Making Information Visual

Today I have listened to Janice (Ginny) Redish’ s interview, following is my takeaway.

1. Most of the people are too busy most of the time, they don’t have time to read too much text
2. Give users what they need in fewer words, use fewer words without loosing meaning
3. Content/titles/error messages/ buttons labels should help users to meet their goals
4. Visual writing helps users to locate the desired info and move to next task, visual writing consist of
   
   • images
     
   • graphs
     
   • lists
   • title
5. At any one time user only wants one topic
6. Use tables when there are numbers to compare
7. Instructions should be written as numbered steps
8. Mantra for web: less is more!

http://www.redish.net/content/handouts/redish_shorttalk_May2001.pdf