Media: Jumbled Letters hold important Message for Usability Evangelisers finds HFI

The current Human Factors International newsletter is a particularly compelling one, so it may have taken a while to get round to reviewing it, but its message will hang around.

It looks at the theory that jumbled letters are quite easy to read. It takes the scientific approach that just because they aren't impossible to read, doesn't mean that they are as easy to read as letters in the right order.

And then Kath Straub looks at the difficulty scientists had in making this point to the general public, who believed that: "If yuo can raed this yuor brian wroks". She shows that sometimes too much learning is a dangerous thing.

'Perhaps psycholinguists would have enjoyed more traction if, instead of offering a mini-lecture on lexical access, they offered the following one counter example with a relative baseline to compare against:

No, really... Which is easier?

a. if oyu nac eadr shti rouy narbi swork.

or

b. If yuo can raed this yuor brian wroks.

or

c. If you can read this, your brain works.

Sure, this explanation is less explanatory. But the goal was debunking the jumbled letters myth, not to enlist a new psycholinguist.'

Eric Schaffer rounds off the essay with two points: 'One is the power of convincing demonstrations. There is no amount of theory that will be as useful as giving your executive sponsor a brain cramp trying to use a proposed design. Then demo the alternative that feels like a warm oil massage.

'The second lesson is how very powerfully users can adapt – they can read the jumbled words, and they can use the jumbled interface – BUT AT A COST. The argument that "The users could do it" is pretty weak.'

Associated Link: HFI: If yuo can raed this yuor brian wroks...

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