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Plain Language and Usability

Plain Language Defined

Plain language is a sister discipline to usability. The most widely accepted definition of plain language goes like this --

Writing in plain language means writing so your intended audience can

find:

• what they need
• understand it, and
• use it to fulfill their needs.

Sound familiar? I’ve had usability folks tell me that’s exactly how they define usability.

So it puzzles me when I see a site that someone has obviously designed with care that’s full of confusing content, obscure headings and links, and content that doesn’t address the reader’s concerns. Why go to the trouble to develop an effective design if you fill it with junk?

 

Let’s look at an example.

I looked at a page about the US Census, entitled “Questions You May Have.” The title is followed by a list of questions with answers. Here’s one pair:

Is there another way to get the form other than the mail?

Be Counted forms are census forms that are available at various community locations for use by people who either did not receive a form in the mail or whose information was not collected on any other form. Be Counted forms are available in English, Spanish, Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese and Russian. These forms can be picked up in various community locations and mailed back in the attached postage-paid envelope.

 

So what’s wrong with this?

First, it includes a lot of information the question (and supposedly the questioner) didn’t ask. And as is common in the government’s writing, it fails to address the reader. Most importantly, it doesn’t answer the question, except to give the vague instruction to pick up a form at a “community location.” What’s a community location?

 

Why didn’t they just say:

Yes. You can pick up a form and a postage-paid return envelope at your local post office. That would have saved a lot of space, and served the reader’s needs more effectively.

Examples like this are multiplied hundreds of thousands of times on federal web sites. If you care enough to test the usability of your design, why not test the readability and usefulness of your content as well?

 

Annetta Cheek Bio:

Dr. Cheek received a PhD in Anthropology from the University of Arizona. She spent most of her Federal Career writing and implementing regulations until the early 90s when she became interested in the Plain Language movement. She spent four years as the chief plain language expert on Vice President Gore’s National Partnership for Reinventing Government. She is currently the Chair of the board of the private sector Center for Plain Language. She works as a consultant providing plain language training and writing. She was instrumental in getting the U.S. Congress to introduce legislation mandating plain language in federal documents.

How Many is Enough

How many options should I include in a rating scale?

There’s been a longstanding debate over how many response options rating scales should have. Some people swear by 5, others prefer 3 or 10. The debate will rage on, but here are some thoughts on determining the best size for your rating scales.

Fewer vs More Options

With more options,

• The scale conveys more information.

• Respondents can better communicate the exact direction and intensity of their attitude.

• The scale is more likely to include an option that corresponds exactly to the respondent’s attitude.

However, with too many options,

• Respondents may have a difficult time differentiating the meaning of each individual option. As a result, they may pick randomly from several reasonable responses, rather than carefully considering the best response.

• Respondents with less familiarity with the topic may struggle with their response.

Therefore, the best guideline is to include as many options as respondents can distinguish. In general, that optimal number seems to be between 5 and 9 points, depending on the topic covered and the experience of the respondents (e.g., Alwin, 1997; Krosnick and Fabrigar, 1997).

Odd vs Even Scales

Odd-numbered scales have a neutral middle, while even-numbered scales do not. Without a neutral option, respondents will have to decide which way they lean. Usability-related scales typically offer a neutral midpoint, but some practitioners prefer no midpoint.

This is particularly relevant to bipolar scales (with opposite anchors on either end), where there is likely to be a natural neutral option in the middle. For unipolar scales (ranging from a zero value to some positive value, such as "never, rarely, occasionally, frequently, always"), there might not be a natural middle. However, respondents consider the position of the response options in determining their response, and may consider a middle option to be "about average."

The research has mixed results about the impact of having a midpoint. All agree that if there is a midpoint, people will choose it. However, the experts don’t agree on whether having a midpoint affects the results (see, for example, Krosnick, 1991 and Schuman and Presser, 1981).

To help decide, it’s important to consider the context of the survey. In some cases, it’s important to know whether respondents lean one way or another (like political polls). However, for usability questionnaires, it is usually reasonable for respondents to have a neutral opinion; if so, it is appropriate to offer it as an option.

References

Alwin, D.F. (1997). Feeling Thermometers Versus 7-Point Scales: Which Are Better? Sociological Methods and Research, 25(3), pp 318 – 340.

Fox, J.E. and Fricker, S.S. (2009). Designing ratings scales for questionnaires. Presented at the Usability Professionals’ Association Annual Meeting, Portland, OR, June 11, 2009.

