RICHTEXT

I was taking a break from doing some tedious proofreading when I came across this blog post. It reminded me of just how tough a language English can be for non-English speakers. Just in case our spelling isn’t weird enough, how about the punctuation?

From Dweebist

Eurostar’s website gave me a scare this morning. I logged on to check a reservation that I made a couple weeks ago. The trip is tomorrow. After entering the reference number and my email, the system told me the reservation had been cancelled. Yikes.

A couple frantic calls to customer support (my penny) revealed that you can’t consult reservations that include a train ticket and hotel reservation. My reservation was in the system, but I can’t see it.

But instead of telling me this, the error message says the reservation is cancelled.

Just how many phone calls from customers like me are they going to field before they change the 10-word message? Is it a ploy to get me to call their customer service number (do they split the profits with the phone company)? I don’t know. But what I do know is that I’ll think twice before booking a hotel along with my next train ticket.

I’m fascinated by accusations of exploding iPhones in France. Are we witnessing the birth of an urban legend or is this a real product quality problem?

Everyone has an opinion on whether Apple is handling it correctly or not.

But what I find fascinating is how similar the reports are to the accusations made back in 2005 about  faulty cruise control systems. That year several drivers said that their mild-mannered Renault family sedans mysteriously transformed into uncontrollable cruise missiles. Braking, cutting the ignition, pulling the handbrake wouldn’t stop the car. These problems only seem to have happened in France. And oddly the news reports just faded from view. No headline court case. No class action suit.

Fast forward to 2009. Exploding iPhones are everywhere in the news in France. the government has launched an investigation. So has the European Commission. But why isn’t it happening in other countries. The reports coming out of Britiain and the States mention overheating but not exploding screens.

I’m eager to see how this plays out.

A brochure project came off the rails the other day because the printer told us he didn’t like to print pages with the dimensions we asked for. It was technically possible, but his “policy” wouldn’t allow it. And he couldn’t assemble the pages in the order we wanted. Didn’t make sense to him. We had to redesign the structure and shape of the brochure.

Of course, this isn’t a real story. This kind of thing never happens with print. Now re-read the paragraph, substituting “IT department” for “printer” and “web site” for “brochure,” and you’ll understand why I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about IT departments.

I’ve been working recently on several internal website projects directed at employees and involving content and content strategy. Needless to say I’ve been spending a fair amount of time with corporate IT. I’ve decided that they are the dotted-line rainmaker of any project. I don’t care what anyone says. The best content strategies, the best wireframes,  the best functionalities, the best site structures can all wither and die in seconds when IT utters those fateful worlds: we can’t do that.

And they always do, or at least they always seem to. I fantasize about IT guys saying: “That looks great. It’s about time someone changed the site. Sure, it’s a departure from what we’re used to doing, but times have changed and so have users. We’d be proud to be associated with such a great web site.”

Instead they throw up road blocks and bandy around jargon to scare project sponsors. They explain that they can’t stream video. That they can’t provide a comments function. That they can’t embed objects. That page templates are coded in stone. That the site map can’t be changed. They wield the list of no-nos like a whip, until we relent and agree to scale back the project and our ambitions.

But if you listen closely to the whistling of the whip you can pick out something else. First, you can hear hidden pleas for recognition. Maintaining an IT system is a thankless job to begin with. Why would they gladly accept the hassle of implementing a change, espcially when they weren’t involved in the project from the beginning? Also, you can hear nervous discomfort. Often the IT department sees the intranet as a library, not as a community center. It’s not a noisy gathering place, it’s a quiet repository of information. It’s as if the library’s value lay in the Dewey decimal system, not the ideas contained in the books. When they say “we can’t do that” they’re actually saying “we’re not comfortable doing that and we don’t see why we should.”

So on my next project I’ve made a promise to myself to get IT involved right away (even if they don’t want too). Also, we’re going to stop seeing them as printers — and hopefully they’ll  stop seeing themselves as librarians.

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.