Content Design Read online

  ● content quality (people don’t trust sites with poor spelling)

  If your site doesn’t offer these things, people will find the information or service somewhere else. If that’s not possible, they will try to find a workaround, or just complain about it. Either way, you have lost them.

  Ease of use

  Making your site easy to understand and interact with is the fastest way to a happy audience.

  Of course, all those things are relative. An academic might want 100,000 words on a new theory in their field of expertise and they will find technical language easy to digest.

  A debt-troubled parent worrying about putting food on the table won’t want 100,000 words on the history of the credit crunch in the UK. They need 300 words telling them that help is available and where to find it.

  Knowing your audience will tell you what they need.

  Why content design matters 25

  Content design in action

  If you want to book a UK driving test online, the cheapest way is through the official government website. A few years ago, the booking service was awful. People used to go to other providers, who put better design and interaction on top of the booking service, but also charged extra fees.

  A lot of users didn’t realise that the official government site was a cheaper alternative. They ended up need-lessly paying more. Others did know about the official site, but still used the third-party alternatives – for them, it was worth paying extra just to avoid using the the clunky government service.

  The official site is now much improved, but the lesson learned is a powerful one: sometimes, people will knowingly pay more if the interaction is easier.

  If you publish push content and care more about your organisation’s internal workings than what your audience needs, you are going to be left behind because:

  ● your audience won’t find you in the first place (you’ll be too far down the search results)

  ● if it’s easier to get the information or service from somewhere else, people will

  ● you will sustain reputational damage. The web is a wonderful place for ranting and criticism; it doesn’t take much to hurt an organisation

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  The science

  of reading

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  Sarah Richards

  A good content designer understands a bit about the involuntary mechanics that govern how humans take in information.

  The science of reading 29

  The better you understand how that happens, the more likely you will be able to write content that’s easy to read.

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  Sarah Richards

  It’s a useful problem-solving tool as well; if research shows that a piece of content isn’t working, it might be because of how humans work.

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  Knowing how to fix things

  like that will save you a lot of time in the long run.

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  Sarah Richards

  What happens

  when eyes look

  at words

  There are entire books you can read about the science of reading. But let’s just summarise the stuff that matters to you as a content designer.

  Think about what reading involves. Is it that you are looking at letters, forming words in your mind and taking meaning before moving on to the next word?

  Well, sort of.

  A definition of reading in Keith Rayner and Alexander Pollatsek’s Psychology of Reading states: ‘Reading is the ability to extract visual information from the page and comprehend the meaning of the text.’

  Most of the western, literate world reads in exactly the same way. The human brain just works like that. It’s only if you have cognitive or physical impairments that this process changes.

  A reader’s eyes don’t simply read one word and then move on to the next. Rather, they jump about all over the place. When the eye lands on a place or word, that’s called a fixation. Fixations happen in 3 zones:

  ● one where you read the first few characters of a word (it can take 100 milliseconds (ms) for the

  The science of reading 33

  Lots of writers have no idea how we consume information - we watch research and change things accordingly. But did you know most of how we ‘read’ is pathological? You don’t have much control over it. If a piece of content isn’t working in research, you might be able to find out why based on how humans work, not just what that person is thinking at that time, and so you’ll save time in the long run.

  reader’s brain to identify a word)

  ● the second zone gives you more information about the word and any small function words to the right

  ● the third zone (known as your parafoveal view) tells you where might be best for the next fixation point The more familiar your words are to the reader, the faster the reader can understand what they mean.

  When the eye jumps, that’s known as a saccade (pronounced ‘sa-kaid’).

  People only take in information on the fixation, not the saccade. You can see for yourself: go to a mirror and try to watch your eyes move. They will move, but you won’t see the movement. You’ll only be able to take in visual

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  Sarah Richards

  information when your eyes stop moving. (Two scientists called Erdmann and Dodge found this in 1898 if you want to look up more.)

  So your eyes jump about all over the place and your brain makes up content during the jumps. It fills in the gaps. From the age of 9, your eyes can miss 30% of text on a page and your brain will still accurately predict the content. That’s not device-specific. That’s just what happens. That’s how humans work.

  In his study ‘How Little Do Users Read?’, Jakob Nielsen found that online, people only read 20–28% of the page.

