Author

Karel van der Waarde studied information design in the Netherlands (The Design Academy, Eindhoven) and in the UK (De Montfort University, Leicester, and the University of Reading). In 1995, he started a design–research consultancy in Belgium specializing in testing of information design. Most of the projects are related to information about medicines for patients, doctors and pharmacists. His research focuses on the effects of visual information. Karel van der Waarde frequently publishes and lectures about information design. Van der Waarde is a board member of International Institute for Information Design (IIID, Vienna, Austria) and the International Plain Language Federation (IPLF), and editorial board member of Information Design Journal, Journal of Visual Communication, The Journal of Visual Political Communication, and Visible Language.

Dr. Myra Thiessen is a researcher in the Design Health Collab at Monash University and is the program coordinator of the Communication Design program in the Faculty of Art, Design, and Architecture. She has rounded expertise as a design practitioner, educator, and researcher with expertise in design for legibility, readability, and usability. Her work focuses on information translation and accessibility, developing communication systems that enable people, including those who may be marginalized due to cognitive differences, to share and use information in healthcare settings and other complex environments. Dr. Thiessen is especially interested in how motivation, context, and environment affect comprehension and decision making, and she specializes in evidence-based design drawing on empirical research methods to test both the preference for and performance of visual materials. As part of the Design Health Collab this interest is applied across a range of user experience design contexts.