Donald A. Norman--"Writing as Design, Design as Writing"

Analogizing writing with design to stress user ease becomes problematic because most people are bad at both.

In designing/writing for user experience, designers/writers must capitalize on empathy, but empathy can frequently be conflated with self-guided empathy, believing everyone is like the designer/writer. "To be successful, both writing and design have to follow basic psychological principles," which are then tested and revised.

Because good designers and writers have taken great pains to become masters of systems, they create a disconnect between themselves--those who have successfully passed the initiation--and those who haven't. This results in a haves and have-nots dichotomy. Those with the knowledge of the system become the gatekeepers of access. Norman calls this "initiation rites" syndrome.

Norman then turns to similarities in academic writing, which tends to elevate obscurity over clarity because ease of reading "reflects a simple mind." Like complex computer design, academic writing performs a gate-keeping exercise that effectively deflects criticism of its style as a failure to understand its complexity.

Some argue, however, that complex ideas require complex writing and complex readers. Norman responds with: "Clearly those who are incompetent to use something or to understand a text have no business trying to do so. Isn't this a great defense? You can cover up any kind of inelegant design or writing this way. Wonderful" (4).

The real test of an idea's power is usability. Clarity, Norman argues, risks an idea being realized as a bad idea.

Some in academia argue that they don't have time to stress readability, but Norman asserts that this diminishes the value of their work because very few can engage with their ideas, rendering their utility a means of promotion instead of disciplinary expansion.

Norman implies that readability, especially in the sciences affects which articles are considered authoritative and frequently cited, creating an credibility echo chamber that ironically supports massive amounts of claims, even those that deviate from the citation's intent.