Dumbing down (or is it actually removing barriers?)

As part of Services Week I gave a talk on ‘Content design: writing for everything’ where I went through the usual stuff:

• accessibility
• plain English
• writing for everyone
• user needs
• how people read
• the barriers people have to accessing content

I talked about user stories and putting ourselves in the shoes of people who read our content.

I noticed I got feedback from a few people concerned about the suggestion we should start to ‘dumb down’ our content. This took me by surprise, but made me stop and think.

Writing to inform

It’s a massive culture shift to move away from that formal way of writing we were all taught at school. I remember teachers saying there was a certain way of constructing a letter if you were writing to a business and I know I definitely carried this with me into my own world of work.

‘Dear Sir, The relevant account will be debited at the earliest opportunity’ I’d say when I worked for a multinational investment bank, as I thought that would make me sound:

• professional
• respectful
• like I was the right person for a job in finance

‘You will be allocated a regular pattern of working’/ ‘These stats show a proportionate correlation between x and y’ I’d say when I was in my first council job, again thinking I was being:

• official
• informative
• and … well, work-y? That’s how you’re meant to communicate at work, right?

Content design!

Suddenly my work world changed when I had the opportunity of helping out another team. I fell into the teeny tiny web team at this council and they opened my eyes to another world.

Content what?? This unusual team of 2 started to re-school me in the way of writing content so that people could understand it. It was so painful — I basically had to un-learn everything I’d ever been taught and everything I’d had reinforced during my 20+ year career.

Something about it really appealed to me — it was a way of communicating with people as if I were a real person, rather than a robot. And it needed a creative mind to design how you laid information out on a page to help people understand it more easily. As a language nerd (and annoying grammarian) this was super attractive to me.

I’d never thought of someone reading my words in anything other than an official way. So, I thought, if I use more complex words it’ll make me sound more superior. And official. And I should be official if I work for a council…

Don’t make me think

Wait a minute! Councils are for people who need a service. Or information. And quickly. And they are often in emotive situations where they might:

• need help for their family
• want housing
• can’t pay their Council Tax

I’d never stopped to think about how someone might be feeling when they read the content I’d written. And there then followed 8+ years of me learning to remove all those barriers that stop people being able to understand the information I’m giving them. Barriers like:

• words that are difficult to understand — you can change the words you use without changing the meaning
• massive blocks of text — everyone scans so I can lay my content out with headings so that people can scan and land on the info they want
• long sentences

I know from experience that it’s a painful process. But using plain English isn’t making your content (or you) less intelligent, it’s making sure everyone can read it and understand it.

My dream now is to create content that people read without even having to think about it.