{"id":15483,"date":"2018-06-29T15:52:17","date_gmt":"2018-06-29T14:52:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/marvel7077.wpengine.com\/?p=15483"},"modified":"2020-11-05T15:28:38","modified_gmt":"2020-11-05T15:28:38","slug":"testing-ux-writers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/marvelapp.com\/blog\/testing-ux-writers\/","title":{"rendered":"Testing for UX Writers: Know When Your Words Are\u00a0Working"},"content":{"rendered":"

Welcome to the latest instalment of my series on writing as user experience design<\/a>. I\u2019m discussing key principles of user-centered design with the aim of applying these ideas to writers\u2019 contributions UX and UI.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s talk about testing. As UX writers, we\u2019re well aware that we work in a space obsessed with evaluating usability. And we love it! We\u2019re in this for the users, after all. We try to understand their every value, want, and need so we can craft perfect pieces of UX copy and microcopy.<\/p>\n

Yet our niche of the UX world is still new. While UX designers and researchers have a marvellous array of methods at their disposal, I\u2019m often left wondering how UX writers can test our words. How do we narrow in on our part of the design process? What testing methods are available to us right now?<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t just mean readability scores<\/a>. Flesch-Kincaid Index and similar metrics of readability can be a great baseline for user-friendly text, but they aren\u2019t perfect<\/a>. Nor can the algorithms powering these scores tell if your words are striking the right tone. As anyone writing in a particular brand voice can attest, every word needs to reflect the persona encoded by the internal style guide. Flesch-Kincaid can\u2019t help you with that.<\/p>\n

(I promise I\u2019m not trying to be too harsh against readability scores. I use Hemingway<\/a> all the time to keep my writing concise!)<\/p>\n

Turns out, we aren\u2019t starting from scratch when it comes to testing content<\/a> and microcopy. Here are a few methods from around the web to help you start building testing into your process!<\/p>\n

A note on participants: <\/em>When testing comprehension, it\u2019s important to recruit participants representative of your actual users. Proxy users aren\u2019t enough. Running cloze tests on stakeholders from the marketing department or surveying engineers walking down the hallway won\u2019t work here. These insiders bring company-specific assumptions and knowledge and can\u2019t provide an accurate measure of comprehensibility.<\/p>\n

Cloze Testing<\/h2>\n
\"\"<\/a>

Source: stock.tookapic.com<\/a> via pixabay.com<\/a><\/p><\/div>\n

Evaluate users\u2019 comprehension with a cloze test, sometimes called a cloze deletion test. Based on Gestalt theory of mental self-organization (\u201ccloze\u201d is related to \u201cclosure,\u201d or the mechanism by which individuals understand an incomplete object as complete), this method was first proposed by W. L. Taylor in 1974.<\/p>\n

Cloze tests are great for figuring out if your intended audience actually understands what you\u2019ve written.<\/p>\n

How to run a cloze\u00a0test:<\/h2>\n
    \n
  1. Select a piece of text and replace every Nth<\/em> word with blanks. A higher N<\/em> value makes the test easier. In typical tests, N = 6. Of course, UX writers working with microcopy will need to have a much smaller N!<\/li>\n
  2. Ask each participant to read the altered text and fill in the blanks with their best guesses about the missing words.<\/li>\n
  3. Calculate the score: the percentage of correctly guessed words. Synonyms and misspellings are allowed (in fact, if a synonym recurs, maybe that\u2019s the word you\u2019ve been looking for). If your participants score 60% or higher <\/strong>on average, your text is reasonably comprehensible for this user profile.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Highlighter testing<\/h2>\n
    \"\"<\/a>

    Source: pixabay.com<\/a> via pexels.com<\/a><\/p><\/div>\n

    How to run highlighter testing<\/h3>\n
      \n
    1. Select a piece of text and determine what you\u2019re testing for. Code a set of highlighters according to these factors. In the linked example, participants highlighted words that made them feel more confident about the service in green and words that made them feel less confident about the service in red.<\/li>\n
    2. Provide participants with a printout of the text, the coded highlighters, and clear instructions about marking the page. If you\u2019re testing for more than one value pair, avoid confusion by providing the user with a clean printout and new instructions for each pair.<\/li>\n
    3. Calculate the results. The colors provide an easily assessed visual indicator of what text works and what might need rewriting. If you\u2019re a metrics person, you can also calculate statistics based on counts of color-coded lines.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

      Comprehension survey<\/h2>\n
      \"\"<\/a>

      Photo by pulkit jain<\/a> on\u00a0Unsplash<\/a><\/p><\/div>\n

      Think back to your high school English class. Do you remember having weekly quizzes to make sure you were reading and understanding the assigned books? Your teacher was on to something.<\/p>\n

      Comprehension surveys are basically quizzes that test whether a user understands a piece of content. You can test long pieces, short strings, and everything in between.<\/p>\n

      How to run a comprehension survey<\/h3>\n
        \n
      1. Determine the text you\u2019d like to test. You can present it all at once, line-by-line, or a mix of both.<\/li>\n
      2. Develop questions. A List Apart has great tips<\/a> for writing high quality questions, including stating questions in positive form, providing only one correct or clearly best answer in a multiple choice list, and providing incorrect but plausible distractor answers. You might want to add an option for \u201cI don\u2019t know,\u201d as random guessing isn\u2019t helpful here.<\/li>\n
      3. Provide your participant with the content and questionnaire. This isn\u2019t the SAT, so keep things short \u2014 twenty minutes is more than enough time to gauge your user\u2019s comprehension.<\/li>\n
      4. Calculate the scores. If you use a survey platform like SurveyMonkey<\/a> or through a UX testing tool such as Optimal Workshop<\/a>, you\u2019ll get a handy score report automatically!<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

        I hope these testing methods are useful for you. If you\u2019re a UX writer or content writer and have other ideas about measuring the effectiveness of your words, let the world know in the comments!<\/p>\n

        This article was originally published on Annie's Medium page<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

        Welcome to the latest instalment of my series on writing as user experience design. I\u2019m discussing key principles of user-centered design with the aim of applying these ideas to writers\u2019 contributions UX and UI. Let\u2019s talk about testing. As UX writers, we\u2019re well aware that we work in a space obsessed with evaluating usability. And we love it! We\u2019re in… Read More ￫<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":240,"featured_media":15499,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[499],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15483","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ux"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\t\n\t\n\n\n\n\n\t\n