RICHTEXT

I’ve been working on a big website redesign project that has got me thinking a lot about the the role of words in user interface design. Words are often an afterthought for designers, but they can help simplify an interface.

Case in point, this label that I spotted on a water heater in the men’s room. It’s hard to read but says: si le temoin ne clignote plus contacter votre installateur, which translates roughly to: if the light is no longer blinking contact your installer.

Huh? As far as I’m concerned, blinking is unclear. Like a flashing yellow traffic light, does it mean stop or proceed with extra caution or what? What the photo doesn’t show is the color of the LED: green. So is blinking green better or worse than full green? And will it turn other colors?

If they could only afford one LED, I would have suggested a red one that is default off with a sticker that says: red light=contact your installer.

Someone, somewhere is wasting money on Google Adwords. This appeared on my browser this morning. I don’t think I’m the target.

Some of my work involves writing collateral and websites in English for French clients. I’m brought in on these projects because I’m an English-language copywriter. But recently I ran into an interesting problem: vocabulary timidity. In both cases, the French clients didn’t want to use perfectly good English words, either out of fear or incomprehension, even though they weren’t the target.

The first was the word “versatility,” which is commonly used in English and is a highly sought after trait in new recruits (it was a HR brochure). Well, the client  wouldn’t approve it because of what the same word means in French: fickleness. Despite my reassurances, they asked me to change it.

The second was “spree.” I used it to describe a shopping trip that was the prize of a contest. The agency asked me to replace it with something that would be “easier to understand” (for them, I guess). Thankfully, a couple links to some magazine articles featuring the word in the headlines seems to have convinced them that a synonym won’t be necessary after all.

These hiccups reminded me of the fact that no matter how fluent you are in a second language, it will always be slightly foreign (as someone who learned French late in life, I know exactly where my clients are coming from). But I highly recommend not letting your fear of the unknown water down your copy. To get strong writing you have to be willing to let the writer use language to its fullest. And sometimes this requires you to work with words that are outside of your comfort zone.

I’m looking for a new car, so the other day I spent some time browsing a few auto maker websites. Overall, I found the quality of the content and interaction to be pretty lacking. Navigation was all over the place. Documents weren’t up to date. Car configurators were either too shallow or turgid. I couldn’t find information I wanted, but there was plenty of content that didn’t interest me. I could go on and on, but I won’t. I was even forced to brave a couple showrooms to pick up some brochures and look at a detail that I couldn’t see on in one of those snazzy 3D car models (like where the hell is the audio-in jack for an iPod).

I won’t because what struck me the hardest was the realization that I hadn’t visited a brand website for personal use in weeks. This was a mini-epiphany.

Sure, I spend a lot of time on the web. A lot of it for work. A good portion for fun. I read. I watch. Tweet and facebook. Shop and catch up with friends. Publish and share. Learn and waste time. But one thing I don’t do, at least not often, is visit a brand’s website.

This got me  thinking: “why?” and “so what?”

Why? Although I’m surrounded by brands who spend wads of money to attract my attention (and some of them do) I don’t go to their website. I do however read what others are saying about this new product or that new service. I may even buy what they’re selling, but through someone else’s website.

I took the time to list, as best I could, everything I’d done on the web recently. The list added another wrinkle. I had in fact visited parts of a few brand sites. I’d bought a computer through a manufacturer’s store. Ditto for an airline ticket. Reserved a rental car. Consulted a train schedule. Looked at a subway map. I’d consulted a tech support forum. These were all sections/services of brand websites that I’d gone to by typing in the url, selected a bookmark or googling. I hadn’t gone to any of them through the front door. I hadn’t been subjected to the marketing message that client’s agonize about on the home page.

So what? How far can I extrapolate on my personal experience? Do other people, other demographics spend more time soaking up the marketing stuff? What does it mean for the marketing content that I write for my clients? Should it command the lion’s share of their attention? Does a brand’s presence on the web boil down to being a service or a subject of conversation, with everything else being just fluff?

This poster was a great excuse to try my new mobile blogging software. I came across it at the Montparnasse train station this morning.

“All our staff is at our disposal and will assist you in your whereabouts wherever you are in this station including the staff of the way-finding desk (near the end of platform 17)”

I was literally stopped in my tracks by the English. I couldn’t help wondering how an English-speaking traveler would react, once they stopped giggling.

The translation is uniquely bad. (I’m not going to start listing everything that’s wrong with it). What struck me the most was how it tries to say more than the original French does while introducing lots of new confusions (it’s along way to the end of platform 17, which you can’t actually access without a commuter ticket). It’s as if the writer was going out his or her way to be extra nice to foreigners but hadn’t ever actually tried to help a hapless voyager.

You clearly get the idea that a decision has been made high up to rectify the quality of traveller assistance (smells like a survey result to me), but you can’t help wondering if the writing skills are a taste of the language skills to be found in the mysterious “way-finding” desk.

And God forbid you’re a non-native English speaker. It must sound even more confusing, while the obsequiousness probably flies over your head.

Ironically, I was on my way to a meeting to discuss the challenges of writing content for a 3-language website.

Lately I’ve giving a lot of thought to the role of writing in experience design.

It started with an article in the NYT that led to an article in the HBR by Tim Brown, CEO of IDEO and a leading thinker in the Design Thinking movement. I then tracked down the author’s blog. It was this post that really caught my eye.

