Enter the spoiler — the person who utters the words “usability test.”

“Why bother?” you think. The site works, you know that. You’ve been showing it to your newsroom colleagues along the way. You’ve listened to their feedback. You’ve made changes you thought were necessary. What more could you learn?

What more? How about 80 percent of the problems with the package? How about architecture flaws you never considered? How about the differences between a good design and a great one?

As the article Technology’s Untanglers from July 8 New York Times reports, “Sometimes there is a huge disconnect between the people who make a product and the people who use it.” Usability testing is vital to uncovering the areas where these disconnects happen. Its value and power shouldn’t be underestimated in the e-commerce world or in the multimedia journalism storytelling world.

But it has to be done right with a methodology that works and takes into account a journalist’s tight deadlines. That’s what this column is about. Today we’ll provide you with a template that makes usability testing less daunting. All you need to do is:

• recruit FIVE people

• set aside FIVE hours (that’s total time, start to finish)
• follow the FIVE steps described below.

FIVE PEOPLE

It is important to realize that when done correctly, usability testing with five people can uncover 80 percent of your problems, as demonstrated in the chart below by usability guru Jakob Nielsen.

Jakob Nielsen’s chart from his March 19, 2000 Alertbox Column. http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20000319.html

Moreover, usability testing is the difference between good design and great design. As we’ve said in the print world for years, if the presentation is aesthetically pleasing, but the user can’t find the information, then the design is useless. This concept is even more important in the world of Web design where clicking to a new site is even easier than finding a new magazine or newspaper.

What exactly will this accomplish?

That’s up to you. A properly executed usability test of your multimedia package or Web site can reveal answers to whatever you design the test to ask. However, in most cases it will uncover three key things:

• Areas of confusing navigation. There is no doubt that as the project designer, you know how your site navigation functions. You know the “Part Two” menu option brings the user to a particular story or audio slide show. But does the new user know this? It is important to realize that about an hour into designing your project, you may have lost all perspective on how the interface appears to others. This also holds true for your colleagues who have been looking at the project as you have been creating it. You all have learned your navigation; you have conditioned yourselves to go where you want. But for others it may not be so easy and intuitive. You need to test and see.

• Users’ intuitive viewing sequences. Again, this is an area that designers tend to have in mind and follow as they work on or show the site to others in the newsroom. A usability test can reveal if others will follow what you intend.

• Roadblocks in the flow or delivery of information. Not everyone in your target audience may know that the e-mail for the reporter is at the end of the text or that the panoramic photograph moves when the arrows on either side are clicked. What seems normal and natural to the creator is not always so with the user.

FIVE HOURS

What! Who has that kind of time? Although it may seem daunting, think about the hours you’ve already put into the project. If simple changes you make can help the user actually understand the project better or more completely, isn’t it worth it?

The testing method outlined below is a combination of suggestions from technology experts, journalists and usability professionals and is created especially for the busy multimedia journalist. It not only focuses on issues specific to the types of site or package designs we do, but it also takes into account newsroom deadlines. So from start to finish it should take one person about five hours to get solid usability data about your package. Here’s the breakdown:

• 30 minutes to meet with project team and determine key questions

• 30 minutes to add your specifics to the basic pre-and post-surveys provided
• 30 minutes to recruit test subjects
• Approximately two and half hours to test five people for 20 minutes to a half hour each.
• 30 minutes to analyze data
• 30 minutes to summarize the results and create a task list.

This testing is leaner and more streamlined than an expensive one designed by a usability firm, but it has been put to the test by my design students on award-winning multimedia news packages as well as journalistic Web sites for the past three years and has delivered valuable data each and every time.

Before you start….

• Check your ego at the door and separate yourself from your creation. If you don’t think you can do this, have someone else on your team handle the testing. No doubt you have an emotional attachment to this project that has consumed you for the past months. That’s only natural. But objectivity is necessary to get test results that will make your project even better. Be sure you want the real answers.

• Realize the limitations of the information you are gathering. Usability tests can reveal valuable information about a particular project, but the results should not be misconstrued as pertinent to all Web presentations. Here is where that number five (in terms of test subjects) is too small and your test design is too specific. The test results are helpful for the project you are testing. When you do another project, you’ll need to do another test.

