Iain Broome

Summer hiatus

Notes on a busy few weeks that explain why posting to the blog briefly slowed to a stop.

I'm just writing and publishing this post to note and acknowledge the gap in posting since sharing the last newsletter.

It's all straightforward enough. There are only so many hours in the day and Clear Language club is currently a side project to, you know, my actual paying work.

Things I have had to prioritise include:

recovering from an operation
a challenging few months of freelance work with NHS England
making an audio documentary every day for 20-odd days
going on an actual family holiday

All this is to say that perhaps summer was a bad time to launch – or extend, I suppose – a new project. And I am sorry about that.

With both autumn and indeed winter, I'm afraid, on the horizon, the pace of publishing here should pick up. Starting tomorrow.

37. Get the message Newsletter

Newsletter

Plain language principles, writing texts and emails, and designing with people around difficult subjects.

Screenshot of guidance on GOV.UK, the text is small and difficult to read, apart from the heading: Planning and writing text messages and emails — Handy guidance on writing text messages and emails from GOV.UK

Co-designing with people around difficult subject areas Link post

Inclusive design

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.

Your documentation is still in your Mum’s filing cabinet Link post

Content design

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 Of course, when guidance was updated, that local copy was soon out of date.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.

Giving pages a clear shape by using headings Link post

Writing

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.

Design decision template for Confluence Link post

Templates

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.

Posts by Iain Broome