The Sustainable Lightness of Language
summary
The talk argues that clearer language in user interfaces and documentation reduces user errors, support costs and customer churn, though specific emissions/sustainability metrics are unavailable. It presents case studies (Hawaii false missile alert, mislabelled dropdowns, iMovie export failures, OTP/internet-banking friction) and audits of large documents (e.g., Italian tax and social-security manuals) and recommends methods: card sorting, tree testing, simple usability tests, a delete test, readability metrics (RIDIT and the new Plain Language ISO), and using large language models only to generate first drafts that must be validated.
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chapters (9)
- 0:00Introduction
- 3:23Software language sustainability
- 7:19Hawaii missile alert disaster
- 10:51Omnichannel language impact
- 17:42Plain language structure
- 22:21Slack accessible docs
- 26:20Agenzia Entrate manual critique
- 29:53INPS service complexity
- 31:37Q&A
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