• Know it is OK to ask for feedback. As journalists we have been trained to NOT go back to sources and show them stories beforehand. Remember that this is different. We are asking an uninvolved group (not the story sources) to do what they normally would do with a Web package. Then we are taking that information and improving the site. It essentially is another step in the information gather process.

FIVE STEPS

What follows are the basic steps and considerations for creating and executing a test on your multimedia news package.

Step 1: Determine tasks to test Call a meeting of the project team and:

• Review. Remind everyone of your target audience and site goals.

• Choose tasks. Determine at least ten (but no more than 15) tasks that you a user should be able to successfully execute to get the most out of the package. Remember, you cannot analyze the entire presentation. Carefully select tasks based on what actual users of the site would do. These could include items such as finding and playing an interactive game you created, watching the audio slide show through completion or navigating the site in a specific, preferred order. Here’s a good list of questions to help.

Step 2: Experimental design Although there are multiple ways to design a usability test, we are providing you with a basic design that has been proven to work on multimedia news packages. As you become more experienced in testing you may want to deviate from this outline, but we strongly suggest you follow it exactly your first few times.

• Welcome, complete informed consent and pre-experiment questions. It is important you do your best to put users at ease by thanking them, offering them a cup of coffee, or just chatting with them for a few minutes. Remind them that it is the multimedia package that is being tested, not them. You then will want users to read and sign an informed consent — where the experiment is explained for the test subjects. This is necessary to ethically complete this inquiry. Finally, you will want to have them complete the pre-experiment questions that you will develop in Step 3. Time: 5 minutes

• Free observation time. This is a time when users explore the site with NO interaction from the tester. You simply direct the user to the site and step back. The only instruction should be for users to “Explore the site for as long as they would like.” Here is where you can either videotape their behavior or take copious notes. You want to know what users do when just directed to “explore.” Allot 10 minutes total, but if the user tells you he or she is done beforehand, move along. If they are not done at the 10 minute mark, make note of that and tell users it is time to move on.Time: -5-10 minutes
• Assigned tasks. Using the list you created in the step above, ask users to execute your preferred tasks. Word the tasks so that you are placing users in a natural scenario. For example, rather than stating, “Find the e-mail for the reporter,” say something like, “You have an unanswered questions after viewing this presentation and would like to contact the reporter. How would you go about doing that?” Have tasks ordered and prioritized, skipping over any that were completed during the free observation time. Depending on the user and the task you may or may not want the user to “think aloud” or describe their thought processes to you while completing the tasks. At this point in your testing, either silent observation or think aloud protocols are fine approaches. Do whatever feels most comfortable to you. Time: -5-10 minutes
• Post experiment questionnaire and discussion. There are two parts to this stage in the process. First, have users fill out the questionnaire you will develop in Step 3. Once complete, it is time for open-ended questions that are answered in a conversation with you.

Step 3: Develop questions There are four printed forms you will want to have ready for each test participant:

• Informed consent. Necessary for ethical completion of the study. Sample here.

• Pre-experiment questions. The purpose here is to give some context to the results and help you understand the Web practices of your test subjects. As the sample form suggests, you want to have users quantify their responses and word questions so that the subjects’ personal interpretation of the answers is minimal. For example, instead of asking a user to describe their Web usage on a scale of 1-10, with one being none and 10 being heavy, it would be better to ask them to quantify the amount of time they spend online and provide choices such as 0-2 hours/day, 3-5 hours/day, etc. You also may want to ask questions that gauge the participants’ interest in the subject of the presentation you are testing, or the Web site your work for. Make this a written questionnaire. A sample can be found here.
• Post-experiment questions. You will want to administer a written questionnaire once the tasks are completed. This questionnaire should gather subjective data, and should contain quantifiable inquiries, asking users to rank the success of certain aspects of the site. A sample can be found here.
• Interview questions. Finally, plan a few open-format interview questions to ask each participant at the end of the session. These should elicit more overall, qualitative impressions of the website. You also may want to ask participants what they recall about how the site functions. If they clearly recall the structure, you can bask in the glory of your success. If not, you may want to consider where clearer labeling or directions may help. Users should not write these responses. You should allow them to speak freely and take notes. A sample can be found here.

Step 4: Gather data The order of data gathering is outlined in Step 2 above. Here are items to consider before you begin with the first test subject.