Krosnick, J.A. (1991). Response strategies for coping with the cognitive demands of attitude strength in surveys. In J.M. Tanur (ed.) Questions About Questions: Inquiries into the Cognitive Bases of Surveys. New York: Russell Sage Foundation, pp. 177 – 203.

Krosnick, J.A. and Fabrigar, L.R. (1997). Designing rating scales for effective measurement in surveys. In Lyberg, Biemer, Collins, de Leeuw, Dippo, Schwarz, Trewin (Eds.) Survey Measurement and Process Quality. John Wiley and Sons, Inc.

Schuman, H. and Presser, S. (1981). Questions and Answers in Attitude Surveys. New York, NY: Academic Press.

The views expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the policies of the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Bio: Jean Fox has been at the Bureau of Labor Statistics since 1998. She conducts usability design and evaluation work on tools for data collection and dissemination and promotes usability whenever she can. She wishes to thank Scott Fricker of BLS, who co-authored a paper from which many of these ideas were drawn.

Why Would They Do That

But Why Did They Do It That Way?

So far we have had an assortment of blogs including Section 508, diverse routes in becoming a usability specialist, outsourcing usability testing, and Likert Scales. Quite an assortment of topics and I hope they have been minimally entertaining if not educational. In an effort not to become our own statistic, I am going to fill in as a guest blogger.

With so many topics that I could possibly choose from, because we all have interacted with poor designs, I find myself at a loss for words. Believe me, I am always saying to myself - 'why would someone do that, what in the world were they thinking?' And I don't just save that question for Web sites but lots of things I interact with.

Pretty soon I will have to change my car clock because the time will change. Of course, every 6 months I make a mental note of how I changed the clock time but it never seems to stay noted. As a result, I am always looking in the owner's manual and thinking to myself why can't there be a button with a clock on it?

Of course being a Federal employee, I have to interact with various Web applications to enter my leave time, check my pay and do all those things we do to keep informed about our professional careers. Of course, they all require different passwords and of course I forget. And of course there isn't a way to let them know I forgot the password like Yahoo, Google, etc do. Then I think, who am I supposed to contact to get a new one because there isn't a link or even a name or number to call. And of course I say to myself - who did this?

I watched a usability test last week and the site had an optional secure sign-in. So I was watching and listening to the participant's comments. Now he knew that he had never signed up for this optional service. But he made comments about what ID/password combination he might enter that he already has used other places. The most important comment he said was "Why should I do this?"  Of course it was not clear why anyone would use this feature. And even though the help and registration information are below the secure sign-in, they don't look like they are part of the process. And of course I asked myself "why don't they tell the users what they receive if they sign up for this optional service?" and I wonder how many registered users they have.

So with this said, I realize every day how resilient humans are when they interact with various systems. But I also wonder why we don't make it easier for them!

Author's Bio

Susanne Furman has been a usability engineer for almost a decade. She earned a Ph.D. in Applied Experimental Psychology, Human Factors from George Mason University. She manages the usability program and Usability.gov at the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services.

 

Scales & Data Analyses

Rating Scales

Usability professionals often rely on questionnaires to collect data as part of a usability evaluation.  We often use ratings scales as a way to facilitate data collection and analysis.  Rating scales provide response options along some continuum.  Rating scale responses are designed to have little overlap between neighboring options.¹ The resulting data are generally ordinal in nature, which means that there is a logical order to the answers but the distance between values is not known.

There are many types of rating scales, and I’ll spend a little time on the most popular in the usability field, starting with Likert scales today.

 

Likert Scales

Probably the most well-known rating scales are "Likert Scales." Rensis Likert (actually pronounced lick-urt) originally developed his scale as a way to combine items to compute an overall score related to attitudes. His scales have three characteristics²:

(1) The response options are evenly-spaced,

(2) The options are "bipolar" and symmetric (meaning that the endpoints of the scale are opposite, as with a typical "agree" to "disagree" scale), and

(3) Multiple items (questions) are combined to get an overall scale "score."

Usability questionnaires are more likely to use what are technically called Likert items, with characteristics (1) and (2) above, but not (3). For example, the questionnaire might include just one question on satisfaction and one other on ease of use.

Further, some usability questionnaires use Likert-type items, which do not meet any of the three characteristics listed above, but still present responses along some continuum, such as a scale of "helpfulness," including "Extremely helpful," "Helpful," and "Not at all helpful."

