20082025

Research activity per year

Personal profile

Biography

Dr Myra Thiessen is a researcher in the Design Health Collab at Monash University and is the Program Coordinator of the Communication Design program in the Faculty of Art, Design, and Architecture. She has rounded expertise as a design practitioner, educator, and researcher with expertise in design for legibility, readability, and usability. Her work focuses on information translation and accessibility, developing communication systems that enable people, including those who may be marginalised due to cognitive differences, to share and use information in healthcare settings. Dr Thiessen is especially interested in how motivation, context, and environment affect comprehension and decision making and she specialises in evidence-based design drawing on empirical research methods to test both the preference for and performance of visual materials. As part of the Design Health Collab this interest is applied across a range of user experience design contexts. 

Expertise related to UN Sustainable Development Goals

In 2015, UN member states agreed to 17 global Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to end poverty, protect the planet and ensure prosperity for all. This person’s work contributes towards the following SDG(s):

  • SDG 3 - Good Health and Well-being

Education/Academic qualification

Typography and Graphic Communication, PhD, Using visual explanations of complex verbal concepts to aid dyslexic children in literacy acquisition, University of Reading

1 Oct 200731 Dec 2010

Award Date: 16 Mar 2011

Information Design, Master of Arts, University of Reading

1 Oct 200630 Sept 2007

Award Date: 15 Dec 2007

Communication Design, Bachelor of Design, University of Alberta

1 Sept 199630 Apr 2000

Award Date: 14 Jun 2000

Research area keywords

  • Typography
  • Functional readability
  • Functional legibility
  • Design criticism
  • Design education
  • Communication design

Collaborations and top research areas from the last five years

Recent external collaboration on country/territory level. Dive into details by clicking on the dots or