SUNY DOWNSTATE BADGE BUDDIES
Along with serving students and researchers as a medical school, SUNY Downstate also functions as a state-funded hospital. There was a need for a badge buddy, a portable reference for hospital staff to keep with them and be able to easily reference in times of need.
The Director of Patient Safety provided an outline of what she wanted the badge buddy to look like, specifying that it would be about the size of a credit card. I created an initial design listing all the important phone numbers and codes in columns
An issue that became apparent was that there was too much information to fit onto the layout. I flagged this issue and prepared an 8.5″ x 11″ PDF that the Director of Patient Safety could print out to see that fitting so much text would result in below an accessible font size.
Another issue was that the Director of Patient Safety felt that the badge buddy looked too much like a list. Working together, we refined the design. On the front, I shifted the layout to appear in rows instead of columns, and added icons to make each section feel more differentiated. To better see each line, we decided to alternate colors.
On the back, we reduced the layout to two columns to better fit the text and added alternating color fill to each row to improve readability.
We shortened the copy without cutting important information, and communicated with the vendor such that we were able to get a larger size without incurring additional charges. As a result, the badge buddy is worn by all hospital staff, leading to improved care as healthcare workers can now access services and communicate codes efficiently.
