HealthTeam: Summer Chao, Audrea Guo, Sam Ho, Yujin Lee
We investigated how various sources typically convey health-related information, focusing on different platforms where people commonly seek advice or updates. These platforms included the New York Times, TikTok, MyFitnessPal, Apple Watch, and supplement labels. The goal was to examine how these sources communicate health messages, with particular attention to their content, visual design, tone, and overall format. Drawing on insights from Crisp’s book Style, we aimed to understand the anatomy of these messages, breaking them down into their core components — content and function.
The study took place in early September, with each of us dedicating 30 minutes to carefully analyzing each source. We conducted our research both individually and collectively. We studied those platforms at home and then presented our findings to each other during class. This allowed us to standardize our analysis while capturing different perspectives.
Our primary goal was to understand how these sources present complex health information in a way that’s more digestible and approachable for a general audience. We wanted to explore how different platforms adapt their communication to suit their audiences and how the combination of format, design, and tone could potentially impact the user’s comprehension and engagement with the material.
Our goal was to understand how these brands communicate complex health information and whether they make it more accessible or potentially misleading. The insights we gained informed our problem statement: Without enough personalized health information, young working professionals today are suffering physical, emotional, and financial harm due to inaccurate self-assessment. By increasing awareness of generalized health information, we can prevent harms from happening.