• Test sooner rather than later. No multimedia designer wants to make changes to something they believe is in its final form. Schedule your usability test in the beta stage of development — not quite finalized, but final enough so someone can navigate the site.

• Do not test your newsroom colleagues. Anyone already familiar with the project does not represent your typical user. In an ideal world, test subjects are recruited through a marketing research firm, but — for the busy newsroom journalist — this probably isn’t possible. So go to other departments. See if someone in ad sales, circulation or marketing (who doesn’t know about the project) can spare a half hour to be tested. See if a friend or relative of a colleague can come in. Bottom line, try to make your test subjects as close to typical users as possible.
• Test everyone on the same computer, in the same location. This will standardize the results and not allow people’s bookmarks or other preset browsing options interfere with results.
• Know what you are looking for during the free observation period. Carefully observe each session and take notes about the participants’ interactions with the site. Which tasks were performed successfully? How long did they take? Did participants make errors? What problems occurred? Did the participants have a conceptual model of the site? Was it correct? It can be helpful to have a checklist for yourself during this time, so you observe the same behaviors with each participant.
• Pay close attention to the steps users take to complete tasks. You want to discern the path that is clear and most natural for users when completing tasks. Ideally they all will complete tasks in fairly predicable ways. But if they do not, you can learn something by the “mistakes” they make. How do they recover? What page of the site do they go back to as a “home base” or starting point? Again, you may want to have your own checklist to refer to here.
• Try to be as unobtrusive as possible. We know… you feel like an elephant in the room when observing someone viewing a website. But awareness of your body language and your non-verbal reactions to the users’ behaviors can make a huge difference in terms of their comfort. It will take them some time to get used to your presence, but once they do, they will become more relaxed and their behaviors will be more realistic and natural.

Step 5: Analyze data and make list of potential improvements

Now the fun starts — seeing what you have learned. Again, take things step-by-step:

• Average all quantifiable responses. Break down the number of men vs. women, the average age of participants, etc. Be sure the demographics match your target audience. You also will want to average the answers to all questions that involve rankings. Place all this data on one sheet and make notes of responses that fall to either extreme.

• Look at the free observation notes in light of the quantifiable data. If users ranked navigational controls as weak, what behaviors during the free observation period support this? Can you find similar behaviors that would contribute to this ranking? Were there any non verbal cues that indicated their frustration at during a certain process? Sighing? Trying to click off the site? Gather as much supporting data for each ranking
• Look at the success/failure to complete usability tasks in light of the quantifiable data. Again, go back and see what common behaviors were exhibited by the users when asked to complete certain tasks. Did they become confused at the same points? Did they all sail through certain tasks? You will discover that their site rankings will correlate with their experiences completing tasks.
• Make a list of at the top three things that should not change and the top three things that should. You are on a deadline, we realize that. So be sure to make note of what is working and why. Write down the top three things you did well based on this usability test. Then make a list of three manageable changes to make.
• Look at user suggestions for improvement in light of the changes you need to make. Your users aren’t designers or interface experts, but their gut reactions can help you determine where to put your professional energies. See what they said they want and find a design solution for it. Again, keep things manageable. You aren’t going to fix everything, but you are going to tackle the top three you listed in the step above. Do everything you can to address the problem areas, and — if possible — check in with the users and show them the solution.

BOTTOM LINE

Usability testing is a skill that — just like design and programming — you improve the more you practice it. Once you’ve done this a few times you’ll find you can use it on the fly when you get into those disagreements about interface design issues within your department. At UNC, we resolved a design issue on a project in Chile this past March. We were working with students from Universidad de los Andes and could not come to a consensus on our secondary navigation. So, we did a quick usability test with audio reporters and photographers who were in the newsroom, but who had not been involved in the design process. What we found was that the design team was split over two equally ineffective navigation methods. It forced the team to rethink at a more basic level and resulted in a much improved solution.

So remember, that person who suggests usability testing isn’t the spoiler, but really your friend — and the friend of your audience.

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES

Don’t Make Me Think
This is an excellent book by Steve Krug. It should be on the desk of every multimedia news designer.

Step by Step Usability Guide
Part of the site usabilty.gov, this diagram is a good visualization of the testing process.

Usability Testing Guidelines
This piece provides a simple tutorial for a general usability test and includes some insightful tips.