Analyzing Likert Scale Data

I’ll provide more information about analyzing rating data in the future, but for now, it’s important to remember that Likert items and Likert-type items generate ordinal data, but not the interval data required to use parametric statistics. Therefore, it is better to rely on non-parametric statistics to analyze these data.

True Likert scales combine ratings from multiple items, which can have some advantages. Combined ratings have better reliability and validity than single items³. In addition, you can use parametric statistics on these combined scores, making analysis a little bit easier (Carifio and Perla, 2007)⁴.

The views expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the policies of the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

_____________________________________________________________________________

¹ Krosnick, J. A., Judd, C. M., and Wittenbrink, B. (2005). The measurement of attitudes. In D. Abarracin, B. Johnson, and M. Zanna (Eds.) The Handbook of Attitudes and Attitude Change: Basic Principles. Hillsdale, NH: Lawrence Erlbaum.

² Likert, R. (1932). A technique for the measurement of attitudes. Archives of Psychology, 140, 1-55.

³ Trochim, W. (2000). The Research Methods Knowledge Base, 2nd Edition. Atomic Dog Publishing, Cincinnati, OH.

⁴ Carifio, J. and Perla, R. (2007). Ten common misunderstandings, misconceptions, persistent myths and urban legends about Likert scale and Likert Response Formats and their Antidotes. Journal of Social Sciences, 3(3), pp. 106 – 116.

__________________________________________________________________

Author's Bio

Jean Fox has been a Research Psychologist at the Bureau of Labor Statistics since 1998.  At BLS, she conducts a variety of usability activities including usability testing, expert reviews, and focus groups.  She is also very involved in the User Experience Task Force of the US Federal Government's Web Managers Council.  Previously, she worked as a Usability Consultant for American Institutes for Research.  She earned her Ph.D. in applied experimental psychology from George Mason University. She earned her Master's degree in Human Factors Engineering from Virginia Tech, and a Bachelor's degree, also in Human Factors Engineering, from Tufts University.

 

Why You Should Outsource Usability Testing

By: Josh Walsh

Small companies  should consider outsourcing the facilitation of their usability testing projects.  On the surface, it makes sense to have a designer/developer who has a deep understanding of the project be in charge of usability testing, but in fact this can cause serious problems.

A developer will always look at the product you are testing from the inside out.  They have internalized the entire product and know it inside and out.  They are more likely to ask “leading questions” or bias the evaluation of the data, even subconsciously.

It may be appealing to delegate usability testing to a graphic designer on the project, but this also has issues.  Artists minds are naturally focuses on aesthetics and many usability problems arise from confusing visual elements.

Most importantly, involving your development team in the facilitation of usability tests can cause a conflict of interest.  Often problems arise that are difficult to implement.  When a developer/designer is involved, the importance of these problems tend to get pushed down the priority list or worse, ignored completely.  There is often something “cooler” to work on, or they do not understand just how large the problem actually is.

During review, problems may dismissed with an excuse: “the product works fine, it’s just not as intuitive as it could be.”  

The Ideal Situation
In my experience, the best solution is to delegate usability testing to someone outside of the development process.  In an enterprise, this may mean involving a customer support person, or even hiring someone for that job.

For small companies, I always recommend outsourcing usability testing to a 3rd party who has a genuine interest in the success of the product.  This ensures that quality tests are established and the results are unbiased.

Josh Walsh Bio:

Josh Walsh is the founder and User Experiencologist at Designing Interactive, a small web application development firm in Cleveland, OH. He spends his days evangelizing UX practices through blogging, speaking and setting a good example with his own work.

You can read more of his writing at http://www.designinginteractive.com or contact him at jwalsh@designinginteractive.com

Diverse Routes to Becoming a Usability Specialist

There are many paths to becoming a usability specialist.  I took the direct route, studying it in college and graduate school.  Other people take a more indirect route, coming from fields as diverse as computer science, technical writing, and industrial design.  They may take courses available through numerous universities and private companies, as well as the U.S. Government-run Web Manager University.

I currently work at the Bureau of Labor Statistics, in the Office of Survey Methods Research.  As the name suggests, we focus heavily on designing the surveys BLS uses to collect data.  However, we also work on applications used to analyze and disseminate our data.  As with the usability field at large, members of our group have diverse backgrounds and areas of expertise, including survey methodology, statistics, and experimental psychology.  By working together, we can analyze problems from different perspectives and develop better designs than if we all had the same background.

