Medical communications and information design

An organization of pharmacists requested our services to improve the design of their printed communications to medical doctors, concerning the use of pharmaceutical drugs. Departing from a design process model developed by the Communication Research Institute of Australia, we selected an existing document, interviewed users, defined the objectives of the document, established performance benchmarks, produced a new prototype, and tested it. Results indicated that memory of the contents had improved in accuracy, and that the time required for search-and-find tasks had been substantially cut. The article describes the process followed and outlines future research to be undertaken.