At the end of the first paragraph he asks himself if the cup is a “great product or a great experience.” The question hit a nerve with me.

Does the copy that I write contribute to the experience of the product/company/service/brand being marketed or is it simply part of the way the user experiences the marketing, whether it’s a web site or printed collateral?

I’ll bet most clients think the answer is the latter. But I’m increasingly convinced that it’s the former. In fact, I think the line separating products from their marketing is quickly dissolving. I’d even go so far as to say that the quality of the marketing is an integral feature of the product experience. In fact, marketing is many people’s first experience with the product.

Experience design should, therefore, be extended to include marketing — and the quality of the copy.

Even before it became mainstream, conversation marketing may be on the wane. For the past couple years, “the conversation” has become one of the hottest concepts in marketing — a way of helping companies embrace social media as a platform for promoting their brand, product or service. But apparently it’s almost old hat already. Some leading thinkers are even talking about “beyond the conversation.”

Stop talking

But before we kill of the conversation and move on to something better, I’d like to make a plea for “zero conversation.” Don’t get me wrong; I’m the first to tell my clients that they need to engage with customers. But engagement isn’t limited to conversation.

One commonly overlooked kind of engagement are transactions. I consider a transaction to be when one party put something in and the other takes something out. There are different kinds of transactions: window shopping, information gathering, answering questions, providing advice and, of course, the actual sale. They are the fundamental contact points between the customer and the company. Put end to end, and done properly, they can lead to a conversation, which is the holy grail: an ongoing, mutually nourishing transaction.

Some businesses, however, are so focused on getting to the conversation, that they forget the importance of transactions.

Conversation vs. Transaction

Compare two transactions for the same product that I completed recently.

I needed some camera gear, which I ordered on a Thursday afternoon on the web. It arrived Friday morning. No follow up email. No invitation to read their blog ( they don’t have one). But that’s ok. What they didn’t know was that I was in a hurry, and they came through for me.

Turns out I needed a second set of the exact same gear three days later. This time I was in town, so I stopped by my favorite camera store. I explained what I needed. We talked, discussed the pros and cons. He took my number, called his distributor, placed the order and called me back to tell me that it would be there Wednesday. But it wasn’t. I made a special trip to pick up the order, but not all the items were available. I missed my deadline. Despite the free advice, useful content, pleasing conversation and human warmth, they flubbed the transaction.

The next time I need gear, where do you think I’m going to go?

Lessons to remember

1. Conversations are a two-way street, requiring an effort from both parties. Sometimes I’m game for one, sometimes I just want to get in an out. So pick the right time to have the conversation. A conversation at the wrong moment can come across as boorish, like the guy on the plane who is bent on talking to you when all you ant to do is sleep.
2. Conversations raise expectations. If the transaction is substandard, the conversation can come across as a waste of time or worse, insincere. The customer may end up resenting having put in the effort.

We’ve all been there, right? How not to design a stop sign.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the value of creativity versus clarity. Let me explain.

Many a brief starts with a request for a creative solution to a communications problem, which is often a lack of interest in what the client is selling. It’s not appealing enough, everyone says. What we need is a concept capable of grabbing the target’s attention. We need to talk louder.

But when I start digging into what needs communicating, I often discover confusion. The offering, whether a product or a service, is inelegant, befuddling, underwhelming or all three. It’s full of asterisks, caveats and conditional language. It’s neither clear nor compelling. It needs to be said more clearly.

The problem arises when I try to get the concept to jive with the content. Often the concept, no matter how strong it is, it ends up being a cache-misère because the offering isn’t up to par with the creative.

I know where the problem comes from: everyone prefers to spend time being part of the next great concept rather than knuckling down on defining a clear and compelling offer. It’s the difference between dining out and working out, between spending and saving. One is fun, the other is tedious.

But the effort can be well worth it. So increasingly I’ve been making this plea: the next time you decide to revamp your communications, think about investing in some clarity too. Focus on getting the simple stuff right. Get rid of the lazy language and cut-and-paste verbiage left over from previous product teams. Iron out the incoherences. Tidy up the loose ends. Your offer will be leaner and stronger, which in turn will make the creative stronger.

Once I’ve established a tone and voice for a client in new marketing materials and collateral, it’s time to bring existing documents in line with the new writing style. So I’m often asked to rewrite documents drafted in English by non-English speakers, mainly French ones.

It’s easy to spot copy that’s been written in English, but conceived in French. You can tell by the length of the sentences. The fact that on a French keyboard you have to use the shift key to put a period at the end of a sentence (while commas, semi colons and colons are all lower case) is telling.

So when a client asks me how to  write more concisely in English, the first thing I tell them is shorten clauses to phrases and phrases to single words. Here are some examples:

BEFORE: Company X, which was founded in 1995, is a leader in the field of mobile technology.
AFTER: Founded in 1995, Company X is a leader in mobile technology.

BEFORE: The function of the technology X is to improve the speed of production.
AFTER: Technology X improves production speed.

My second tip is avoid expletives, and I don’t mean swear words. I run into these a lot because they are commonly used in French ( C’est ,il y a). Avoid using them in English. They rob a sentence of its impact:

BEFORE: There are 40 employees in the company.
AFTER: The company has 40 employees.

BEFORE: It is the function of the tool to detect errors .
AFTER: The tool detects errors.

There are many other ways to write lean copy in English. More to come in the future.