Presented by Jonathan Rubin, MA, & Katherine Spivey, MA, on March 13, 2015 at the fifth Center for Health Literacy Conference: Plain Talk in Complex Times.

1. True Customer Service Websites:
User Experience (UX) Testing
and Plain Language
Maximus Plain Talk Conference
March 13, 2015
Katherine Spivey and Jonathan Rubin

2. Overview
1. What PL and UX are + why you should care
2. What we do and how
3. Top problems we see
4. What you can do
5. Resources
6. Contact us

3. 1.What PL and UX
are and why you
should care

5. You are not your users
You
Target
Audience

11. What’s the Return on Investment?
● Increased customer satisfaction
● Increased compliance
● Increased gov transparency
● Reduced training time
● Reduced help desk calls / emails
● High task completion rate
● Reduced error rate
Successful + Happy Customers!

12. Results of UX + PL
Complete tasks 50% faster
70% bump in user satisfaction
Saves $2 million a year by
prioritizing top tasks
Decreased help calls by 10%
Mobile site average visits up
50%, some 1000%

13. What is Plain Language?
● Users understand on FIRST read or hear
● Quickly find what they need
● Understand what they find, and
● Use what they find to meet their needs.

14. Foundations of Plain Language
● Reader-centered organization* (needs testing)
● Design features like headers, tables, and bullets
● Short sentences and paragraphs
● “You,” “we,” and other pronouns
● Active voice, not passive
● Verbs, not nouns
● Consistent terms, not jargon or acronyms
● Common, everyday words

15. What is User Experience
The overall experience of a person using a
product (often a website or mobile app),
especially in terms of how easy or pleasing it is
to use.

16. Goal: Explore user behavior
● Can people get to the
important content?
● Do they understand
how your site works?
● Can they contact you
(if needed?)
● Does your search work
as expected?
● Do your terms make
sense?

17. User Centered Design (3 phases)
1. Research 2. Design 3. Test

18. Thanks
Steve!

19. Things that INCREASE goodwill
● Know what people do on your site...
● … And make them obvious and easy
● Tell me what I want to know
● Save me steps whenever you can
● Put effort into making your site easy
● Know what questions I’m likely to have,
and answer them

20. Things that DECREASE goodwill
● Hiding information that I want
● Punishing for not doing things your way
● Asking me for info you don’t really need
● Having me wade through marketing
● Amateurish design

21. 2. About us / What
we do

22. About Jon
● BA English
● MS Journalism
● Certified Usability Analyst
(Human Factors International)
● GSA for 6 years
● I love: Building UX teams,
comics, gardening

23. About Katherine
● BA, MA English
● GSA for 5 years
● Co-chair, trainer for Plain
Language Action and
Information Network
● I love: editing to reveal the
real message and deleting
redundant content

24. 3. Top problems
we see

25. Top problems
Top problems
1. Confusing navigation
2. Difficulty with top tasks
3. Too much stuff
4. Jargon + acronyms
5. Unclear audience / Site’s
purpose unclear

26. Top problems
Top problems Solutions
1. Confusing navigation Clear labels. Remove clutter. Put
in order of use.
2. Difficulty with top tasks Put important info at top. Remove
clutter. Prioritize around metrics.
3. Too much stuff Cut text by 50%. Remove useless
images. Cut outdated content.
4. Jargon + acronyms Use common words. Put tech
words in ( )
5. Unclear audience / Site’s
purpose unclear
Taglines. Use words they value.
Remove clutter.

27. 4. What you can
do

28. Things you can do
● Talk to users
● Determine top tasks
● Edit
● Train
● Test
● Look at metrics
● Advocate for your audience

29. 5. Examples

30. Before/After Examples
Consent form: Before
It is understood and agreed that the
attending physician or his associates or
assistants shall be responsible for the
performance of their own individual
professional acts, and that the blood typing
and the selection of compatible blood are
the responsibilities of those who actually
perform the necessary laboratory tests.

31. Before/after examples
Consent form: After
I understand that in non-emergency
situations the lab technicians who perform
the blood tests are responsible for
determining my blood type. The attending
doctor, his associates, or assistants are not
responsible for these actions, but only for
their own actions toward my care.

32. Before/After Examples
Consent forms: Results
Participants who read the revised form
answered an average of 4.52 questions
correctly; those who read the original (before)
averaged only 2.36 correct answers.
Participants using the revised form were also
faster, averaging 1.64 minutes to answer
compared with 2.64 minutes.

33. Reading level
Medical information pamphlets often are written using
language that requires a reading level higher than parents
of many pediatric patients have achieved. Anecdotal
reports suggest that many parents may not readily
understand the federally mandated Public Health Service
vaccine information pamphlets prepared by the Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in 1991.
http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/97/6/804.abstr
act

34. Reading level
We compared the parent reading time and comprehension
of a simplified pamphlet (Louisiana State University, LSU)
comprising 4 pages, 322 words, 7 instructional graphics,
and a text requiring a 6th grade reading ability with the
equivalent 1991 CDC vaccine information pamphlet
comprising 16 pages, 18,117 words, no graphics, and a
text requiring a 10th grade reading level. We measured the
reading ability of 522 parents of pediatric patients from
northwest Louisiana seen at public clinics (81%) and in a
private office (19%).

35. Reading level
A short, simply written pamphlet with instructional graphics
was preferred by high- and low-income parents seen in
private and public clinics. The sixth grade reading level
appears to be too high for many parents in public clinics;
new materials aimed at third to fourth grade levels may be
required. The new 1994 CDC immunization materials,
written at the eighth grade level, may still be inappropriately
high. The American medical community should adopt
available techniques for the development of more effective
patient-parent education materials.

40. 6. Resources

42. www.digitalgov.gov/events

43. govux@gsa.gov

47. 7. Contact us

48. We’d love to hear from you!
Katherine Spivey
Katherine.Spivey@GSA.gov
@katherinespivey
Jonathan Rubin
jdr613@gmail.com (personal)
@jonathan_rubin