Linknote — — 112 words

Content design — Digital — Human-centred approaches

Using contractions could be making your writing inaccessible

We found that some of these users did not understand sentences that had negative contractions in them (negative contractions are words like ‘can’t’, ‘won’t’, ‘don’t’). They interpreted the sentence without inferring the ‘not’.

I have been in two minds about using contractions for a while. On the one hand, avoiding contractions does seem to reduce ambiguity. But at the same time it can make your writing seem stilted and overly-formal.

As always with writing style, there will be no true answer, and the right way forward will depend on the circumstances. But if in doubt, it is worth considering avoiding contractions.

Linknote — — 159 words

Human-centred approaches — Media — Web

Are we designers shamelessly good at self promotion?

An analysis of content about design — why people write it, how they look for it, and why it needs to be better.

Last year, we published and shared 4,302 articles and links with the community …

That’s a lot of links.

Most of them 5-minute Medium articles.

Not as thorough as we would like them to be.

Not deep at all.

Not as honest as our industry deserves.

This makes me wonder if my own approach — blogging daily with a link to and short remark about a 5 minute read — is wrong.

We definitely need to find more ways to write and think more deeply about design, and spend less time with superficial, self-promotional clickbait.

More on this from Khoi Vinh: Why designers don’t want to think when they read.

See also: Platforms, agile, trust, teams and werewolves — on why we need to see more stories about failure.

Linknote — — 87 words

Accessibility — Content design — Human-centred approaches — User experience

Readability guidelines

I really like this idea of crowdsourcing, and making available to the community, a set of readability guidelines based on evidence.

I see many content designers spending time talking – arguing – about points of style when often accessibility and usability show what we should do.

What if there was one place where we, as a community, shared knowledge and created a style guide that was accessible, usable and – if we wanted – evidenced?

We could then spend time on the things that matter more to our organisations.

Linknote — — 155 words

Technology — Web

Google AMP for Email: What it is and why it’s a bad idea

I have been following the controversy around AMP fairly closely. A lot of people whose opinions I respect are against AMP generally, although I still cautiously think AMP is generally a good thing. At least, it is in my view clearly better than Facebook Instant Articles.

So if AMP is Google’s response to Facebook, I am in favour of it. Facebook’s interest is clearly to keep people in the Facebook ecosystem. AMP may give Google some a bit of control over content, but it still keeps it fundamentally of the web. At least you don’t have to use Google to use AMP.

However, AMP for Email seems far more obviously bad. Not least because, as this article points out, it appears to be a solution looking for a problem.

There may be cause to be wary of Google’s intentions after all.

Linknote — — 60 words

Content design — Digital

Language in web teams

Content designer Sarah Richards shares an amusing story of a technique she has used to help people from different disciplines and backgrounds who have been talking at cross-purposes.

We are meant to be content and communication experts. But we often see people putting little effort into how they communicate internally, or even within their own teams.

Article — — 825 words

Accessibility — User experience — Web

Work:

Adapted from a post originally published on the University of St Andrews Digital Communications team blog. One of the biggest issues we have had to tackle while working on the new Study at St Andrews website is the entrance requirements and country information section. The website contained a Flash world map that was considered to […]

Article — — 1,021 words

Information architecture — User experience — Web

Work:

Adapted from a post originally published on the University of St Andrews Digital Communications team blog. The first project of the digital communications team is a relaunch of the website for prospective students. This project began about a year ago, long before the digital communications team was formed. Lean sessions In early 2013, members of […]

Article — — 768 words

Web

Work:

Adapted from a post originally published on the University of St Andrews Digital Communications team blog. Earlier this month my colleague Gareth Saunders and I attended the Institutional Web Management Workshop 2010 (IWMW10), held at the University of Sheffield. It was my first time at IWMW, and since I still feel slightly new to the […]