IRB Consent Form Generator Interface
To help Human Subjects researchers create understandable and usable consent forms for their potential participants, compliant with the IRB requirements, I designed the interface of a Consent Form Generator to improve researchers’ consent form writing skills.
Individual Project
Features
Human-centered design | Design for different people
Choice of Characters
To raise the researchers’ awareness of different capacities and needs of their target audience, we add a character selection at the beginning of this consent form generating process. Visualizing the target audience of their consent form made for will help them always keep in mind their wording style. The tailored instructions and conversation box will be based on the character the researcher selects. If the preset characters are not enough for their choice, a prompt of a self-defined character will help them elaborate on their audience.
Tailored Instructions
After the character selection, a general instruction fit for a specific audience group will pop up as feedforward to guide the researcher’s writing. Optional elements for the target audience in a consent form, such as understanding checkbox for kids, a need-interpreter checkbox for non-native speakers, and a larger font option for the elderly.
Progress dashboard
To help researchers navigate through the consent form generating process and help new researchers to build a conceptual model of the consent process, a progress dashboard is presented in the sidebar with embedded skip logic, which adjusts the whole structure based on the research attributes. The basic elements and additional elements of a consent form will be listed as mandatory components and optional components to complete. The consent form generating process is segregated into small sections with in-time and on-demand instructions to show the purpose of providing the required information.
Conversation Box
Using plain and communicative language is the key to convey dry research-related information to ordinary people and achieve consent. However, researchers tend to use their professional language, especially when talking to a computer. To create a natural environment for researchers to speak a common language, the selected characters on the screen raise questions about what information is necessary for them to make informed decisions. The input box is designed as a dialogue box to encourage the researchers to provide the necessary information in a conversational style.
Soft Word Limit
Lengthy text always daunts potential participants. We borrowed the idea of word limit from twitter posts and changed the hard limit to a soft limit, which just shows warning but still allows the excessive input. Responses within 40 characters for each question suit ordinary people’s attention spans. A yellow warning will signify the burden of reading over 80 characters, and the researcher is required to highlight keywords in the text. A red warning will show up when the input is over 120 characters, and the researcher is required to summarize one-sentence key points.
Checklist
After the researcher compiles each section, a preview of that section in the consent form will be presented in front of the character, and a checklist will be prompted for the researcher to examine if the necessary information in that section is provided with the appropriate writing style. This review also allows researchers to go back and revise their writing immediately rather than after the whole consent form is completed.
