Usability of documents is part craft. The typographic tradition, the sense of design - these have their roots in the work of stonecutters and engravers in centuries past. Sometimes, we may even think it's an art: the creation of beautiful objects should be looked at that way, even where they are strictly functional in intent (for which insight I am indebted to William Morris, Mr Arts and Crafts himself).
But the craft itself has elements of science. A lovely sense of proportion in a document is itself functional: if the headings relate to the text harmoniously and consistently, for example, the finished article will be easier to grasp, and simpler to use. These effects are real and measurable.
A recent example shows the strength of simple touches. In reproducing a second copy of a booklet with a different cover identical text, the firm that was supplying us bound the booklet slightly differently, reduced the line feed fractionally and altered the line breaks in one paragraph (to avoid a "widow" - a single word left alone on the last line). The end result was a lot less white space around the text and a denser, more fraught paragraph of text, which was trying to tell a complex story.
The changes were subtle: even our team hadn't spotted them initially. Somewhat to our surprise, the earlier tests of this complex text had led to no problems. But when we tested the new version, the results were markedly worse than before. We compared everything - time of day, profiles of test respondents - before looking again at the booklet. When I spotted these barely perceptible changes, I shook my head ruefully. How many times had I written that small changes can make a big difference? And here was the indisputable truth.
The journeyman craft element: checking the space you have, blank area, letter size - these may be the skills of the letter-cutter, but they will still fix an awful lot of your document problems!
No comments:
Post a Comment