I enjoy working with and learning from such a diverse group of professionals at BLS and beyond.  Regardless of our individual experiences, our common goal is to create products that are easy to use.  We share our experiences and lessons learned in usability publications and conferences, and now in many Web 2.0 arenas.  We can learn to adapt tools and techniques from other fields to work in our usability efforts. 

This professional diversity of the field can also be difficult.  Tools and techniques that work well in one situation may not work with other domains, types of organizations, or user populations.  In addition, each specialty area has its own unique vocabulary that may need to be defined or interpreted for a larger audience.

Despite these challenges, it is exciting to be working in a field with so much diversity.  There is a lot we can learn from one another.  In this blog, I hope we can start a dialog about issues facing usability specialists in government organizations.  I plan to share some of the challenges and lessons learned I have experienced at BLS, and I’m looking forward to learning from the other bloggers and participants. 

The views expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the policies of the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Jean Fox BIO:

Jean Fox has been a Research Psychologist at the Bureau of Labor Statistics since 1998.  At BLS, she conducts a variety of usability activities including usability testing, expert reviews, and focus groups.  She is also very involved in the User Experience Task Force of the US Federal Government's Web Managers Council.  Previously, she worked as a Usability Consultant for American Institutes for Research.  She earned her Ph.D. in applied experimental psychology from George Mason University. She earned her Master's degree in Human Factors Engineering from Virginia Tech, and a Bachelor's degree, also in Human Factors Engineering, from Tufts University.

Its Not Just for the Blind

If you ask most Web developers about Section 508 they will respond with something about their site being accessible to the blind. Most people don’t realize that 508-accessibility is not just about making Web sites accessible to the blind. Section 508 is about removing barriers and making Web site information accessible and usable to all.

In addition to blindness, some of the conditions to be considered include:

·         Motor control

·         Cognitive issues

·         Low vision

·         Color blindness

·         Hearing impairments

Take a few minutes, look at your Web site and consider the following scenarios.

• A person has tremors brought on by early stage Parkinson’s. This person finally finds some good information on early stage Parkinson’s; but the Web site has fly-out menus and they can’t get to the information because every time they try to click on the menu, tremors move their hand and the menu goes away.  
• A person with dyslexia is looking for information on a Web site. This person has learned to establish patterns and cues to navigate Web sites. The person has taken some time to focus on the patterns on the home page; they click on a link and on the next page the navigation moves to another part of the page, and the primary navigation cues change. This person now has to study the page again to determine the new navigation pattern.
• A person with low vision needs may be relying on the option to enlarge text within the browser and not be using a screen magnifier. Often these users encounter Web sites that have a set font rather than ones they can resize. In this case, the user will never be able to enlarge the text. 
• A color blind person visits a Web site. This web site has some very nice soft colored text on a pastel background. All a person with color blindness likely sees is a mass of color, no text all.
• A hearing impaired person visits a Web site to view a late-breaking story. The news story is a Webcast of a talking head and the video is not captioned; this user can not gather any information from this Web site and must look elsewhere.  

If any of these scenarios apply to your Web site, you may want to consider making changes. After all, your Web site is the gateway to the information that is most important to you and your audience. Aside from being the law, it makes sense to ensure the site is accessible and usable to all.

 

By Lisa Kruppa

Bio: Lisa Kruppa is a Web Content Specialist for the Department of Health & Human Servcies. She has been involved with Section 508/Accessibility as it relates to the Web since 2001.

Usability.gov Introductory Blog

You may have thought it was a recent craze but blogging began in the mid-1990s. It never really exploded until the terrorist attack on September 11, 2001.

There are more than 4.12 million blogs but most of these only last only a couple of months. People under 30 created over 90% of the blogs and over half of the bloggers are women.

Of course blogging requires a new language, such as blogrolls (a list of links to Web pages the author finds worthwhile or interesting), trackbacks and pingbacks (these provide a method of notification between Web sites). And to keep things clearer there are pretty permalinks and post slugs.

There are sites for the 100 best blogs for school librarians. There are recommended blogs for today. There are music blogs, poetry blogs, good ranting blogs, of course political blogs and even knitting blogs.

Well we decided to get with the times and to provide more interactivity with our users. So we are going to blog here on usability.gov. We have invited several guest bloggers who are experts in various areas of usability. Just to pique your interest we will have experts blogging about web metrics analytics, 508 accessibility, creation of surveys, online selling, usability topics, and more.