User experience should extend beyond software.
Multiple usability studies uncovered a need for veterans to be able to print out portions of completed forms for their records. Specifically, veterans want to print both the form’s review screen before submitting and the confirmation screen following submission. However, there are currently no print styles implemented on VA.gov; pages contain massive formatting issues when printed. I worked with another designer to create a print style that follows best practices to standardize stylesheets across VA.gov.
This mockup is an example of how a confirmation screen would print with the new stylesheet.
Research that influenced the final design
Usability studies
Caregiver usability study:
5 out of 9 participants expressed the desire to print and/or take a screenshot of the confirmation page to "prove" they submitted the form
One participant expressed desire to have "proof" for the Veteran for whom they were submitting the form
Many participants mentioned the importance of both the review page and confirmation information
“I think electronic transmission, getting to the VA in that way, there was a little bit of a paper trail in the electronic one, anyway, where I could go back and prove that I submitted something.”
best practices
Convert all colored elements to black
Remove unnecessary imagery including pictures and graphics
Remove both nav and footer
Display all collapsed elements
Include urls to important links either in parenthesis or brackets
Change buttons to text and incorporate url either in parenthesis or brackets
Ensure margins are optimized for print
Guarantee font size is optimized for print
There was no consistent styling across the website; entire pages would print in various shades of grey and headers were grossly misaligned. Additionally, there was unnecessary information such as prompting users to print a page that they were already in the process of printing. Finally, the links both printed in blue and were underlined - which is difficult for folks with dyslexia to read.
The next steps
Once the other designer and I agreed on the final design, it was passed on to a front-end engineer to implement. The finalized solution is currently being incorporated onto VA.gov.
This project was both fun and rewarding! I hadn't designed print styles before and learned an extensive amount about best practices from both design and accessibility perspectives. I look forward to applying my knowledge about print styles to future projects!