I say I don’t listen to many podcasts, but I’m currently listening to Design Critique’s podcast with Gerry McGovern at the User Interface 12 conference. Timothy Keirnan was a MTSC classmate of mine and does an excellent job interviewing usability professionals for us all to learn from.
One of Gerry’s comments that really hit home to me is that Google’s entire ad revenue generation is based on 17-word ads. Seventeen words! I complain about the 140-character limit in Twitter, yet, lots of money is being made on seventeen words.
Also, they both noted that generally, web site design is so flat – rectangles and boxes are pretty much all you get. So websites should be useful and functional. And words matter. For example, if you are a non-native English speaker approaching a website for information, you’ll be more successful by recognizing the word “search” quite quickly.
I was also reminded of Harry Miller’s podcast, The IM Model of Technical Writing, about writing end-user documentation as if you were responding to a friend’s Instant Message (IM). Topic-oriented writing such as DITA encourages you to encompass ideas in discrete bundles – topics contain only as much information as is needed. From the specification: “A topic is a unit of information with a title and content, short enough to be specific to a single subject or answer a single question, but long enough to make sense on its own and be authored as a unit.” Very IM-like, I’d say.
An enjoyable couple of podcasts, and quite appropriate for my current thoughts about the value of good writing along with good design.