Janice (Ginny) Redish, Ph.D. is president of Redish & Associates, Inc. based in Bethesda, Maryland. In this work, Ginny helps government agencies and private companies create successful web sites through training and consultation on plain language and usability. Among her many accomplishments, Ginny helped develop the federal website www.usability.gov – a guide for developing usable and useful websites.
Ginny has won many awards for her work and is the author of numerous publications on usability, task analysis, accessibility, document design, plain language, and writing for the web. Her latest is the widely-acclaimed book, Letting Go of the Words – Writing Web Content that Works.
In this podcast she talks with Helen Osborne about ways to communicate clearly on the Web. Topics include:
- Writing for print or the web. What’s the difference? How are they the same?
- Appreciating that every web use is a conversation started by the site visitor.
- Understanding your web visitors by thinking of “personas.”
- Applying principles of plain language to health websites.
- Using usability testing to measure how well your website works.
More Ways to Learn
- Redish & Associates, Inc., www.redish.net
- Redish J. Letting Go of the Words — Writing Web Content that Works. Elsevier, 2007. Available at http://redish.net/content/books/lettinggoofthewords.html. You can download two chapters to get a sense of the style and tone by going to http://redish.net/writingfortheweb/index.php/sample-chapters
- Dumas J., Redish, J. A Practical Guide to Usability Testing. Intellect Ltd.,
First edition, 1993; Revised edition, 1999. - Hackos, J., Redish, J. User and Task Analysis for Interface Design. John Wiley
& Sons, 1998. - Osborne H. “In other words…What Makes Web Sites ‘Patient Friendly?'” On Call magazine, July 2005. Available at http://www.healthliteracy.com/article.asp?PageID=3803
About plain language: www.plainlanguage.gov & www.centerforplainlanguage.org
About usability: www.usability.gov & www.usabilityprofessionals.org
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Using information from other webcasts you have provided Helen, I have ventured into my own podcasting for a distance education class of community health workers. The responses have all been positive. They like to hear a voice, material and ideas presented through the spoken word.
Students in the class are now asking how they can post podcasting as well. We are working on that at the moment.
As a content manager, I heard a lot of useful information from this podcast that I can apply to my work. The resources available from Ginny Redish’s web site are terrific. Thank you for offering such a practical approach to writing for the web.