  The cognitive load (in other words, the mental effort required to take in the information) increases 11% for every 100 words added to the page. So how do people actually get information from the page?

  You’ve probably seen the Jakob Nielsen eye-tracking heat maps that show the F-shaped pattern for websites on the desktop. You’ll notice that, generally, on whatever site you have, whatever you are offering, the first couple of sentences are at least skimmed.

  Memory

  Words are stored like long-term memories, just like sounds and smells. You have probably had the experience when a smell has revived a memory you’ve not thought about in years, or a sound sparks a long-

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  Sarah Richards

  repressed birthday party image or similar – it’s all there, it’s all in your long-term memory.

  The more our brains practise something, the deeper the impression it leaves and the stronger the memory.

  The more you read – the deeper the impression words have on your mind – the easier it is to recall them. That means readers can recognise words on the third eye fixation zone, which means they read faster.

  You can use this to your advantage when designing content: there’s a strong argument for using words your readers can easily recognise, understand and skip by using their natural saccade rhythm.

  Which words to use

  Most people have a common vocabulary of around 15,000 terms. These are words a reader’s eyes are more likely to easily skip because they are so recognisable.

  If you have children and they come home from school with ‘high-frequency word lists’, that’s the start of that vocabulary.

  By using these words, you allow your users to take in more information at a more rapid pace. This is often called ‘using plain English’. Or by some people,

  ‘dumbing down’.

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  A simple search in Google for ‘dumbing down’ will tell you how many people openly oppose using short, clear sentences in a vocabulary that allows the user to read at speed or with quick comprehension. But science shows that people can read, comprehend
and retain that language faster than jargon and unfamiliar terms.

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  Sarah Richards

  Low-frequency words take about 100ms longer to read than high-frequency words. In one study, participants were shown the words ‘coat’ and ‘cove’. Coat is in everyday language. Cove isn’t.

  Most high-frequency words in English are function words, like prepositions, conjunctions, pronouns (and, the, on, but, by, me, she, it). Low-frequency words are usually nouns, verbs and adjectives (kettle, making, lovely). You need both to form sentences, but if you keep language to the common terms where possible, you are allowing your users to read more quickly.

  Typography

  There have been many studies that show the effects of typography on reading speed and comprehension.

  In 1969, Smith, Lott and Cronnell completed a study on AlTeRnAtInG TeXt LiKe ThIs, claiming that word identification was not impaired by printing words in a mixture of upper and lower cases. But in 1974, Coltheart and Freeman re-examined that study’s methodology and declared it was on average 12ms slower to make a word decision.

  However, later studies (Paveea and Rosa, 2002) showed greater effects. The main problem with this type of study is that it is difficult to know if the delay is due to word identification or just because it looks odd and

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  unfamiliar. A new study showing this and perhaps looking into the effects of modern-day design on our perception of what is familiar would be beneficial.

  Text presented in sentence case is the most familiar style for most people and, therefore, usually the fastest to read.

  Between 10 and 15% of saccades are regressive saccades, also known as return path reading. Eyes bounce backwards over the text because the reader didn’t take it in the first time. This happens in fractions of seconds. Most readers probably aren’t even aware they’re doing it. Most probably do 4 to 5 saccades per second, and a regression once every 2 seconds.

  This leads to a typographical consideration. If lines of text are too short, you’ll increase regressive saccades.

  If they are too long, the return path is too long and people can get confused about where their eye needs to go back to.

  The size of the text doesn’t matter: studies show saccades stay about the same.

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  Sarah Richards

  So what does

  all this mean?

  Do we turn into

  scientists every

  time we write or

  design a page?

  What’s 700ms

  between friends?

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  Add loads of 700ms delays to every page. Add emotion. Add a light-emitting device, lack of time, children wanting the reader’s attention, add any of life’s dis-tractions… The question isn’t how much it detracts – the question should be why would you do that to your reader when there is another, more respectful way of doing it?

  If you respect your readers, you will make the content

  work for them.

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  Sarah Richards

  Don’t force

  readers to work

  your way.

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  Work

  theirs.

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  Content

  discovery and

  research

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  Sarah Richards

  Discovery is an

  important process.

  It’s a phase of asking

  questions and

  getting answers.

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  It helps you ensure

  that when you move

  to the next phase,

  ( usually building a

  prototype, often

  called an “alpha”)

  you’re moving in

  the right direction.

