52 weeks of UX A discourse on the process of designing for real people

This week’s guest author is Karen McGrane, an accomplished user experience and interaction design consultant, with 15 years of professional experience in customer research, information architecture, and content strategy.

I remember the first time I heard the phrase “information architecture.”

It was in the technical communication program at RPI, in a conversation with the department chair about my enthusiasm for combining my love of clear writing, making outlines, and labeling my file folders with what I was then just discovering: a whole new world of spatial design, how people translate cognitive information into physical tasks, how visual and tactile cues help make verbal communication more clear.

She smiled and said: “You should look into this new field called information architecture.”

Uniting the physical and mental

Information architecture! Could there be a better metaphor to capture the intersection between the linguistic and the physical, the cognitive and the tactile, how people think and what people do? (If you disagree, I’ll point out that this conversation took place in 1996.) I, for one, was hooked on the potential of bringing these two spheres together.

This convergence, of course, is the continuing promise of UX: to meld cognitive tasks and physical tasks into one seamless experience. Douglas Englebart, working in the 60’s, knew that to “augment human intellect” would require improvements to both hardware and software interfaces. Donald Norman has called it “cognitive engineering.” Even William Gibson’s vision of “cyberspace” melded information systems with physical actions.

But the center cannot hold

I know lots of people who are good at communicating with words and labels and expressing things verbally. I know lots of other people who are good at design and motion and making things tactile. I know it’s rare to find people who are great—truly great—at both.

It’s only natural that as the user experience field has evolved, we’ve developed depth and specialization. From a business standpoint, narrow focus is often the key to success. If you’re seen as an expert in a particular area, you’ll get more work than if you present yourself as a jack-of-all-trades.

Unfortunately, this natural movement toward more specialization results in fault-lines within the UX disciplines. Not a day goes by without seeing different factions fighting it out over who has the better approach to designing for humans.

I do not understand what some people within the interaction design community hope to achieve by treating information architecture like it’s the enemy. And I do not understand why some people insist that content strategy must destroy or overtake other disciplines. And then there are people who dismiss the user experience field altogether, suggesting that our roles are unnecessary overhead on projects.

The in-fighting has to stop. We must kill the enemy within. The real enemy is out there, in the vast realm of people who still don’t get user experience.

You don’t have to declare a major

We need to embrace the idea that UX is necessarily multi-disciplinary—not just within different communities of practice, but within individual skill sets. People are surprised to hear that I speak at conferences about content strategy and yet still do interaction design work for clients. Why can’t I love them both? I loved them both when I called them information architecture.

So that’s why I hope that everyone working in this space feels like they have the potential to develop skills in multiple areas. You can be an interaction designer and a content strategist. You can be a user researcher and a visual designer too! You can even still be an information architect.

I’m not saying that everyone will be great at all of these things. Getting good at even a couple of them is a life’s work. But we need to embrace the tension and contradictions that make our field unique. We need more people who are truly great at communicating using both verbal and physical models. The user experience field should work to unite these practices, not divide them.

Recently I was reading a list of copywriting guidelines on how to make web pages attract and keep a reader’s attention. The list contained familiar items you’ve probably seen before: write a catchy headline, talk benefits vs features, and focus on a single message instead of many.

One recommendation, however, rang false to me: keep your text short. The author recommends this because “People don’t read on the Web”. Instead, the author claimed, they “scan” text instead. 

There are several problems with this assumption, however. First, people do actually read on the Web…scanning is simply the first step in the process. Second, short text can be just as poorly written as long text (and often is). Third, people actually seek out and enjoy reading longer texts. 

People Scan First, then Read

The fact that people scan when on the Web has little to do with length of text. The act of scanning, or glancing through and quickly examining headlines, subheadlines and other emphasized text, is not a substitute for reading: it’s merely the first step of reading. People scan quickly to find the good stuff…it’s the most efficient way to find it. 

Despite feeling overwhelmed, we are incredibly efficient at finding information on the Web. Once the scanning bears fruit and we find a headline delivering the promise we’re looking for, we slow down and begin reading word for word for more detail. We dive in. We might not read long…only long enough to find an answer…but we are “reading” at this point. And if the piece is longer, such as a piece from a newspaper or magazine, we might read all of it.

It’s not so much that people don’t read, it’s that we start by scanning large amounts of information for the good stuff. Then, and only then, do we dive in and read. 

Text Length doesn’t Equal Quality 

For a bad writer short copy is easier to write than long copy. They simply stop writing sooner. All things being equal short text is preferable to long text, but since when are all things equal?

It is important how short text gets short. If text is kept short merely to stay within the guideline, chances are it doesn’t do all that it needs to do. But if text is short as the result of careful writing and revision, with a strict adherence to saying all that is necessary as briefly as possible, then your text won’t just be short, it will also be good. (and thus read)

Short copy shouldn’t be a goal, it should be an ideal. Like Einstein’s famous quip “make it as simple as possible, but not simpler”, in writing we want to “write as concisely as possible, but don’t leave anything out”. 

People Enjoy Longer Texts

Finally, people often enjoy longer texts. Given the choice between a well-written short piece of text and a well-written longer piece of text, many would choose the longer version because it naturally has more of what the reader wants to know. It answers more questions. It goes in depth and provides context and detail. People who are truly interested in a topic will read everything they can about it. How often do you hear people say things like Sunday is my time to sit down with the paper (or an iPad) and read what I didn’t have time to read before? 

Additionally, e-readers like the Kindle, the Nook, and the iPad are exploding in use, while services like Instapaper also suggest that people desire to read longer texts with less distraction. In this way longer text can become a powerful differentiator…if you are telling an interesting story and your competitor isn’t then you’ve got an upper hand. Take, for example, the power of writing in Groupon.    

In conclusion, explaining people’s behavior on the web as simply “scanning” is too simplistic. Short text can be as poorly written as long text, and in some cases short text is less desirable than longer, well-written text.

Writing well often means writing short text. But writing short text doesn’t mean you’re writing well.