[aabusiness Writing Technical Content for Consumers: The Mom Test
You have permission to publish this article electronically
or in print, free of charge, as long as the bylines are
included. A courtesy copy of your publication would be
appreciated - send to joann@leqmedical.com.
Title: Writing Technical Content for Consumers: The Mom Test
Word Count: 831
Author: Jo Ann LeQuang
Email: joann@leqmedical.com
Category: Business - General
Article URL: http://www.submityourarticle.com/articles/easypublish.php?art_id=14944
The article is preformatted to 60CPL.
Writing Technical Content for Consumers: The Mom Test
As Mother’s Day approaches, it reminds me of one of the
best tests that was ever concocted for patient literature.
Patient literature is a generic term for all sorts of
content written expressly for healthcare consumers,
typically patients themselves and possibly their families.
You see patient literature everywhere nowadays. Go into any
doctor’s waiting room and you’ll see lots of cardboard
brochure stands with pamphlets aimed at talking directly to
the healthcare consumer.
There’s even more patient content on the Internet. Most
medical companies offer a lot of patient-oriented materials
on their main websites and some have spin-off sites devoted
exclusively to the consumer.
What does this have to do with Mother’s Day? Writing
patient literature is somewhat more of an art form than
writing technical specifications. To know if you’ve done it
right, you need to subject your material to “the mom test.”
Sometimes I do this literally. I bring the material home,
in as close to final form as possible, and hand it to my
mother. I ask her to look it over and give me her opinion.
I’m mainly interested in whether or not she could follow
what was being presented.
Some writers use the “mom test” in a more imaginary way and
try to read the material from the perspective of their own
parents.
Most healthcare consumers are senior citizens, so the mom
test works well for most patient literature. If you’re
writing for patients who are more likely to be young adults
or even teens, you need to test in an appropriate age group.
The difficulty writing patient literature is striking the
right balance between simplifying things and keeping it
accurate. Sometimes, in an effort to avoid using big words
or difficult concepts, errors or misleading statements get
injected.
There is also the danger that no matter how carefully you
present the content, it is too technical or confusing for
the reader. This is possible when crafting any highly
complicated content for a lay audience.
Another problem with patient literature is that it has to
be fair and balanced, yet, ideally, it should be reassuring
and positive. You can’t mislead your reader, but you have
to be very careful not to frighten him or her, either!
What’s funny about the mom test is that often patient
literature prepared at my agency gets good marks in those
departments but we learn other things. It seems that by
deliberately working hard to be clear, honest, accurate,
yet positive, we turn out copy that meets those standards.
But sometimes we drop the ball in ways we never imagined.
In one brochure, my mother informed us, the type was hard
to read. The designer had done something very attractive
and artistic and had placed gray type on a white
background. It’s very trendy among artists right now to do
that. The trouble is, my mom said it was hard to read.
(The brochure was for heart disease which is typically a
health concern of older people so our target readers would
be around the age of my mother.)
We switched the type to black. Not quite as snazzy but more
practical. We then passed the mom test.
In another brochure, we used a lot of big medical terms but
defined them in a mini-glossary in the back. We thought
this was terribly clever. My mother said she didn’t want to
keep flipping back and forth in the brochure. We
re-designed the piece to make the glossary a “flap” that
also worked as a bookmark. Again, she gave us thumbs up.
For another project, another person’s mom was given some
material and although she found the material fine, she
suggested that we do an audio cassette or CD with the same
content for people who have trouble reading. Another great
idea! It was honestly something that we had considered but
hearing the need again from a potential consumer got the
project green-lighted.
Another mom test was conducted on a website. Again, this
site had a list of commonly used terms that related to the
disease in question. The idea was that patients could use
this list to learn more about their condition. My mother
said, “Those definitions and explanations are fine, I
guess, but why can’t you just explain it in plain English?”
That gave us a great idea. We left the terms exactly as is
but we added a new choice to the website. You could now
view the medical term and get its definition or you could
press, “Tell Me In Plain English.” Then we rewrote the
definition. Because of the “plain English” button you had
to press to access this definition, we had a bit more
freedom in being folksy with these definitions.
So now that it’s almost Mother’s Day, it’s time to thank a
very responsive and valuable (and unpaid) focus group for
many writers: our mothers.
About the Author:
Jo Ann LeQuang owns LeQ Medical Marketing Communications,
an agency that works exlusively with medical clients. LeQ
Medical Marketing Communications is online at
http://www.LeQMedical.com
########################################################
Looking For Quality Content?
The Syndicator provides free, quality syndicated articles
for your website that are automatically updated each week.
Syndication feeds include:
Business/Sales
Internet Marketing/Promotion
Web Design/Development
Biz Tips
Web Design Tips
Home & Family Matters
Dinner Ideas
Health & Fitness
Horoscopes
AngelVoice
Headlines
and more…
http://www.web-source.net/syndicator.htm
########################################################
Post Articles: mailto:aabusiness@yahoogroups.com
Subscribe: mailto:aabusiness-subscribe@yahoogroups.com
Unsubscribe: mailto:aabusiness-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com
Change subscription: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/aabusiness
List owner: mailto:aabusiness-owner@yahoogroups.com
Yahoo! Groups Links
To visit your group on the web, go to:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/aabusiness/
Your email settings:
Individual Email | Traditional
To change settings online go to:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/aabusiness/join
(Yahoo! ID required)
To change settings via email:
mailto:aabusiness-digest@yahoogroups.com
mailto:aabusiness-fullfeatured@yahoogroups.com
To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
aabusiness-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com
Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to:
http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/