Designing the Written Word for Better Usability
UX designing is not simply about colors, boxes, elements, and patterns—words, yes words also play a very significant role when it comes to the usability of a product or a feature or a simple web property.
A written word provides the context and also the understanding of the scenario to a common user—remember, new users of your product or for that matter new to internet might not have the complete understanding of the symbols, icons or signs—written word is something that could provide the ease which every user is looking for while using a particular product or feature.
Understanding the importance of these words is one thing but how do you go about designing these words so that they convey the intended meaning and also get the users to do what you want them to do.
Here are some points that you can do while designing the words:
While taking user surveys and interviews, jot down what kind of language they are using—what kind of words they use to describe the same terms. Sometimes, a different set of people use diff a rent kind of connotations to explain the same things.
While you are doing usability testing, also perform the understandability test—are the words that you are using in your design explain the customers what they need to do and where there are while using product? If not, try different versions or options.
If you are involved in conducting guerrilla testing for your product, as the customers if there are any words that confuse them—ask them to mark those words in red. Also, get to know what kind of words facilitate better usage of the product or the prototype.
Obviously, the abovementioned points are just examples where you could very specifically get to know what kind of words you need to use; however, it always make sense to simplify the language and be as specific as you can so that there is no confusion in the minds of the users.