Most people don’t have time to read through your whole page of instructions of how to use your new app. You must be concise and exact on how you communicate to your user. You must streamline the message your communicating as much as possible without having negative ramifications in accomplishing the goal. A way to be direct when you have a lot to communicate is to give examples. A well-chosen example can often replace several paragraphs of explanation. Even more important places to use this principle is on mobile interfaces where space is limited and landing pages where you want to catch the users attention. Source
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I really enjoyed all the examples you gave and the definition you provided. Especially where you mentioned “streamlining…without negative ramifications”. I do find that to be a fine balance, but when executing properly in design it makes a huge difference.
Nike does a great job in utilizing brevity. Check out their app:
https://www.nike.com/us/en_us/c/app/snkrs
Hi again Amit 🙂
Happy to read that you understood the concept of being brief with instructions but not to the point of leaving out what they need to complete a task. I think your example is valid and I think Nike as a company has always done a good job conveying messages with short powerful lines, “Just Do It”. I think another example of the principle of brevity at its best is google.com, you should check it out, heard it’s a popular site.
I appreciate how your definition of “brevity” starts with empathy for the user and a distillation of their problem – lack of time. I’d put forth the idea that emojis are effective examples of brevity because of how they act as visual shorthand for simple to moderately nuanced feelings, expressions and phrases: https://unicode.org/emoji/charts/full-emoji-list.html
Hi Katherine,
Thanks for your feedback! I’m glad that you could see how important brevity is especially from a users perspective. I love your example of emojis and think it’s a very valid example of this principle. Emojis are even being harnessed in certain companies content strategies now. An example I’m thinking of is how Slack uses emojis to convey messages. Thanks for your comment.
You explained the importance of brevity well, both in how it benefits the recipient as well as how to execute this principle effectively. I like how you elucidated that striking a balance is necessary: it needs to be concise enough to communicate efficiently but not too emaciated that the message is lost.
With shrinking screen sizes in the form of wearables, like the Apple watch or Android wear, brevity becomes even more important. Because the smart watch is another extension of one’s mobile device where screen space is already limited, it is important to create notifications that are concise and easily scannable/readable, so that information can be communicated with a single glance and flip of the wrist.
Hi Cindy,
Thanks for your great example of wearables. I think as a designer your forced to be brief within these platforms and you run into the issue of being too brief. Like you said balance is key here. I think mastering the art of brevity will be proven while designing within these constraints. Thanks for sharing!
Examples are definitely a great way to communicate more information while still being brief. Your mac & cheese box example is a great one to show the combination of examples and brief text coming together to communicate what could be a longer explanation into a brief infographic. I agree with your point that on mobile interfaces, especially, brevity is extremely important. One example I always think of when considering the applied concet of brevity, is the twitter platform. Twitter is now considering expanding their character limit from 140 to 280, taking away a large part of the “brevity” that defined the site previously.
This article takes a look at the potential expansion: https://techcrunch.com/2017/09/26/twitter-trials-an-expansion-beyond-140-characters/
Hey Mia,
That’s a spaghetti box example lol! But I was looking at Mac & Cheese too 🙂 I agree they do a great job using pictures so you have more of an understanding how to complete a task. I like your example of Twitter, the short character count forces people to be brief and not have to read a ton. I think this can also be perceived as ‘forced brevity’ and be translated as a constraint of Twitters platform. I think a lot of products have charter restrictions but that doesn’t make them great at using brevity as a principle. Thanks for sharing!
The initial launch Snickers OOH campaign in 2008 is one of my favorite examples of visual brevity — the entire campaign was beautifully distilled to the typography, color and border shape from their packaging with a psuedosynonym for “Hungry = Snickers”. The visual and copy brevity broke through the marketing noise of most out of home, and advertising reporting.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/03/business/media/03adco.html
Hi Sarah,
Thanks for your awesome example of a marketing campaign. Marketing has the unique challenge of capturing someone’s attention and conveying a message in a very short period of time. I love this example because its brevity at its core. The message Hungry = Snickers just makes me hungry! Then Snickers is the next word and it’s almost like I’m being brain washed to go buy one lol. Like I said in Amit’s comment, I think Nike did a great job with the “Just Do It” campaign. Get the point and tone across quick. Thanks for sharing :).