Is it Readable or Not?

Readability, as its name suggests, refers to the ease with which written text can be read by a specific audience. Readability formulas assign a numeric value to a given document, and this value identifies the reading level that the audience is expected to have. Among the various types of readability tests are the Flesch Reading Ease, the Gunning-Fog Index and the Flesch-Kincaid Reading Grade Level. All of these assessments utilize some type of mathematical formula that is based on the average number of words per sentence and the average number of syllables per word. Obviously, this is a very superficial way at looking at language, but it does have particular relevance in the field of usability.

A readability assessment of a given document can provide a pretty quick and effective way to determine its potential suitability for a specific audience. However, these assessments can really only determine if something is "not usable." If a readability test calculates that a document is beyond the reading level of the intended audience, then it would be safe to assume that the audience will have trouble getting through the text. It wouldn't matter if the other elements of the document are appropriate for the audience; if the audience can't read it, then it's not usable!

However, if a readability assessment determines that the reading level of the document is within the range of the reading level of the intended audience, it would not be safe to assume that the document is totally usable. This is because there are so many other factors that readability formulas can't take into consideration, such as the document layout, the complexity of the concepts, the audience's interest and knowledge of the material, potential gender or racial biases, and so on. If something is unusable in one area, then it is generally unusable as a whole; thus, one cannot only use a readability assessment to determine a document's usability.

What this means is that readability assessments don't really have much bearing or relevance beyond what they have specifically been designed to measure--that is, the readability of the text. They would not be very effective in assessing the visual design elements of a document. This is because design elements are generally subjective and much harder to define; as such, they cannot be mathematically quantified the same way readability elements are. Nor does the readability of a document imply anything about the actual quality of the writing. Just because a document is potentially readable doesn't mean it is any good or even worth reading in the first place. While readability assessments do have a role to play in the field of usability testing, it is a very specific role; attempts to make use of them beyond this could potentially yield unreliable results.

My Kind of Website

As discussed in a previous post, the design of a website should be heavily influenced by the intended audience of that site. I recently got a chance to put this theory into practice when I used Google Sites to create the website How To License Music. The intent of this site was to teach and inform about the process of licensing a piece of music for a visual project, and it was designed with a specific audience in mind--myself. That is, someone with a learning style similar to my own.

After taking this Index of Learning Styles Questionnaire, it was revealed that I was a highly Reflective and Global learner and a moderately high Intuitive and Verbal learner. Using these descriptions of the different learning styles as a guiding tool, I went about designing my website so that it would best be utilized by an audience with these particular learning styles.

In general, my website is designed to present information in a broad, conceptual manner. This is partially achieved by having the key important terms stand out, which are first seen on the page as bolded text, as such:


When these terms are "moused over," more information and an additional description is revealed. This is illustrated below, showing how the page looks when the cursor hovers over the the bolded term "Music Library" at the bottom of the page:

Bolding the text in this way causes it to stand out, which highlights these important concepts at a glance. This way of presenting information is conducive to the global learner, who prefers to see the larger, more important concepts first, as opposed to the tiny details. The ability to see the terms first and then find out more information about them will help the reflective learner, who learns best by taking things slowly and having time to digest and "reflect" on the information.

In addition, there is a separate "Important Terms" page that collects all of the bolded terms used throughout the site and presents them in a dictionary-like format. This uses language to enhance the visual aspects of the page, which aids the verbal learner:


In keeping with this theme, a universal aspect of the website's design is that all of the navigational icons are enhanced with text, as seen here:

And here, with the illustrations of various movie scenes having captions underneath:


Site navigation is also presented in outline format with clickable text, as opposed to images or icons. In terms of the background and color scheme, pale yellows and grays give the page a muted look, causing the text to stand out as hierarchically dominant. All of this plays to the strengths of the verbal learner, who generally prefer words to images. This does not mean that there is no use for visuals; rather, the optimum learning experience is to strike the right balance between both verbal and visual information. This is the point in having all the images enhanced with additional text.

I also employed design features that were helpful to the other ends of the learning spectrum. Attachments of actual licensing contracts give practical examples of the issues discussed, which encourages the "sensing" learner who prefers to see connections to the real world. In addition, pages are presented in a logical, sequenced order, which helps the "sequential" learner. Employing these design features helps to broaden the reach of the website and also challenges the other types of learner to overcome their limitations.

As this was my first foray into web design, it was quite useful to have this background knowledge on how to use design elements so that they are geared towards a certain audience. This helped me develop a focused site that should specifically appeal to learners like myself but also be accessible to a general audience.