Letting Go of the Words

Most web sites include forms – to log in, to register, to sign up for newsletters, to buy stuff, and so on. If you’ve already read my book on web content, Letting Go of the Words, you know that I cover many aspects of writing for the web, but I don’t say much about forms.

Don’t despair. Now there’s a companion book that covers all you need to know about creating great web forms: Forms that Work – Designing Web Forms for Usability by Caroline Jarrett and Gerry Gaffney (Morgan Kaufmann / Elsevier).

Continue reading Get Forms that Work, a companion book to Letting Go of the Words

Three web sites that focus on usability and clear communication have recently featured Letting Go of the Words.

• Tim Kiernan, Tom Brinck, and I talk about writing for the web and other aspects of creating successful web sites in an hour-long discussion. This interview gives you points and examples from many parts of Letting Go of the Words. It’s the September 2008 interview in Tim and Tom’s Design Critique podcast series.
• Also in September 2008, Gerry Gaffney and I spent a half hour talking about writing for the web, the book, technical communication, and what the future holds for technical communicators. Listen to this interview on Gerry’s UX Podcast.
• If you would rather read than listen, the September 2008 issue of Andy Goodman’s newsletter, free-range thinking, is all about Letting Go of the Words.

Enjoy these and send me your questions and comments.

People have asked to see samples from Letting Go of the Words before buying it. That’s a fair request, so I’ve posted two chapters. They are in PDF because you want to see them as they are in the book:

• Chapter 1 Content! Content! Content!
  (PDF, 1.3MB)
• Chapter 5 Writing Information, Not Documents
  (PDF, 2.5MB)

For the titles of the other chapters and interludes, see the Table of Contents on the page About the Book.

If you like these excerpts, you’ll love the whole book. Use one of the links in the box on the right to buy the book.

I welcome comments and questions. Contact me

Glad that you stopped by. This blog is the web site for my new book on writing for the web – Letting Go of the Words (Morgan Kaufmann / Elsevier, June 2007). From here, you can

• find out more about the book
• contact me to ask questions or make general comments
• read more about writing and testing web sites
• comment on articles that are already on this site

I’ve put up a few articles about usability testing – an important part of the process of writing successful web content. I’ll be adding more on usability testing as well as planning, organizing, designing, and actually writing web content that works.

Please join the conversation. Sign up for the RSS feed. Ask questions. Send comments.

Ginny Redish

Too many usability tests focus only on finding information – not on how the information itself works for people.

Testing “finding” (navigation) is critical – but not enough. People come to web sites for the information (content) not for the pleasure of hunting for that content.

We have to test finding to be sure we can get our site visitors through that part quickly and easily. But we also have to learn whether we have the right information for them, organized in a way that is logical for them, written in a style that is easy for them to understand, and presented on the web page in ways that make them want to work with the information.

Continue reading Usability Testing: Be sure to test content as well as navigation

Early models – academic research; validation

Early usability testing (in the 1980s, mostly for software interfaces) had its origins in two traditions that called for large numbers (and therefore much money). First, it was modeled on academic psychology studies where having enough people to reach statistical validity was a critical factor. Second, the goal was usually “validation” – testing once at the end just before release with the goal of showing that all was well.

Continue reading A bit of history of usability testing – and why it’s not so expensive any more

The list is long.

• You do not need a finished product. Don’t wait. Test early. Test often. Start testing with the old site. Test with paper prototypes. Be informal. Just do it.

• You do not need a special space. If you have access to a usability lab, great! It’s wonderful to have cameras in place, someone to run the tapes, a separate room for lots of observers. But it’s not necessary.

  You can do usability testing in a conference room, a hotel room, your kitchen, or the person’s cubicle. A few years ago, I had a wonderful experience testing a web site for pilots in a hangar at an air show.

Continue reading What do you not need for a usability test?

A useful usability test has six main attributes:

• Real issues. You have thought about what you want to learn and planned the test to give you answers to your questions.

• Real people. The people you ask to try out the site represent (at least some of) the site visitors whom you want to succeed with your site.

• Real tasks. The participants in your usability test say the tasks you ask them to do are realistic.

• An open mind to collect real data. You watch, listen, ask neutral questions, and take notes so that you have data about what people do and say and think while they are working with your web site. You put away your ego and your biases so that you really see and hear your web users.

• Useful insights. You review and think about and use the data to figure out what you learned – what is working well and what is not working well on the site.

• Fixes. You use what you learned to keep what is working well and improve what could be better.

All of this does not need to take a long time, cost a lot of money, or be very formal.

Usability testing

• challenges your assumptions
• resolves arguments
• saves your site visitors from pain, frustration, and failure
• saves you and your organization time, effort, money, and reputation

Don’t assume. Test!

It’s natural to assume that everyone is like us. But “if it works for me, it’ll work for them” often isn’t true. You almost certainly are not typical of your site visitors:

• You know what the site is trying to say. They are coming to it from outside your context.
• You know the organization’s vocabulary. They probably don’t.
• You know how parts of the site fit together. They probably don’t.
• They may be much more casual, infrequent, less motivated visitors than you are.

Continue reading Why should you do usability testing?