INaction

Usability is a hot topic. We want to make sure that users can accomplish basic tasks easily the first time they try. But have you ever thought about reviewability or revisability? I refer to designing your materials so that the reviewer can review the material easily, and the designer or developer can incorporate the revisions easily; thus, reducing the number of review iterations.

The harder material is to review and revise, the more it costs. If you must translate the materials, it becomes more costly. You do not want to miss items requiring translation because they were not easy to see. This applies not only to words, but also images, and colors that might not be appropriate for the intended audience.

I worked for one company that was so focused on the end-user’s experience, that even when the animation was complicated, they wanted all the graphics and text on one slide. This was so the next and previous button always took you to the next and previous slide.

Look at the image at the top of this blog. This is what a static slide looks like when all the images are on it, but you do not see it in action. This particular slide has 15 images on it. If you look closely, some of those images have words in it.

Using the premise that the animation must start and complete on this slide, creates a very complicated slide to design, review, translate, and revise. If you designed the animation over several slides, and sent the user back to the first slide when clicking previous, that would resolve part of the problem. When you start worrying about users, and where they end up in the animation if they use the scrub bar, it becomes a little more complicated.

From the design perspective, we have other issues to worry about. The advent of rapid e-learning courseware that offers online reviewing, might make this seem like this is no big deal. After all, the reviewer will see this slide in action. Maybe so, but not all coursewares have built in review tools.

From a translation perspective, you also must ensure that you identify all the images with words that need translation. Sure, you can make a list as you watch the slide run, but someone must find the graphic in the slide, make sure that the text is translated, and replace the image. When images and text are layered one upon the other, as in the image above, this is very difficult.

You need a solution that weighs the needs of the user against the needs of the designer, reviewer, and translator. Where you land when you click previous, click next, or use the scrub bar, may be less important, especially if you are translating the materials and want to avoid translation mishaps that can be much more costly.

There is no easy answer to this. It is a balancing act. Designing for translation requires not only thinking about words and images, but also about revision and maintenance.