The long-awaited National Workplace Wellness Policy was ready to be implemented. However, the team needed communications design and outlets that would be able to reach and impact employers and employees alike for the implementation. They reached out to me, and I knew it would be a very fulfilling project combining my skills in graphic design, Bachelor's in Marketing and my Master's in policy (with an appropriately aligned thesis on health policy in Barbados!).

The WAAP Tool

The Wellness Assessment and Action Planning (WAAP) Tool is one of the main. The Professor designing the tool and I had to work together to find a way to convert his well-researched methodology into something that could be filled out by employers and employees planning their wellness activities in alignment with the policy. The tool should be able to be both downloaded and filled online and printed (for those who still use paper!)

Development Process

Design thinking & planning: I printed out the word document an used some design thinking to analyze how the users of the tool would best interact and systematically go from section to section. Which parts did I want to empathize? What needed extra symbols? I had to go back and forth to clarify to ensure both me and the users of the tool could visually understand clearly how to fill and make the most of the tool.

Design and Creation: The tool first and foremost needed to be functional, then easy to use and then have clear, simple, beautiful design (eel more complete and official, having it's own design and visual language). I had to learn and experiment with Adobe Acrobat's form tools and work with InDesign and Canva as well to combine functionality with design.

The visual language throughout was green and leafy - aligning with the fact that the tool is for wellness planning. It was mostly white, light and spacious, to ensure that the words-heavy important planning aspect of the tool shone through and it seemed less intimating and more easy, simple and approachable. There was light branding and repeating of visual elements and language throughout the tool and its accompanying guide, including some of plants growing representing the growth and health as a company filling out the WAAP tool implements the wellness policy.

There was a lot of information in the tool, as it was one that is to take careful planning and is the roadmap for the next 12 months of the organization. Applying bold formatting to the most essentials parts of the sentence, therefore, was essential as well as bullets and callouts for prioritizing what persons filling the tool should remember - including things like collaborating with others.