Ask the Experts on User Testing
February 26, 2025
Is a “natural person” someone without makeup?
Is online shopping designed to help you hide your purchases from your spouse?
User testing experts Liezl van Zyl and Annie Burger-Boschoff have heard so many surprising ways audiences experience the world and they shared it with us our first webinar of 2025.
The discussion was a rich overview of user testing best practices with unique insights and experiences. They discussed practical strategies for effective user testing, how to approach testing with clear goals in mind, emphasizing the importance of understanding what you want to achieve and how the results will be used. They discussed practical techniques such as card sorting to understand how users naturally organize content and cloze testing to measure how well readers comprehend the text. They also addressed the importance of using real-world data to track the impact of improvements, like monitoring call center statistics to see if user queries have decreased.
Recruiting the right participants can be challenging, and the speakers stressed the need to avoid using colleagues or allowing users to self-select, as this can introduce bias. Whenever possible, involving external recruitment companies ensures a more neutral and reliable testing process. They also highlighted the need to adapt methods when dealing with diverse audiences, including those who may not be digitally literate.
Our panel
Liezl van Zyl is an information designer, plain language expert and co-founder of South African-based information design agency, Hey Plain Jane.
Annie Burger-Boshoff is a plain language practitioner, researcher and teacher with a passion for clear, kind communication.
Cultural considerations in plain language
November 20, 2024
“Send the text by dinner time.”
Depending on the different cultures writing or reading such messages, they may mean very different things. What time is “dinner time” in your country? This webinar is intended to help avoid such cultural traps. It will inspire you to get the message across clearly between cultures.
Gary Smith translates and reviews texts for many universities and government bodies in Spain. Based in Valencia, he is a former president of the regional translators and interpreters association, La Xarxa, and serves on the board of IAPTI. His work with academics and government officials means he often has to turn rather convoluted texts into plain language—and help his clients to do so!
Bad Graphs: Assessing Graphs for Readability, Fairness and Impact
October 22, 2024
A good graph or chart is readable, accurate, and fair—and it tells a compelling story in support of the text around it. We were grateful to Robin who shared her excellent presentation with our members which showed how recognize the elements of a good graph, analyze a bad graph, and propose improvements that can turn a bad graph into a good one.
About the speaker
Over a 25-year career, Robin Marwick has worked with scientists, healthcare professionals, pharmaceutical companies, hospitals, professional associations, and nonprofit organizations to produce clear, compelling, and reader-friendly information. She read the data visualization classic How to Lie with Statistics at an impressionable age and has been on the lookout for bad graphs and dodgy data ever since. She is a certified Editor in the Life Sciences and a Certified Professional Editor through Editors Canada’s certification program.
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Ask the Experts: Building the Case for Plain Language in Organizations
Louise Stait, Mary Jane Nirdlinger and Chantale Audet
August 28 at 15:00 UTC
Our panel of experts answered questions about securing buy-in across an organization for implementing plain language. This discussion featured practical advice from people who have successfully advocated for plain language in a variety of organizations.
Panelists Louise Strait (Pushing the Pen, UK), Mary Jane Nirdlinger (Town of Chapel Hill, USA), and Chantale Audet (Autrement dit, Canada) answered questions from PLAIN members and shared their experiences, successes, and challenges.
This webinar is available for free as our International Plain Language Day gift.
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Beyond the ISO standard for plain language
Dr. Neil James
September 25 at 07:00 UTC
Dr. Neil James, chair of the International Plain Language Federation, presents the developments around the ISO 24495 plain language standard and answers the community’s questions.
The webinar covered how the Federation partnered with ISO to create a global plain language standard, which was officially launched last year with the publication of its first part. This “tipping point” will lead to more standards focusing on areas like legal writing (coming next year), science communication, plain language for organizations, and clear formats for business reporting (graphs, charts, and tables). In total, there could be up to eight plain language standards.
He also covers how the standard is being adopted worldwide, from countries like Australia and South Africa to those working on translations, such as Brazil and Spain.
Certification was of great interest to the audience and Neil shared insights on how complex the process can be. While work is underway to develop certifications for organizations, it’s still a work in progress. He also discussed the challenges of ISO’s paywalls, time-intensive processes, and copyright issues.
To wrap things up, Dr. James shared plans for future Federation initiatives, including a plain language resource bank and ongoing efforts to advocate for plain language through the Federation’s website and member organizations.
You can find all the links mentioned in the webinar in this PDF..
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Celebrating plain language in New Zealand
Lynda Harris, Kate Thompson and Tatiana Mes
April 19, 2023 BST / April 20, 2023 NZST
Our first webinar of the year was broadcast on the eve that the Plain Language Act was introduced. PLAIN Communications and Conference Board Member Lodewijk van Noort interviewed three guests.
- Lynda Harris, founder of Write Limited, the largest plain language consultancy in the world
- Kate Thompson, Head of Communications at thinkstep-anz, a sustainability consultancy
- Tatiana Mes, Principal Marketing and Communications Manager, Consumer Wealth, Mercer (N.Z.)
The 40 minute webinar covered what the Plain Language Act means for New Zealand, what a key component clear communication is in sustainability, and what projects are improving financial wellness.
If you’d like to read the Plain Language Act for yourself, you can find it here.
The full video is available for PLAIN members. If you’d like to become a member, you can join today and enjoy all of our member resources.
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A court closer to its citizens
Judge Lorena Tula del Moral (Law School of University of Buenos Aires)
July 19, 2022
In this webinar PLAIN host Lodewijk van Noort interviewed Judge Lola about the role of plain language in building an open, online, and model court in Buenos Aires.
Traditionally, we don’t expect judges to make efforts to be closer to citizens. Yet, this is what Judge Lola and her project team set out and managed to achieve a few years ago. Judge Lola tells us about the steps she took that transformed the court into a space that fosters innovation, transparency and collaboration, which led to significant improvement in interaction with citizens.
Lola earned her Law Degree from University of Buenos Aires, and has specialized in Administration of Justice. She is the director of the Observatorio de Lenguaje Claro of the Law School of University of Buenos Aires. She is a judge of the Criminal Court No. 13 of the City of Buenos Aires, and has written several publications.
The full video is available for PLAIN members. If you’d like to become a member, you can join today and enjoy all of our member resources
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The sense and nonsense of icons and pictograms
Charlotte van Hooijdonk (Utrecht University)
February 23, 2022
In PLAIN’s first webinar Charlotte van Hooijdonk presented her research on the comprehensibility of icons and pictograms, which explored whether they would make for more inclusive communication in the Netherlands and Flanders (Belgium).
At the start of the corona crisis, governments needed to communicate about all kinds of new measures that citizens had to adhere to, for example, “keep 1.5 meters distance” and “avoid crowds”. It was essential to share this information in an understandable way, given that Dutch is not the mother tongue of all citizens, and the written word can form a barrier. Icons — highly simplified images that express a message — could help to optimize communication with these groups. The idea is that images are easier to understand than written language. But is that true?
The research, requested by the Municipality of The Hague (The Netherlands) and the City of Ghent (Belgium), and on behalf of the Taalunie (Language Union), provided some results that were striking and sometimes startling.
After the presentation followed a discussion of the implications the research would have for plain language specialists’ work.
This video is available for PLAIN members. If you’d like to become a member, you can join today and enjoy all of our member resources.
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