The smallest of errors can have catastrophic consequences.
In 1962, a missing hyphen in a line of code caused the crash of an unmanned rocket heading to Venus. The missing hyphen reportedly cost $18 million. That’s about $169 million in today’s money.
Content designers at Hippo have the keen eye of a horologist. They also use terms that people are more familiar with.
So, we’d say ‘watchmaker’ instead of horologist.
Colons, commas and apostrophes are the intricate cogs that make our content tick. If we put one in the wrong place, it won’t destroy an expensive rocket, but it might affect how users understand content and get the help they need.
Broken links are unhealthy
I recently worked on the NHS login service. This allows users to access a range of health and care websites and apps.
Writing for an essential health service, you need to know your colons from your colonoscopies, your negative contractions from your Braxton Hicks contractions. Thankfully, the NHS has a very useful tone of voice and content style guide. It reminds us of the importance of small things. For example, should we include a full stop as part of a link?
No.
It sounds trivial, but with around 50 million registered users on NHS login, it can mean the difference between getting an appointment to see your GP or getting a ‘404 error, page cannot be found’.
Please get to the point
Hippo designers and researchers on the project continually build and test screens to improve user journeys. Much of the challenge is around security and helping users to prove who they are. One method involves users taking a photo of their passport and then a selfie so we can verify them. Making sure users understand this process is a fine balancing act. If the content is too vague, users might submit the wrong details and fail. If there’s too much content users might miss important information… and fail.
Hippo content designers are skilled in writing content that is concise and on point. We know that a lot of users skim read digital content, so unless we need to draw their attention to something important, we try not to slow them down.
Cognitive overload is our enemy. We love removing superfluous words.
For example, we don’t say ‘please’ when we want you to do something. It might sound a bit rude and not very ‘English’, but it’s not a word that matters in the context of a digital service.
Would you refuse to tell us your name because we said ‘Enter your name’ instead of ‘Please enter your name’?
The grammar police are on the loose
Content also needs to be carefully checked before it’s sent out into the world. The smallest grammatical error can reflect badly on the reputation of the organisation you work for. Users can easily lose trust if a service is littered with typos. Aside from looking unprofessional, it’s fairly well known that phishing sites use small errors to lure the right type of users for their scams.
Like most content designers, I’m a full time pedant. Outside of office hours, I find it hard to switch off. On social media I become the ‘grammar police’, correcting people when they confuse words such as ‘lose’ and ‘loose’. When I have to use websites with badly written content and confusing interfaces, the frustration I feel helps me empathise with users of the services I work on.
To help keep content in good shape, the content design community at Hippo have regular crits where we help each other out by suggesting improvements and spotting any small errors we’ve made. We also enjoy sharing examples of content where small things really do matter. Here are a few that made us smile.
Jonathan Lorrimer
Jonathan is content designer with extensive experience delivering user-centred services across various GOV.UK and NHS projects. He also has strong interaction design skills that helps him collaborate effectively in multidisciplinary teams to design clear, accessible digital journeys.