USAC Content and Design Principles

Start with people and their needs

Think about your user(s) and their goal(s). How can you shape your content to help them achieve their goal(s) efficiently?

Build trust

Talk like a person. Be transparent. Use positive language and concrete examples. Base procedures around the assumption that your stakeholders are well-intentioned and trying to achieve good ends.

Set expectations and meet them. Remember to inform users when things change.

Give the right information to the right person at the right time

Meet users where they are. Guide them through a process or task with digestible content and clear next steps.

Leverage design to help users easily find the information they need and identify the same types of information across multiple pages.

Do the hard work to make it simple

Customers should not be doing redundant and repetitive work. Make technology do all “non-thinking” tasks.

Make it understandable and intuitive

Use plain language and simple sentences.

Write text to the simplest comprehension level possible. If that is not an option, provide a simplified version of the text nearby.

Use design to direct users to the most important information on the page.

Use data to tell the story

Wherever possible, use factual data to support your point or tell the story. It connects our mission with the real world.

Test and refine

Make sure your experience works for users. Don’t be afraid to scrap what’s there and start over.

Test, test, test, and then refine.