Linguistic Clarity

The fifth law of interface design is Linguistic Clarity: The interface will communicate as efficiently as possible.

Human Factors

Users must understand an interface before they can use it. And in order for them to understand the interface, it must be clear. In this law we are concerned with the clarity of the language itself (as opposed to clarity on a monitor, or clarity in the sense of no errors).

For the interface to be linguistically clear, it must provide context and speak in the user's terminology.

Context

Information without context cannot easily be assimilated and stored in long-term memory.

People need context to process information. Information without context cannot easily be assimilated and stored in long-term memory. Take for example, this paragraph:

Equipment Instructions:

First, sort the items into like categories. Sorting by color is common, but you can also use other characteristics, such as texture or type of handling needed. Once you have sorted the items, you are ready to use the equipment. You want to process each category from the sorting separately.

It is hard to understand what these instructions are about, because you have no context. Now read this paragraph.

Using Your New Washing Machine:

First, sort the items into like categories. Sorting by color is common, but you can also use other characteristics, such as texture or type of handling needed. Once you have sorted the items, you are ready to use the equipment. You want to process ...

Get Designing Effective Speech Interfaces now with the O’Reilly learning platform.

O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.