Beyond words

There’s a variety of reasons why text is the default content format on the web:

While these reasons are valid, text has limitations.

Capital One has done some great work on identifying and categorising vulnerabilities that affect users of financial services. One such vulnerability category is “Comprehension Difficulty”.

People who struggle to comprehend often have difficulties with one or more the following:

People may have these difficulties if they have a neurodiverse condition, such as dyslexia, attention deficit disorder (ADD), or developmental language difficulties (DLD). Or, a person may have difficulty with vocabulary because English is an additional language.

These difficulties can cause people to re-read sentences several times to try to understand them, leaving them tired, confused and anxious.

A person’s ability to process and comprehend large amounts of text is affected by something called their “working memory”.

Working memory is a person’s ability to hold information temporarily and manipulate it. It’s a valuable resource but its capacity is limited and it can become overloaded. When this happens to a reader, they are forced to go back to the beginning – which can be exhausting.

Readers may also have difficulty with something called “comprehension monitoring”. In these cases, people can be unaware when their understanding has broken down.

Improving text and its presentation can of course make reading, and comprehension, easier. Good typography, plain English and breaking up content with headings all help. We can also promote comprehension monitoring by summarising and highlighting key points.

But we should use alternative strategies to help people understand better, whether they have comprehension difficulties or not.

Financial services are often difficult to understand:

Complexities like these make it hard for consumers to make informed decisions. If you struggle with comprehension you’re at even more of a disadvantage. The risk is that you make poor decisions that get you into financial difficulties.

The FCA has recognised this. In February 2021 it published guidance for firms on the fair treatment of vulnerable customers, setting expectations that will be strengthened by 2022's Consumer Duty.

It says that “Failure to communicate with vulnerable consumers in ways they can understand may result in an increased risk of harm.” 

It recognises that many factors can affect a lack of understanding. This includes factors like low literacy and cognitive disabilities, discussed here.

The FCA guidance states that firms should “Ensure all communications and information about products and services are presented in ways that are understandable for these consumers.”

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Join our free webinar on 1st Feb:

Making sense of the Consumer Duty

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If we want to treat customers fairly, we need to think differently about how we communicate with them.

The alternatives to text are fairly obvious: images and video.

Images and videos often feature on websites’ marketing pages. But they’re used much less, if at all, when users get to pages dealing with more complicated information. Instead, text dominates on product detail pages, charges information, help pages, and terms and conditions.

We need to stop viewing images as decorative elements, or videos as superfluous. We need to recognise the power they have to improve understanding.

Let’s examine what makes images such an effective communication tool.

Images communicate meaning to a viewer in an instant. As a viewer, you may not be aware of the different ways they do this.

The simplest way images form meaning is when they resemble the thing they represent. A photograph of a person works in this way. In the field of semiotics, this is called an “icon” (which is different to “icons” in UI design). In this example from Airbnb, online experiences are represented by an image that resembles one. At a glance, you understand how the service works.

Images may also denote a concept through a connection, rather than resembling it directly. Smoke represents fire in this way. This is called an “index”. In this example from Headspace, they use a smile as an index of happiness.

Or, there may be no logical connection to what the image represents, for example, a no-entry sign. This is called a “symbol”. On this page on Bulb’s site, the links between the warning and chat symbols and the concepts they represent are arbitrary. Meaning is instead created through a convention.

Images can work as metaphors, transferring their meaning to something else. In this example from Google, an image of a padlock transfers the concept of security to the way they handle customer data.

Images can also work as a synecdoche, where a part is used to represent a whole, for example, Big Ben can represent London. In the feature promotion below, Slack uses part of an enterprise, the building, to represent the whole.

Data graphics, as Edward Tufte writes, “reveal data”. One of the examples Tufte provides is Dr John Snow’s dot map. Snow plotted the location of deaths from Cholera in central London for September 1854. The map revealed that cholera was affecting those who lived near and drank from the Broad Street pump. The pump was removed and the neighbourhood epidemic ended.

These maps, showing three peaks of Coronavirus infections in the US, also reveal data. We can see how different geographies are affected across the three peaks and the difference in the scale of infections.

Images and text used in combination can be even more powerful, by making learning more effective. This is supported by a cognitive theory called “dual coding”.

According to this theory, two information channels feed our working memory: the visual, known as the “visuospatial sketchpad”, and the verbal, known as the “auditory loop”.

Receiving information in two different ways unlocks more working memory because you have access to both visual and verbal memory capacity.

Studies of dual coding have also shown that information is retrieved more easily when it has been offered in two different ways. The theory being that the information is encoded twice into your long-term memory.

Robinhood, a US-based trading app, combines text and images to help people learn investment basics. In the screenshot below, they explain how stocks work by visualising a basic example.

Like images, there are several reasons why videos are so effective.  

Videos can communicate in more ways than images alone, allowing them to convey more information.

Videos have movement and they can communicate action. As the director and educator Alexander Mackendrick says “film can also tell stories purely in movement, in action and reaction.”