  It means you’re

  working on data,

  not guesswork

  and hunches.

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  Sarah Richards

  Often, a discovery

  involves a group

  of people working

  together in a room on

  a specific problem.

  It’s about open,

  honest discussion.

  It usually means a

  lot of making notes

  and sketches and

  talking out loud, and

  not a lot of peering

  at computers.

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  The idea is to

  get a really good

  understanding of

  the nature of the

  problem – not to start

  designing solutions.

  It’s collaborative

  thinking-out-loud. It’s

  usually quite fun.

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  Sarah Richards

  Discovery is really

  important, because it

  helps you understand:

  You can apply discovery to whole sections of content, or single items.

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  • your audience

  • what your

  organisation

  thinks it wants

  • what your

  organisation

  actually needs

  • when you should

  publish what

  • what channels

  you should use to

  communicate to

  whom (and when)

  • why you should

  have a digital

  team at all

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  Sarah Richards

  Squishy humans

  You can also use discovery to help others in the organisation understand what you are doing and why. This is particularly helpful when dealing with people who have sign-off. I’ve found the best way of getting people to sign off content with the minimum of fuss is to bring them on the journey with me. I haven’t always done this. Sometimes I’ve had a deadline and I’ve stormed ahead – I had a ‘you can come with me or get out of my way’ sort of attitude. But that’s not always the best way of doing it.

  Using discovery

  to bring people

  with you

  I work with organisations around the world. In many places the process is like this:

  ● author writes

  ● editor edits

  ● the content goes to be signed off

  ● it disappears for weeks and both author and editor have to chase several times

  ● when it comes back, it’s been rewritten, and neither author nor editor like it

  ● it’s rewritten and goes around and around like

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  that for a while

  ● someone forces the decision to publish

  ● everyone is unhappy with what is left Sound familiar?

  Content discovery helps you avoid that.

  It’s a chance for everyone to be involved early on.

  It’s not a guaranteed way of avoiding confrontation and disagreement, but in my experience it helps a great deal.

  Making the content journey with people instead of against them can be easier.

  How to do a

  content discovery

  The point of discovery is that it’s a chance for everyone to share what they know with everyone else. All the participants end up with the same understanding of the problem. Everyone can see the same data.

  You know when your discovery is over when everyone who needs to agrees on what the next steps should be.

  A good discovery means getting all the right people in one room at the same time. Sometimes you might

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  Sarah Richards

  need just 3 or 4 people for 2 or 3 hours. Other times, you might need 12 people for 2 days. The important thing is to have all the right people in the same place, at the same time. Invite everyone
who has an interest in the content you want to work on. Invite writers, editors, designers, developers, delivery and product managers, people with sign-off, and experts from outside the team too.

  Conversation

  with experts

  Having experts in the room during discovery gives you a chance to find out the most important things that matter to them, and see how those things fit with the online behaviour you have observed during your earlier research.

  If conversation is hard, you can introduce a piece of evidence in a high-level way and then ask if their experience is the same. Always ask open-ended questions at this stage – you are likely to find the answers much more useful.

  Conversation with experts can help you find out about:

  ● Any offline behaviour you haven’t seen: experts have anecdotes as well as hard evidence – you should look at both. If your experts are asked the same thing over and over at parties, it’s either just

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  a conversation starter (their happy nature is very attractive) or they have a targeted view of what people think. You’ll have to take decisions on what you will use and what you won’t.

  ● Things your experts find themselves constantly repeating: if the experts have to say something over and over again, the answers they’re giving must be things people want to know.

  Top tips for

  running a

  discovery session

  ● book a big room

  ● plan the day – include breaks so that people can keep their minds fresh

  ● stand up as much as possible, keep the atmosphere lively

  ● make sure there are lots of whiteboards, pens and sticky notes

  ● ask open-ended questions.

  ● bring snacks

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  Sarah Richards

  After discovery

  You’ll probably end up with a stack of notes and sketches. Work through them as soon as possible after the discovery itself, while your mind is still fresh.

  Try to create some sort of mind map, something visual.

  Put it up on the wall so you can keep it in mind while working (and so your colleagues can all see it too).

  Send an email round to all the participants, thanking them for their time and summing up what the team concluded. This is especially helpful to make sure you’ve understood everything the experts said, and be sure you didn’t misinterpret anything.