Cognition: Human–Computer Communication - Foundations for Designing User-Centered Systems - page 214

culture in which the system is used. This will make it easier for your users to carry
out their tasks, and hence make the system more acceptable to them. More gen-
erally, you should try to use simple, direct, and clear language.
If your interface requires your users to read text, particularly large amounts of
text, you need to take into consideration the factors that affect how users read. You
should avoid using several fonts, for example, as this can adversely affect reading
speed, and may also detract from the overall user experience. You should also lay
out the text in a way that helps the user to comprehend it, making appropriate use
of headings, subheadings, and white space between paragraphs, for example. If
you are designing web pages, then you will need to be aware of how people scan
web pages, rather than read them in depth, so that you can position your text so
that they will see it.
Irrespective of whether your display shows only text, only graphics (including
icons), or some combination of the two, it should be clear and apparent to your
users what all of the items mean. This also applies to menu items where, once
again, you should use terms and language that are relevant to your users, their
tasks, and the context in which they are carrying out those tasks.
If your users need to seek information, you need to help them find the infor-
mation they are looking for in an efficient and effective manner. Using information
scent can help them to find out fairly quickly whether they are looking in the right
area, so you should make similar information have the same sort of ''smell'' as the
information they are looking for. When you return the information to them, you
should present it in a way that makes it easy for them to interpret, understand, and
learn. In other words, it needs to be appropriately structured, for example, using
tables and charts to present numeric information.
For web sites in particular, the way that you write, structure, and deliver content
are all major contributors to the success of a system. Managing content is an ongoing
task, so you will need to maintain the content after you have written it, to make sure
that it stays up to date and grows and evolves along with your users. It is therefore
important to define a content strategy and information architecture up front to help
you manage and deliver the content in a systematic way. You also need to think
about how your users will access that content. If they will be using a range of devices
(smartphones, tablets, desktops, and so on) you should seriously consider using a
responsive web design approach which automatically resizes the content based on
the size of the user's display screen. In this way you can help to ensure that your
users get a similar experience when accessing your system from different devices.

7.7 Summary

This chapter covers some key issues regarding communication between users
and systems. There is much more that could be said about the related top-
ics

of computer-mediated communication, non-verbal communication, and