"People don't read"
should be tattooed on the back of every designer's hand.
Of course, they won't read it before they design something that requires deep engagement through reading.
Of course, they won't read it before they design something that requires deep engagement through reading.
2. In fact, users can’t read anything, and if they could, they wouldn’t want to.”
— <https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/04/26/designing-for-peop...>
So for most stuff the manual goes straight to the shelf. Unless it is something particularly powerful or complex, I see having to refer to the manual as a failure in UX design.
So yeah, I don't want to refer to the manual.
That said, https://readabilityformulas.com/readability-scoring-system.p... is a good sanity check. Over half of people can't read text above a grade 8 readability. Worse yet, we aren't conscious of the effort that reading takes. Not until we are struggling. So competent people have little sense of the barriers they create.