This example from Snoop, a money management app, shows how movement can communicate something as complicated as Open Banking. This video was the most successful during a recent benchmarking exercise at cxpartners where we tested different ways to explain Open Banking.

In this example from the BBC, a graph about Coronavirus cases is animated over time. The motion here helps to tell an alarming story.

Video also provides an audio channel. We can make use of speech to provide extra meaning through pace, tone, emphasis and intonation.

The richness of videos also makes them engaging. This is important if you are trying to get someone to understand a potentially dry subject matter.

“Explainer videos” have become popular in marketing because of their ability to engage potential customers. A Forbes article claims that marketers using video see 49% faster growth in revenue (on average).

This video for Coin, a (closed) US fintech, is a great example of an explainer. It’s made by the agency Sandwich, and like most of their videos, it’s clear, concise and witty.

These explainer videos are typically used for product marketing, but they could help with education and support content too.

Dual-coding theory also applies to video. They provide visual and verbal information simultaneously, strengthening the encoding process and helping people learn.

A related educational strategy that applies to video is multisensory learning. This also proposes that people learn better if they’re taught using more than one modality: visual, auditory, kinaesthetic or tactile.

The 2009 Jim Rose report on how to teach people with dyslexia and learning difficulties recommends multisensory teaching. In the UK, the Department for Education requires that children are taught phonics using this approach. It’s also recognised by the British Dyslexia Association.

YouTuber Dominic Walliman uses video to help people learn about science. His multisensory approach makes complex scientific theories surprisingly understandable. In this example, he teaches us the basics of quantum physics in just 12m45s.

People with dyslexia tend to be “wholist” learners that focus on the big picture, rather than “analytic” learners that focus on detail. Wholist learners prefer an overview of a topic first and tend to get frustrated with fine detail.

Summaries also help people who have difficulty with “comprehension monitoring” (the ability to check your understanding of text).

This is where videos could play a role. They could be used to summarise a topic before it is detailed in a longer passage of text. BBC news occasionally provides a video summary at the top of an article, before the text below goes into more detail.

The examples from Robinhood, Snoop, and Coin begin to illustrate how other content formats can be used in financial services. And there are other signs that the industry is recognising the value of other formats.

In the FCA’s recent webinar on Consumer Vulnerability, they recommend offering multiple channels of communication so that vulnerable customers have a choice. They specifically highlight the use of video in a good practice example: 

“A number of firms provide new customers, in particular, with short videos. This video may talk about the advice process that the customer will be taken through. It may be a triage video that talks about the generic risks and benefits of staying in a defined benefits scheme. It may even be a video explaining different terms that will be used during interactions with advisers.”

One of the big five banks, Lloyds, is also using video on their website’s help and support section. Videos cover educational content, like how balance transfers work, and supportive content, such as staying on top of mortgage payments. This last example is a reaction to people finding themselves in vulnerable circumstances because of COVID-19.

These videos aren’t perfect. The balance transfer example relies too much on text and symbols without widely understood conventions. But it shows recognition in the industry that a page of text isn’t always the best way to explain financial concepts.

Although images and video can help make content more understandable, they could potentially exclude people too.

Images won’t be seen by blind users, and they can cause problems for people, with visual impairments, who use screen magnifiers. They can also distract autistic users.

The same issues also apply to video. In addition, people with hearing impairments will have difficulty with audio, and people who have auditory or visual processing disorders may feel overwhelmed.

When we do use images and videos, we need to make them as accessible as possible.

We should describe images, usually using alt text (unless there is no extra information communicated by the picture).

We should caption videos for those with hearing impairments. We can also provide video descriptions (also called audio descriptions) for those with visual impairments. You can hear video descriptions in action by enabling them on iPlayer.

For more information about making media accessible, see the W3C’s guidance. And see the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines for both image and other media.

This isn't a niche set of users that can be overlooked. There are 6.3 million people in the UK with dyslexia. In the 2011 census, 4.2 million people reported that English was not their main language. Not everyone in these groups will have comprehension difficulties, but it gives you a crude idea of scale.

But that doesn’t mean you should only consider other formats for people with comprehension difficulties.

Text written in plain English helps people with a low reading age, but this approach also benefits everyone, including “highly educated experts”.

Images and video can be equally inclusive. These content formats can improve comprehension for everyone.

Text is fundamentally important, especially when it’s written in plain English and well structured. But people with comprehension difficulties can struggle with text.

We need to recognise that images and video have a remarkable power to provide meaning, explain and help people learn. They are not decorative elements.

Images communicate quickly, they reveal data and they support learning.

Videos communicate in multiple ways, they’re engaging, and they support learning too. They can also provide a “big picture” view.

In financial services, we have the opportunity to help not just people with comprehension difficulties, but everyone.

By helping people to understand the complex world of financial services, we can help people make better financial decisions, get support when they need it and reach better outcomes.

Thanks to Libby Charlton for her invaluable guidance on dyslexia and other neurodiverse conditions