by Dan Moren
Why are vaccine cards the wrong size?
Funny and incisive piece from Amanda Mull at The Atlantic about the bad design of the CDC’s vaccine cards:
But let’s hold our focus on the most important point of inquiry: What’s the deal with the cards? When Bogost looked into them in May, a historian at the CDC guessed that their design was likely inherited, but no one seemed to know from what. “Like so much of our vaccine rollout, I’m guessing someone had to produce this in, like, eight hours,” Buttenheim said. “There was not time to workshop it and focus-group it and pressure-test it and rapid-cycle prototype it.”
Mull also points to issues trying to make the existing vaccine cards work with electronic systems:
New York City’s smartphone verification app—not to be confused with New York State’s Excelsior Pass, or its new Excelsior Plus Pass—appears to accept photos of restaurant menus as proof of vaccination. A spokesperson for Mayor Bill de Blasio has said that’s because the city’s app doesn’t verify anything; it simply gives users a place to store a photo of their vaccine card.
Par for the course.