Living with a Chronic Illness

For a research design class, I was asked to create a system map to display a process that would relate to seniors 55 and over, using at least three data layers. My system map is targeted towards seniors living with chronic illnesses (and their families). Since the map is meant to be read by older people, I kept the audience in mind with every decision I made. I did not want it to be too busy or distracting, while still presenting a few levels of information. I want a senior or their family to walk past this map and be intrigued, but definitely not overwhelmed. It made sense to organize the content by least drastic change (of lifestyle) to most drastic because all three categories fit well with that hierarchy. My setup is divided into three sections because all of my information was suited to fit into treatment, housing and care. I wanted to describe the relationships between the stakeholders, so I thought that different types of arrows (in the same colour) would work well because it is very distinct from the other graphics on the page, but the arrow styles are different enough that it should be easy to distinguish the type of relationship. I chose to colour code my stakeholders so that people who are interested in who is involved can easily figure it out, but there is not too much distraction from the content. I chose the colours I did because I wanted the map to be inviting and lively, but I muted them and reduced transparency to avoid being harsh on older eyes. I intentionally made the senior stakeholder yellow because it is easy to track on the page. I also kept the background white as to not distract from all of the other colours. I kept the type quite large so that it would be easy to read for seniors, as the eyesight often deteriorates with age. I chose Gill Sans as my typeface because I think it is easy to read–it doesn’t have any unnecessary decoration or complicated aspects. To me, it feels like a friendly, welcoming typeface as well, perhaps because of the subtle curves and overall softness.