What We Do

Research, Testing & Expert Testimony

Clarity is not easy. Many organizations don’t know enough about their readers to make wise choices about how to reach them. At Karen Schriver Associates (KSA), it’s all about your readers – what works for them and why. Deciding what works should not be left to intuition. We test our ideas. And take listening seriously.

We are an award-winning consultancy that has earned an international reputation for excellence in communication design and research. We offer practical advice about writing and design based on empirical evidence. Let us help you in these ways:

  • Explore customers’ unique needs and desires for visual and verbal content. Understand why people engage with some messages and reject others.
  • Make messages stick by exploring ways to combine data with the power of narrative.
  • Evaluate the usefulness of content with one-on-one customer interviews, comprehension testing, customer journeys, shadowing, focus groups, surveys, and usability testing. We focus on cognitive, emotional, and cultural aspects of engagement.
  • Benchmark quality with metrics and track improvement of content.
  • Bolster your legal case with expert witness testimony from a world leader in evidence-based plain language and information design.
  • Get a plain language audit of strengths and weaknesses of your business communication. We conduct expert analyses of visual and verbal features related to clarity (e.g., style, structure, graphics, typography, etc.).

 

Plain Language & Information Design

Your customers deserve useful communications. They should be able to easily understand and act on your messages. KSA creates clear, concise, and honest content while maintaining accuracy. We sweat the details.

We bring expertise in plain language and information design to craft many types of business communication (e.g., web content, instructions, policies, marketing materials, style guides, forms, FAQs, catalogs, emails, customer letters, and the like). Our evidence-based strategies for writing and visual design can help you realize benefits such as these:

  • Improve customer experience by redesigning content to make it plain, easy to understand, and simple to use. 
  • Connect with expert and novice users by identifying unique needs for depth and breadth of content, using examples, analogies, stories, or visuals.
  • Make content accessible to more people. Reach customers who face challenges with seeing or hearing. Meet the needs of users who struggle with reading. Get the attention of professionals who are too busy to read carefully.
  • Enable faster translation by revising content for visual and verbal clarity, translation-friendly syntax, and brevity.
  • Create a coherent brand voice by eliminating inconsistencies in writing, design, and tone of voice across information channels.

 

Workshops & Presentations

Grow your team’s expertise in making content clear. Invest in your organization’s future by expanding your team’s knowledge of plain language and information design. Improve your team’s ability to provide a consistent and compelling customer experience.

Karen Schriver is a sought after speaker who has given hundreds of keynotes, workshops and presentations all over the world. Draw on KSA to achieve these goals:

  • Gain a competitive edge with customized workshops that offer the latest insights on business and government writing, plain language, and information design.
  • Save time and money by reducing costs linked to poor communications. Stop paying support staff to explain to customers what should already be clear. Plain language pays. Learn how.
  • Update your team’s professional skills by honing their ability to analyze users, write better copy, design effective visuals, benchmark progress, and test information products.
  • Get data-informed ideas that team members with any level of experience can use right away.