Choosing Media

In addition to affecting what you say and how effectively you'll reach your audience, the media you choose to convey your message will have a major impact on how you can present your information. To date, most sponsors have delivered performance information on paper, while some have been experimenting with electronic media such as the Web and CD-ROM. Each of these media has unique properties that can both facilitate communication and create obstacles to comprehension and use.

Select links below for an overview of these media:

• Reports and Brochures.
• Electronic Media.

Reports and Brochures

Reports and brochures on paper are the most common way for sponsors to deliver information to their audiences. This medium enables sponsors to present text and graphics in a way that feels comfortable and familiar for both them and most of their audiences.

However, people do not like being confronted with a "book" of material; if your report is perceived as unwieldy and long, your audience simply won't bother to look at it. One lesson is that you have to keep reports as concise and to the point as possible, leaving out many of the details and layers of information. Limit the report to the information that is most relevant to your audience. If you're not sure what's most relevant, ask them. Depending on your audience's needs, you can also consider producing a supplemental report that has the detailed data that some people will want.

Electronic Media

Benefits of Electronic Media

Electronic media offer the ability to:

Layer Information

Whether on the Web or on CD-ROMs, the electronic format offers the opportunity to layer information easily so that people can get as much (or as little) data as they want.

Simplify and Customize Information

One of the major benefit of the computer-based delivery mode is that the computer can process and tailor information for users. By asking questions to determine consumers' needs, the computer can eliminate inappropriate options, helping people narrow their choices. It can also overcome many of the complexities of using comparative quality information by giving more weight to some things than others. That is, it can help the readers figure out what really matters to them and make sure that those values are reflected in their selection.

Provide Detail

You can also provide a lot of definitions and explanations without interfering with the look or flow of the material. For instance, the Web allows the user to select a word to get a definition, so you don't have to fit everything in a limited amount of space. In addition, unlike with a hard-copy report, where readers may be intimidated by a large number of pages, the user of electronic media is not aware of how much material is being provided. This means that you can include all of the educational information, methodological explanations, and detailed data that someone might want.

Offer Links to Related Information

Web-based information can also be linked to other sites, such as employer or health plan Web sites that offer lists of providers and benefits.

Support Advisors

Information intermediaries (such as the staff at a Medicaid enrollment office) can also use computerized information to help enrollees work through their decisions.

Disadvantages of Electronic Media

There are three major downsides to electronic media.

• Not everyone has access to computers; there are huge differences in Web access depending on socioeconomic status and ethnicity. Centrally located kiosks help to address this problem, but it's hard to make them accessible to everyone who might need the information.
• Design can become a major challenge if you try to present a great deal of information. If you fail to provide good navigational aids, people may get lost in the information.
• From a presentation perspective, the computer can be more limited than paper in the sense that a chart can only be as big as the monitor's screen; this makes it harder to present large or multiple tables or graphs in the same view.

To learn more about creating Web sites that follow good design principles, reflect the state of knowledge on effective Web development, and are accessible to people with disabilities, go to Usability.gov.