Make your reports readable: a content design approach

Recently, the United Nations (UN) reported that very few people read UN reports. 

Content designers can work with subject experts to make their reports understandable, useful, findable and accessible to the people who need them. 

That work can be the difference between an unread report, and an influential report. 

An unread report costs time and money to write. It uses even more resources while it lives on a website. 

An influential report affects the world around it. It might influence law, policy, communities, or the environment. 

It takes time to learn what readers need from a report, how they will find it, and how they will act on it. And the outcome is worth the effort. 

Use understandable language in the report

On past projects, my most successful strategy has been to make information:

• credible to experts,
• understandable to non-experts.

There is strong evidence that people want information about their area of expertise in clear language. The more expertise a person has, the more they appreciate clear language.

Clear language is useful for everyone - not just experts. A person who is not an expert should be able to understand, trust and use the report as easily as an expert. 

Make the report useful to a real person

People rarely read a report because it’s a report. They read it because it has valuable information. Not just valuable generally: valuable to them, now. 

Content designers often use user stories or job stories to guide our work. 

Stories help us understand when the work is “done” and measure its effectiveness. They are based on evidence we gather through research about the people who will use our content. 

A user story for a report on rule of law might look like this:

As a citizen of a country that had a recent revolution

I need to know what progress my country has made toward re-establishing rule of law

So I can plan for my future in my country

Or this:

As an expert in international law

I need to understand the challenges different countries have when re-establishing rule of law after a revolution

So I can plan for what might go wrong in my work

Make the report’s information findable 

Clear language and knowledge about the reader’s needs can help people find the report.

Content designers learn what people need. Then, we design the report so people can quickly:

• find the report through different ways of searching,
• know whether they’ve found the information they need,
• find the information that’s most important to them within the report,
• be confident the information they found is accurate and complete.

We do that by carefully structuring our content. We design the order and length of words, sentences and paragraphs. 

And, we work with a multidisciplinary team to design the structure around the report. 

Make the report accessible  

When designing a report, content designers consider whether it’s accessible to a person who:

• cannot physically use a mouse,
• is distracted by competing responsibilities,
• has a headache,
• is blind or D/deaf,
• has limited knowledge of the report’s language, 
• is caring for a baby, 
• does not trust the information in the report,
• has dyslexia, dyspraxia, or dyscalculia, 
• does not have reliable internet or unlimited data,
• might experience an unplanned power outage,
• is in an environment they cannot control, like a crowded train. 

Those are just a few examples. 

Accessibility is our ethical responsibility. Designers also consider accessibility for legal reasons. Companies are fined and prosecuted for accessibility violations. 

Reports are more influential if they are accessible. That’s because more people can find, read, and understand accessible reports.

For example, if a report is in PDF or a video without transcript and captions, a lot of people cannot find it or read it. If people cannot read a report, they will not be influenced by it. And they will lose trust in the people who write the report. 

The same applies to reports with inaccessible charts and numbers, low colour contrast, information coded by colour, unbroken walls of text, or unhelpful headers and titles.

Contact us if you would like to see how we can make your reports useful, using a content design approach: hello@contentdesign.london