Summary: To appeal to experts, provide concise titles and summaries, use clear headings, charts and figures, and donâ??t overdo visual design.
In our interviews and usability tests with domain experts, we learned that scientists and researchers have different expectations for content as compared to a general audience.
To create compelling digital content for a specialized, highly educated audience, we can take inspiration from the writing form they often spend the most time with â?? traditional scientific papers. However, when presenting scientific content online for such audiences, simply providing the PDF of an existing scientific article isnâ??t good enough. Adapt research findings for online reading by keeping what works well in scientific papers, and improving on what doesnâ??t.
We conducted usability testing with scientists, researchers, and experts such as clinicians and engineers who use research findings in their work. We found that the following writing techniques work well with these audiences:
- Shorten titles as much as possible.
- Use subsections with clear headings to create structure.
- Provide succinct summaries.
- Remove or layer introductory content.
- Include charts and figures.
- Donâ??t overdo the visual design.
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