Now an assistant professor at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill (and a colleague of co-columnist Laura Ruel), Cairo has been taken his hands-on knowledge and moved it into the classroom. Here is a link to some of his students’ work: http://www.albertocairo.com/jomc/projects/index_projects.html.

International animated infographics expert Alberto Cairo is writing his first book, Visual Journalism: Print and Multimedia Infographics Storytelling.

Many online journalists are anticipating the book’s release, which should be in 2008, because there is an urgent need for the guidelines it provides. So, below we have offered you a form of a “sneak peek” – Cairo’s advice for multimedia storytelling using informational graphics.

Q: Define animated infographics and describe why they are a powerful storytelling tool for journalists?

A: Traditional infographics consist of the use of the tools of graphic design, illustration, cartography and statistical representation to convey journalistic information. Web infographics increase the number of tools to include the ones of online storytelling: 3D and 2D animation, interactivity, audio and video.

Infographics are difficult to define precisely because of their multiple and flexible nature. Almost any informative representation where verbal and visual elements are combined, and that is intended to tell a news story, can be considered an infographic.

Infographics have been crucial throughout the history of journalism to explain things that could not have been told otherwise. It is obvious that there is not better way to display large sets of data than with a good statistical chart, or to provide geographical context to a story than with a map. In my book I explain that, on an abstract level, an information graphic is an aid to thinking and understanding. This is not a new idea, of course. A good infographic makes patterns arise, discovers trends, condenses enormous amounts of information in a very small space.

To understand why infographics are so important to modern journalism, try to think about stories such as September 11th, the invasion of Iraq or the shootings at Virginia Tech without them.

Q: What are three current examples of excellent animated infographics? Why are they effective?

A: The New York Times has the best statistical online infographics in the news industry at the moment. They have finally understood that in the Internet era infographics cannot be just static, linear representations. Sometimes you have to let the reader transform the information and play with it. You have to let the readers adapt the data to their needs.

Cairo believes that the work of nytimes.com is some of the best online inforgraphic storytelling. The graphic above is one where users can interact and “play” with the numbers themselves.

Among the best recent multimedia coverage, I would highlight the Times’ interactive about the Virginia Tech shootings. The combination of audio, video and information
graphics makes this breaking news coverage one of the best I’ve ever seen. You see, almost any publication can create a good long-term, feature project online. It is much, much more difficult to do that in a tight deadline.

The Times’ ability to create quality animated storytelling on deadline is noteworthy, according to Cairo.

With their most recent hires, The New York Times is trying to emulate the model we used at elmundo.es back in 2000-2005. The are focusing more on breaking stories, rather than on features. Don’t get me wrong, features are great, but a newspaper should focus first on up-to-date information.

The best animated diagrams can still be found in Spanish news organizations. Elpais.es and Elmundo.es keep publishing great linear explanations. Athough their work is still a great source of inspiration for professionals worldwide, both news organizations need
to think about new ways of presenting information. They cannot continue to succeed if you by using the same formula over and over again. In the current environment, your work gets dated quickly if you do so.

Spanish news organizations, such as elmundo.es, still are producing the best animated diagrams and linear explanations.

There are news organizations in the United States that currently are taking steps in the right direction. I would mention The Dallas Morning News, San Jose Mercury News, and The Boston Globe. The Sun-Sentinel is still a major reference for multimedia graphics as well.

Q: What are the most common mistakes multimedia journalists make when creating animated infographics? How can they avoid them?

A: The first and gravest mistake that individuals make believing that infographics are a branch of graphic design or that they have anything to do with illustration.

Infographics, like any other form of journalism storytelling rely on solid, accurate content. It is great if you can create cool 3-D animations and great interactive scenes, but if your content is weak, the presentation will be weak. There are not good infographics without good reporting.

As a second mistake is the fact that many people think that online infographics can be created just by “translating” print pieces to the Web. Unfortunately, this is what is happening in many newsrooms worldwide. That’s the wrong approach because what you usually end with is with a still picture with a bunch of roll-over buttons. In order to create a great multimedia infographics piece, you have to think about it from the very beginning, on the planning process, rather than consider it a subsidiary element that depends on the content generated by the print side. Print and online use different languages that share the same root grammar. They are dialects.

Q: Can you provide us with a checklist of questions for editors to ask themselves when deciding if an animated infographic is the best storytelling method for a given topic?

