Web Interface design: Three levels of web readability

Readability (readability) is an important indicator of the Web user experience, because visitors surf the internet to get information, and users are used to "scan" rather than read. At the same time, there must be a prerequisite for obtaining information to guide "interaction" before interaction behavior occurs. So, the importance of readability is obvious and unquestionable.

A concrete analysis of the composition of web readability, first of all, I think that part of the information itself is the quality of writing good or wrong, and some is the combination of information and design added value, can be promoted through the display of designs. The former should be the basis that the content workers in all walks of life need to master, while the latter needs the web designer to optimize the promotion. For example, the readability of a novel, the first is the content level of the novel structure, chapter paragraph organization, whether the wording is readable, followed by the typesetting and printing quality, such as the performance layer is readable. In other words, literature and cultural skills will affect readability, but not with design, they can be completely separated from the technical level. So, I don't think it's necessary to delve into the "readability" of content quality itself in studying web readability.

Continue to summarize I found that the various languages over the years in the "Quality of information itself" topic has accumulated a lot of research, and the formation of fixed norms. In addition, the Web interface on the Internet has a feature, language and character composition complex, Chinese, English, numerals and various symbols are often mixed together. Therefore, I think the web readability can be divided into three levels to understand:

1. Totally wrong.
2. Failure to comply with established specifications
3. Poor form of presentation

October 2007 Ucdchina Group Bo has written attention to the interface of the text of this topic, although the content is more scattered, but review summary or most of the relevant readability. Has accumulated a lot of cases of readability, now faced with a problem of sorting out, no clue, specific below the situation to explore.

Totally wrong.

Covers a wide range of content, error syntax, error words and words, error punctuation, error symbols, and so on are included.

The error grammar mainly manifests in some copywriting, some plans are not rigorous the page, many copy is the engineer conveniently adds. There are also some overly decorated and quirky language, and the user doesn't necessarily like it. In addition, the translation of the copy is also a hot issue, because many translators do not understand the professional field of knowledge, inevitably in the wording of the lack.

Error words (typos) and words in the interface are also many, more typical is "login" or "Landing" case ("login" correct), similar to "account" and "Account" ("Account" correct). It is rare to find proof of the product, but it is easy to enter it incorrectly when discussing it.

Error punctuation is too common, especially in chat with friends, and in messages. I think the most common problem on the Internet is the use of Chinese and English punctuation, perhaps we are too lazy to switch input method. For adults, the majority of the use of punctuation is correct or not, will not give a big misunderstanding of the expression, the network plus punctuation on the text of the word game is a joke. Use good punctuation is mainly to strengthen communication, lest much waste of explanation, beneficial to both sides.

There are also good examples of error symbols, such as when people are often not aware of the @ and © (@ is the message delimiter, © copyright meaning). There is even an asterisk "*" used as multiplication "x" in the content, or a lowercase "x" instead. There is also the debate about ￥ and ¥, in general, characters are seriously affected by the font definition, sometimes in some circumstances look similar, but essentially there is a fundamental difference.

Failure to comply with established specifications

Taking the Chinese context as an example, it mainly includes Chinese writing standard, English writing standard and digital writing standard.

Chinese writing norms may be unfamiliar, the daily use of the language there are norms? It is estimated that some of our bloggers will be aware that the acronym for the first time in the article should be written with a full name and brackets. Chinese Ganzhi Annals and Xiali Month Day, should use the Chinese character; the adjacent two numbers are used in conjunction with each other to represent the approximate number, should use Chinese characters and so on.

The English writing specification is mainly the case, except the first letter, the person name, the title of address, the national place name, the month day and so on words all need to capitalize the first letter, but the special abbreviation letter all needs the capitalization, for example CSS or HTML. and Chinese and English address writing habits just the opposite, first number, and finally the country.

The digital writing standard is relatively simple, we can be divided more clearly, but some problems are easy to ignore. For example, the year is not shorthand, 98 years can understand that 2012 can not be abbreviated for 12 years? Another expression such as the 2010.5.11 Gregorian calendar month day, the correct should give a number plus "0" to become "2010.05.11". The special shape of the figures, usually in the Chinese communication to occupy the advantage, but also can not be used casually. For example, the expression of the "more than 30 species" is not standardized, the correct should be "more than 30 kinds of".

Poor form of presentation

The performance refers to the user to be able to see visually the effect, the concrete situation concrete analysis, but we can take the user custom as the benchmark, summarizes some general criteria. European and American academia has a lot of research results, through scientific quantitative analysis can use software to calculate the approximate readability of reference.

Should be said to pave the way so much, finally entered the core theme of this article, that is, the web design within the controllable range of "performance layer" readability impact factors. Basically involves only the structure and performance of the web, and the relatively low cost of improving the user experience. Probably summed up as a character, link, form, form four parts, specific rules and cases after the adjustment of the supplementary.