Teaching effective poster design using eye-tracking technology

Department of Foreign Languages, Literatures and Cultures (University of Bergamo)

International School of Medicine and Surgery (University of Milan Bicocca)

Head of the research project:  Larissa D'Angelo, PhD

The present research involves 1st-year medical students enrolled in the International School of Medicine and Surgery of the University of Milan Bicocca. These students are exposed to current guidelines in academic poster production within the medical field and are asked to produce a poster based on research data of their choice. With their data at hand, they each design a poster whose readability and salience are ‘tested’ using a mobile eye-tracking lab. By observing eye movements and heatmaps obtained thanks to the eye tracker, and how these involved specific visual and textual metadiscourse elements (D’Angelo 2016, 2018), each student obtains information regarding the readability and the careful positioning of salient elements and redesigns their posters accordingly. The research aims to provide new educational insights on academic poster teaching and design as well as a much-needed discussion on poster formats.