Newsflash: today's media consumers are not reading every word. Modern readers are more likely to skip around, skim readings and, in some cases, abandon the text altogether if the information they need isn’t provided in “the first scroll”.
Clearlink’s Vilja Johnson and Aaron Gates presented “Editing for UX in Digital Content” to help editors to better understand and meet consumers' needs.
“It might break our hearts, as editors, that people aren’t going to read every single word that we’ve poured our blood, sweat and tears into, but this is the reality of how people read online, and so our job as editors is to do our best to make it as easy as possible for readers to locate information,” Johnson said.
The speakers advocated for editors and writers to “think like their readers” and implement changes like writing shorter, more concise pieces and taking “scannability” into account.
Gates and Johnson "were trying to really expand the general idea of what UX is when applied to a broad range of editing topics so that anyone can start to think about the user experience,” Gates said.
Conference attendees can watch this session and more on the conference website. The session will be available to watch until July 31, 2021.
