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I get confused about once a month. Well I get confused more than once a month, but I get confused once a month with my bus pass. I have an Oyster Card which you just swash past the reader when getting on the bus. It handily tells you when your travel pass expires.

So as you swash it, the LCD display flashes

Expires 24 NOV

This is all good and well up till about 5 days before expiry when it flashes

Expires in 5 days
...
Expires in 2 days
Expires in 1 day
Expires in 0 days

This is where things get confusing. Does "Expires in 1 day mean that it expires tomorrow? Or the day after. What does expires in 0 days means? Does it mean expires today? or is tomorrow the last day.

The last two reading should really be

Expires end of tomorrow
Expires end of today

That makes it very clear as to when the bus pass expires. However for a system that abbreviates December to DMR not DEC, designing for the human interface appears to be last on their priority list.

I see this problem all the time on the web. I'm guilty of. We design for ourselves, or we design for people who know how to use the system. Which arguable are the exact user base we need to worry the least about. We forget to design for people who may not really follow the arcane paths of out mind and why we came up with a particular flow. We forget to design for people who look at a page and think "What the fuck am I meant to do now" and what they do is press "alt-f4".

We forget a lot to design in plain English.

Take for example the comments preview problem I highlighted last week. The submit buttons are normally labelled "Ok" "Post" "Submit". What does this really mean to someone reading their first blog?

"Submit" is almost ok. "Post" is a bit confusing, as the only people who know what post is, are bloggers really. "OK" is pretty confusing, as most people see this in a dialogue box, and well a web page isn't a dialogue box is it? I changed mine to "Submit Comment" a while a go. I thought this was the most obvious plain English expression of what the user would be doing. I removed all other buttons and especially the preview functionality. There is less confusion with a simple single call to action.

Yeah most people can figure these out. But I know my granddad probably couldn’t. My aunt might not be. Could your mom? You uncle? Maybe, maybe not. I know if my granddad was on the web, he would be intimidated enough to begin with. It's a strange a cruel place for a novice non technical person. The minute something isn't simple, obvious and in plain English that's it. It's enough. It makes someone feel stupid, and no one wants to feel that. Shut down. Turn off. No comment.

I know the examples I've used are quite simple. It's easy to work out what the terms expressed mean and are asking for. But if even I have to think about it for a second (longer in the case of the bus, and I'm still not quite sure what expires in 0 days means) what about other people. If the simple examples can be confusing, what about the more complicated areas?

It's not actually any more effort to implement plain English design. It just requires us to use some saichel when designing.

A little thought can go a long way in design.