Plain language principles, writing texts and emails, and designing with people around difficult subjects.
I have just started working with the brill Charley Pothecary who is bringing some excellent user research and service design nous to the project. In this post, she shares some good, practical suggestions for running inclusive research sessions. These are especially useful if you often work with people who are vulnerable or who have experienced trauma.
This post by Geri Reid questions the traditional folder-based approach to documentation:
For years we’ve treated documentation like a filing cabinet. Put the thing in the right folder and give it a label. But much as it pains me, people rarely wander through my carefully crafted hierarchy, admiring the taxonomy. They search, skim, follow links. And the second finding information feels like work, they’ve checked out and just asked someone.
I have to say, this was exactly my experience on a recent guidance project. Users would often find the document they wanted and make a direct copy to keep locally. Of course, when guidance was updated, that local copy was soon out of date.
For these users, knowing where to quickly find guidance was important. To heck with the shared folder structure! And for those times where they couldn't find the right guidance document at all, they would simply ask a colleague for the answer.
Needless to say, I learnt a lot from this experience. It's important to organise documents in a clear, sensible way that people can easily navigate. But don't think for a second that users will or want to carefully wander through your folder structure to find what they want.
You may have read plenty of articles that explain why you should use headings in your content. This piece by Steve Barnett comes at it from a more technical standpoint to show how headings give pages a clear shape.
If you don't already know a little code, I really recommend learning the basics of HMTL. It will help you understand how a page is structured in code and improve how you work with a developer. You can work with them to make sure your content is clear and accessible, including your headings.
Earlier this week, I shared an article on documenting design decisions. If you and your organisation use Confluence to manage all of the things, you might want to take a look at its very own design decision template.
Use our design decision template to organize your ideas and explain your design solution. Once you’ve brainstormed creative options, use the template to exchange feedback with your design team.
That last bit is worth thinking about, actually.
It doesn't have to be Confluence, but a tool that other people can easily see and contribute to is really important. The alternative? A document that festers deep in some long-neglected folder structure, never to be used by anyone but you.
We've all been there. Come one. Gets your docs out. Make them easy to find.
My primary advice on AI is to be highly sceptical of anyone who tells you they know exactly what they are doing. Or what the future looks like. Instead, read posts like this one by Matt Tyas, Head of Design at the Co-op, which explains how an experienced team is talking, sharing and learning about AI together.
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