Catering for different users

An advert I saw for Volkswagen got me thinking about web copy and how it can be optimised to cater for different types of users.

Volkswagen has always been about simplicity and functionality. Their very name embeds these principles (“Volkswagen” means “People’s car”) and their slogan reinforces them (“Das Auto” means “The Car”, and nothing else).

The design language they use is built around essential forms and, over the years, they have been exercising it not only in car manufacturing but also in their advertisement campaigns. This practice has generated interesting twists from which we designers can take inspiration.

I recently spotted this advert whilst waiting for the underground:

What’s interesting about this is that Volkswagen demonstrate that they understand that not everyone will want to read their message in a conventional way, i.e. reading every word from left to right, and has designed the copy to be read in a variety of ways.

Someone like me, who does not know much about cars, would find the first message quite complicated and uninteresting. The only thing that makes sense or catches my interest is that this engine can save me fuel, i.e. spare the environment some trouble and make me a bit richer. This is all I need to know and the carefully highlighted words are a powerful visual cue to convey this information.

For someone knowledgeable and passionate about cars, the advert can be read top to bottom. At the same time, if they do not have enough time to read it (as the train approaching the platform is about to cover the advert), they can still find sense in the message highlighted in pink.

A great example of how to optimise copy to cater for different types of users, namely novice and expert users, users with time to spare and users in a hurry, at once.

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