Introducing coronavirus disease 2019

Say what???
When we had to talk about the pandemic, what did we call it?

The challenge

Out of the blue, there was a pandemic and we had to add new features to our B2C apps so travellers could prove their health status by scanning test results or vaccination certificates before they could travel internationally.

But what do you call a new global phenomenon? I needed to find a term that was easy to understand with as few characters as possible, due to character limitations in a mobile app.

The process

I researched and read articles about the pandemic from health organisations including the World Health Organisation (WHO) and UK National Health Service (NHS), international governments and newspapers.

The variations in terminology and their pros and cons were recorded in a spreadsheet, along with an indication of which ones to use.

The results

Based on my research, I proposed:

COVID-19 when the term was first used on a screen or in a user flow.
COVID for subsequent mentions, to avoid unnecessarily long repetition.

This proposal was used throughout the app when the new feature went into production.

Two years later, we shortened the term to COVID throughout the app, to reflect how it had become known over time.

More information

Here’s a press release from 2021 about Amadeus Safe Travel Ecosystem.