. In other words, even if someone has set up an advance directive, there's no guarantee that their wishes will be followed. This can lead to tough situations for families and healthcare workers, who might be unsure about the right steps to take.

Our goal was to tackle this issue by designing content that ensures that, even without legal force, people's end-of-life preferences are respected and clearly understood by all involved.

Empathize (discover)

I wanted to understand the language people use and what they’re interested in. Therefore, I conducted user research interviews and analyzed its findings.

I developed a comprehensive user journey map with the user needs and preferences. This helped in forming a foundation for the content strategy, ensuring it was user-centric and met the identified needs. Afterwards, I defined acceptance criteria.

For more information, please look at the discovery board. If it isn’t accessible, please refer to this PDF instead.

Discovery board, followed by steps and insights for the prompt, finding, doing and getting stages.

Problem definition

Lack of accessible information on advance directives in Scotland.

Ideation

Content grouping

I catalogued all the user needs in a spreadsheet and grouped them into distinct pieces of content:

filling in the form
researching end of life options
legal status of AD
sharing and updating an AD
role of family and friends

The key criteria were audience segmentation, user goals and tasks, journey stages, context of use, and content type and format.

Prioritizing user needs

User needs prioritized in an ascending order.

I ordered user needs in each content piece based on actions user would take. This gave me a structure for the content pieces.

Sketching and exploring content formats

Content design is more than simply placing words on a page; it requires creative and innovative thinking.

To effectively meet user needs, I expanded my approach beyond text. I used sketches to plan out the structure and format of our content, aiming to make it easy to understand and empathetic.

Example sketches from ideation.

Voice and tone design

I worked with the team to understand CID’s core design tenets: principles that are specific to creating and designing at CID.

I established five key tenets: Simplicity, Purpose, Respect, Empowerment, and Inclusivity.

I used the design tenets to inspire and develop voice and tone guidelines from scratch. I focused on vocabulary, verbosity, grammar, capitalization, and punctuation to align with each tenet.

Voice chart for Compassion in dying

I aimed to create a framework that not only guides the writing, but also connects and supports our users, fostering a sense of understanding, empowerment and community.

Writing

I aimed to write comforting and supportive content for those facing end-of-life situations and their families. In alignment with best practices, I used simple, clear, and compassionate language while writing.

After drafting, I refined the content based on feedback from user testing, internal critiques and reviews, ensuring it was understandable and helpful. I also checked how accessible the content was, using WCAG guidelines.

The final content met user needs effectively.

Prototype

While creating Figma prototypes, I considered how people read webpages. I started with sketches, thinking about how people looking for information and support would use the content. My goal was to make their experience straightforward and comforting, especially considering the topic's sensitivity.

I opted for simple layouts with soft colours and fonts that felt warm and empathetic. I added interactive elements so users could explore at their own pace, giving them control over how they engaged with the information.

You can view the designs here.

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