Author(s): Costa, Inês ; Martins, Nuno ; Garcia, Francisco ; Espanha, Rita ; Brandão, Daniel ; Barros, Ana ; Di Fátima, Branco
Date: 2025
Persistent ID: http://hdl.handle.net/10773/44906
Origin: RIA - Repositório Institucional da Universidade de Aveiro
Subject(s): Interface design; Usability design; Health risk communication; COVID-19 Pandemic; Public health
This article presents an analysis of the websites of the two main official health organizations communicating with citizens during the COVID-19 pandemic period: the Directorate-General for Health of the Portuguese State (DGS) and the National Health Service (SNS), SNS24. This study was conducted as part of the research project “Health Risk Communication: Design and digital communication of official public health sources to guide citizens in pandemic situations” (HERIC 2D), funded by the Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT). This project aims to develop guidelines to improve the Health Risk Communication of the official institutions of the Portuguese Government in pandemic scenarios. The methodologies adopted consisted of a literature review on interface design, with the aim of identifying guiding principles and patterns to help identify common interface design problems that potentially affect the user experience, as well as usability tests on the DGS and SNS24 websites. The main results of the analysis indicated significant gaps in both websites, namely the lack of visual consistency on the pages, as well as the absence of adequate spacing between the various information sections.
