I attended the 2-day PLAIN Plain Language conference in Sydney last week. It was excellent. While many people think of plain language as simple, jargon-free language, it is so much more than that. Plain language incorporates insights from a broad range of fields including information design.
The best definitions for plain language place the reader, or document user, at the centre. A document is in plain language if the user can use it in the way intended by the document writer or designer.
Therefore, plain language research is first and foremost research about the document user.
While some exploratory user testing can be conducted by the document writer or designer, as a professional researcher, I bring both objectivity and research expertise to such projects. In particular, we need to make sure that the sample sizes for before-and-after measurement are large enough for us to draw valid conclusions.
In contrast to our approach, some research agencies treat plain language research as if it is just another research project, without understanding what plain language is.
Our research design philosophy: the words 'user testing' and 'focus groups' should not be used in the same sentence - except this one. Call me for advice!
