Janice (Ginny) Redish

Janice Redish has spent her career arguing that documents are tools, not literature, and must be tested with the people who use them. Her work shaped the plain-language movement in U.S. government and industry.

¶Core ideas

• Document as conversation: users come to a document with a task, not an interest in reading it
• Usability testing for text: observed user behavior beats expert judgment about clarity
• Letting Go of the Words: writing for the web means cutting, not adding

¶Key works

• A Practical Guide to Usability Testing (with Joseph Dumas, 1993)
• User and Task Analysis for Interface Design (with JoAnn Hackos, 1998)
• Letting Go of the Words: Writing Web Content That Works (2007)