A: Checklist:

With a little more than half of the participants (63 percent) ages 30 to 49, the test generated results applicable to the target audience for most news sites. Additionally, 20 percent were 18-29 and 16 percent were 50-64. Fifty-eight percent were female, 42 percent were male. Every test subject was given 50 tasks to complete. Sessions with each test subject lasted about one to two hours.

Coyne (who we interviewed for this column) stresses that crucial to understanding the testing results is an awareness of the user’s motivation or goal behind each task. Some of the testing scenarios included asking the user to “read the news” or “read/learn”, making a number these results particularly helpful to journalists. She said eyetracking is valuable in these cases because it indicates not only where our users look, but where key usability problems exist.

“[With eyetracking] we can see that a user may navigate the page of an interface that houses the info she wants,” she said, “but if the text is poorly presented, or the navigation is cluttered, or there are too many superfluous images so she cannot easily find what she needs. This is a lost opportunity.”

We’ve featured three of the more interesting journalistic study results below.

Featured finding #1:
Rewrite + reformat = remember

What if you could engage users in a story for about half the time, yet have them remember about 34 percent more of the content? That’s exactly what one test showed. Spending less than two hours rewriting and reformatting a story about New York City restaurants really paid off according to this study.

The image below shows the two stories tested:

The original version (left) was revised to increase white space, make the main idea concise, remove unnecessary images, shorten lines of text and add a graphic for each restaurant ranking. (Nielsen/Norman Group images, used with permission)

The eyetracking data is featured in the image below. Red areas indicate the areas where the fixation length (or the length of time the users spent look at that area of the screen) was longest. Dark areas indicate low or no fixation length on that part of the presentation.

Users spent a longer amount of time (about one minute) viewing the original version of the content (left) but remembered 34 percent less than those who received the reformatted story (right). In both cases a greater amount of time was spent on the left-hand side of the page. (Nielsen/Norman Group images, used with permission)

Nielsen and Coyne also ran a similar test with more complicated content – a story from the New York Times about Australians receiving the Nobel Prize for Bacterium work. The results were similar. Changing the story presentation to text with:

Increasingly, news organizations are challenging themselves and their staffs with stepping outside of their format expertise and trying to produce news packages that take full advantage of the array of media formats available. Online news sites are trying to integrate different media types into the story package – creating rich multimedia experiences for their audience. Exploration in the use of Flash helps designers create a common interface that transitions easily from graphics, to video to photos to audio without interrupting the user.

Creating these rich media experiences is a commitment of time and specialized talent that news organizations cannot – and should not – afford for every story. This is the biggest challenge for news designers: Given all the design options now available, how does one evaluate effort over return? When does an integrated, interactive story work best in terms of users’ enjoyment and/or comprehension? When is it warranted to help with understanding of the topic? Bottom line, when is it worth it?

In this column we will find and report on the beginning efforts to research and evaluate story design effects on news audiences. In this month’s column we discuss the findings for the first project of our research consortium – DiSEL – the Digital Story Effects Lab.

Comparing Static / Passive Text and Dynamic / Active Multimedia Stories

DiSEL study: Overview

In 2002, working with a graduate student at the University of Minnesota, we attempted to “catalog” the areas where design decisions could be made when crafting stories online. These “Elements of Digital Storytelling” (www.inms.umn.edu/elements) looked at a variety of attributes of digital stories.

In our first DiSEL study, we looked at two of these attributes, both related to “action.” We wanted to compare the impact on user attitude and experience between different approaches to content and user action.

Stories can be designed with either static content (the material just sits there, there is no movement) or dynamic content (the material moves.) In terms of how the user must engage with the content, stories can be designed to be passive (once the user has clicked to the page they can sit back, there is no action to take) or active (the content is designed so that the user must engage with it in order to fully experience the full set through selection of options or clicking to see the next portion.) Dynamic / active content is the type that is typically crafted using Flash. There is motion and choice. Static / passive content describes HTML coded, there is no motion and what you see is all you get.

We found perfect pieces to test these two presentation styles in the BBC’s material on health effects of recreational drugs. They had created two packages – the static, encyclopedia-type page display here and the dynamic interactive package here.

The integrated, interactive piece about recreational drug use creates a scenario where users give various drug combinations to a dancing clubber and witness the effects on his body.

