Breaking sentences down into smaller units is proven to improve understanding
Jeff Petty, Microsoft
Too much text can be intimidating, off-putting and difficult to comprehend for many people, including the 14% of adults who have difficulty reading. It can also be an inconvenient distraction for other people who just want to extract the information as efficiently as possible and get back to playing.
Highlighting important words and concepts can help in two ways. Firstly to allow people to skim the content quickly, extracting the key points the text is trying to communicate without having to trawl through every word. And secondly by breaking up sentences into smaller and more easily digestible chunks.
Best practice examples:
- Assassins Creed Syndicate loading screen tips
- Destiny help text
- Happy Wars instructions
- Ori and the Blind Forest instructions
- Zelda: The Wind Waker item text
Category & Level:
- Cognitive (Intermediate)