Tell me how long it’s gonna take to read this
A Service Design principle to help people feel less overhwelmed when opening documents
Context
Watch my early thoughts in video
Side notes
This is the first draft of this Service Design Principle. Once adapted and refined multiple time, this principle will be part of the book "Service Design Principles 201-300"
Let me know if you find useful or not to have the automatic transcription of the video (as seen below). I'm still playing with this format to create a very first draft of my Service Design principles.
Automatic transcript
This is the automatic transcription of the thoughts I shared in the video.
Hi there in this video, I want to share a little service and tip that you can use at work to basically make work a little bit less overwhelming.
So let's go through it. Here we are, in my notion that today's where I put all my notes about services and principles and observations I do about services experiences.
And there is one that I want to share with you. It's just an early thoughts that they want to explore with you kind of in thinking out loud fashion.
So let's me find that again. It's telling me how long it's going to take to read this. So the context is, this is I found this app, which is called the Vido method, which lets you basically take some piece of texts and put it in the app.
And then it tells you, oh to read this, a normal human should, would need about so many minutes. And so that's something that I found quite useful especially in one context, which is in my work I have to do kind of like some research reports where I do field interviews and this kind of stuff.
And then I do a report, right? Explain kind of what are the key findings of these elements of this research.
And often these are, you know, PowerPoints or presentations, and they can look quite long, you know, for people because they open it and it's like, oh wow, it's 50 slides or more.
That feels overwhelming. You know, that's gonna take a lot of time to read, which is a problem because once people open it, then the first cloud they have is, oh my God, I'm overwhelmed.
I will never have time to read this. They might just shut it down and go for something else or just skim through it.
And if they just skim through it, they will not get the good quality. And that is in the document. So one fact I found, but I didn't try it out more and more is to let people know in advance, like how much time will it take to read this thing?
And here we see it in French. You see kind of like, okay, second, first light is kind of like the title slide of the report.
And the second slide is one where I basically tell, you know, like the table of content where like, that's what I'm going to talk about this in this presentation.
And then we have here, it's time of reading and here it's written in French. So I'm going to kind of translate it live.
Oh, that sounds way less overwhelming now. So if I just received this in an email, I'm checking out and I'm thinking, Hey, maybe I have this investment in one extra minutes and I already can explore the executive center or I think, Hey, I have a few minutes ahead, 15 minutes.
Sounds kind of fair. Cool. I can do that now. Or, Hmm. I don't have time right now. That's something that the person I think, but she could say in her head, but 15 minutes, I think that's manageable for me to do tomorrow between these two meetings.
And then you're helping the person to decide when she will be able to go through this. So that's basically the idea.
It's something that we see a lot in kind of a newspaper website, magazine websites, and this kind of stuff, where they tell you, how long will it take you to read this document or this story, but it's not something that you see as often in documents.
So imagine now if you things, imagine if you receive a contract for your insurance and they tell you, okay, this is a new contract and you have to read it.
And obviously when you see like how much, how long it is, you say, Hey, I will not read it, but I will sign it nevertheless.
Which obviously is not the best thing to do. But imagine now if they change one little thing, if they tell you, Hey, it's going to take you five minutes to read this document.
Oh, okay. That seems long, but five minutes. It seems long because you see kind of the quantity of text. It looks overwhelming because it's a contract.
So it's obviously often not so well designed, but if you look really at how long it takes, it just takes five minutes.
So Hey, investing five minutes to be sure that I'm not getting screwed could be a good investment. And now I'm more willing to go read the full document.
So this idea of letting people know how long it takes to read something or to go through some material is something that we can use, not only for websites or presentations, but also for any type of document, especially the kind of documents that people don't like to read.
That's basically it for this idea. Just to summarize it in a very short way, the for now, at least this principle is called, tell me how long it's going to take to read this.
And the question I have for myself and maybe also for you is should we go a little bit higher and, and say, tell me how long it's going to take, but then it's kind of too general, I think.
So I'm not sure yet if I, if I'm going to just stick with kind of the reading part, because I think it's already something that you can apply to many different contexts, or if this principle should be more general and go in, let tell me how long it's going to take to do this.
So that's kind of like the thinking where I'm at right now. And these were my Very, always thoughts about this possible new service and principle.
1 comment
First written draft
This is a first written draft of this Service Design Principle where I turned the transcript of the video above into something more readable and shorter. I've also changed the title of the principle.
Tell me how long it’s gonna take me to go through this
That's something I find quite useful, especially in one context: when I do field interviews work, I then write reports in the form of PowerPoint presentations where I explain the key findings of this research. Such presentations make the report more visual and appealing but they can look quite long for people. When they open they might think: "Oh shit, there are more than 50 slides to go through! This will take me so much time!." That feels overwhelming.
That's a problem because people might just close the document and forget about it. Or they might just skim through it which makes them lose the good quality that's in the document.
So one thing that I do more and more is to let people know in advance how much time it will take to read a document (1).
For example in a presentation I have the title slide and the second slide is the one with the table of contents and the mention of the reading time. I then write down something like this:
"The reading of the summary of the executive summary of this document takes less than one minute." And below that, I said, "The reading of the complete document takes about 15 minutes."
Once you read that you might think:
“Hey, in one extra minute I can already explore the executive summary.”
Or you might tell yourself:
“I have a few minutes ahead. 15 minutes sounds kind of fair. Cool, I can do that now.”
Or, "Hmm, I don't have time right now." That's something the person can say in her head, but 15 minutes, I think that's manageable for me to do tomorrow between these two meetings. And then you're helping the person decide when she will be able to go through this. So that's basically the idea.
Informing people about how long it takes to read something is something we already see in blogs and online magazine, but it's not something that you see as often in documents.
Imagine now if you get a contract from your insurance or a privacy policy to read and the company would tell you upfront:
“It's going to take you five minutes to read this document.”
Often you don’t read documents in full because your perception of the document makes you believe it’s gonna take a shit load of time to read, when often it isn’t the case.
Action question
For which parts of your service would it make sense to let people know in advance how long it takes to go through it?
Footnote
(1) To do this I use I found an app called Read-o-meter, which lets you take a piece of text and put it in the app. Then it tells you how long it would take a normal human to read it. The app is created by Tharique Azeez and it uses the average reading speed (around 200 words per minute) to make its calculation.