The encyclopedic-type presentation lists various drugs, describes their effects with text and an image.

In addition, we decided to see if the motivation for going to the site would change the user’s perception, attitude, and information retention.

In late 2005 we collected data from 63 subjects (the target audience for this content was young adults so we tested 18-29 year olds), using four different testing conditions, resulting in a total count of 15 subjects tested under each condition. (Three of participants had unusable data.)

The conditions were:

• Condition one: Users who viewed the dynamic / active Flash site and were told they had received the link from a professor telling them to explore it to complete a research paper. This was the “information” motivation scenario.
• Condition two: Users who viewed the Flash site and were told a friend e-mailed them the link as something interesting to check out. This was the “entertainment” motivation scenario.
• Condition three: Users who viewed the static / passive HTML site with the “information” motivation.
• Condition four: Users who viewed the HTML site with the “entertainment” motivation.

These conditions allowed insight into the effectiveness of each form based on what the users’ motives were in seeing the presentation, and also allowed for enough subjects to generate statistically reliable results in some areas.

Research participants filled in a pre-exposure survey intended to gauge their overall use of the Internet, their preference for certain styles of presentation, the use of news sites, and their attitude toward drugs. Then their movements around the page they were sent to were “eye-tracked”. A post-exposure survey provided feedback on their attitudes toward the experience and the news organization that presented it, the ease of navigation, and their retention and recall of information presented.

The challenge in this type of research is determining what it is you want to test. There is a variety of hoped for outcomes when a news organization creates and presents an online news package. Which is most important? Effective presentation of information as seen in greater retention and recall of facts? Stickiness as seen in length of time spent with the content and greater depth of examination of the material? Brand enhancement as seen in reported enjoyment or appreciation of the organization presenting the information? With this study, we tried to get at the impacts of the presentation form on a variety of these areas.

DiSEL study: Findings

This comparative study showed that for the two sites tested:

Interactive presentations work best when you want users to…

• spend more time with the presentation;
• describe the experience as “enjoyable;”
• recall more of the information;
• recall your brand;
• feel entertained.

Static presentation work best when you want users to…

• “click to” all the of the presentation’s materials;
• perceive the site navigation as easy.

Either form is equally effective if you want to…

• increase the likelihood a user would return to the site.

In terms of the motivation for going to the site, there were some interesting differences in people’s responses to the two presentations.

If users are seeking information…

• They will spend an average of two minutes longer on the site than if they are looking to be entertained;
• They will have greater recall and comprehension of the information than those seeking entertainment.

Motivation did not matter in terms of…

• How enjoyable a user found the site.

DiSEL study: So what?

This research shows that the choices made in presenting information will have significantly different impacts on the audience. No one presentation form is going to be the most effective by all measures that you have in your newsroom for determining successful design. What the research does seem to reveal is that the highly interactive content results in more time spent online with the material and a greater level of reported “enjoyment.” In addition (and counter to some other studies which show a negative impact) the Flash version seemed to help people recall the information being presented. So, if your goal in presenting a story – particularly one that has potential for a long “shelf-life” – is to entertain, inform, and keep people online longer, then investing in a creative, interactive presentation could be well worth the effort.

Supporting Research

A portion of Poynter’s Eyetrack III study tested similar situations. In this study, two distinct story designs were considered. With the help of NYTimes.com, text versions of two news stories were edited to 3-5 minute reads. Then, existing multimedia presentations were condensed to 3-5 minute experiences.

The text version of the story “Dangerous Business” that was used for the study

The multimedia version ofo the story “Dangerous Business” that was used for the study.

The text version Al Hirschfeld’s obituary that was used for the study.

The multimedia version Al Hirschfeld’s obituary that was used for the study.

Half of the test participants (approximately 25 people) experienced one of the stories in text and the other in multimedia. The other half experienced the opposite formats. (All participants saw a control article beforehand.)
After they read or viewed the stories, participants were given the same recall quizzes.

Eyetrack III: Findings

This study shows that:

Interactive presentations work best when you want users to…

• recall unfamiliar terms and processes/procedures more effectively.

In one test story an animated graphic showed how cast iron pipes are made – an essential component to understanding the overall story content. Those who received this graphic had better recall of the terms and processes involved than those who received the same information in text form.

Static text works best when you want users to… correctly recall specific factual information, such as information about names and places.