Design Patterns of Health Animation: Scaling pattern languages into a new domain

This paper presents the results of a Danish study on the scaling of the de-sign approach of design pattern languages into the context of citizen-oriented health animation. We propose that the use of design patterns, and the development of an emerging pattern library of health animation patterns, can support the design of more informative and useful animations visualiz-ing health information. We mapped 72 Danish citizen-oriented animation products into 23 design categories, including both form-related and con-tent-related elements. We used the design pattern approach to systematize the state-of-art animations to enable an overview of approaches typically applied in health animation across different institutions, producers, and target audiences. We discuss how design patterns can be appropriated from previous uses in e.g. architecture and digital design into a health communi-cation context, and through a pilot split-test we discuss both the benefits but also the limitations of using the design pattern approach to design new health animations.