How to word a help button so it actually gets pressed

The person who presses it should choose the words

Almost every unused button was written by the person who will answer it, not the person who will press it. It is an easy mistake, because the answerer is usually the one setting things up and is thinking about what they need to know.

But the labels are read by somebody deciding whether their situation counts. A label written from the answerer’s side — Assistance required, Non-urgent request — asks the presser to classify themselves before they are allowed to ask. Most people, given that job, decide their thing does not qualify and say nothing.

Written by the answerer: Assistance required · Urgent · Non-urgent

Written by the presser: Come and chat · I need a hand · Can you bring tea

Sit with them and ask what they would actually say out loud if you were in the next room. Then write that, including the bit that sounds too casual. Can you bring tea is a real button that gets pressed daily. Refreshment request is a button nobody has ever pressed.

Specific labels save the trip you would otherwise waste

A single general button means every answer starts with finding out what is needed. If the answer is “the remote is under the chair”, somebody has walked two rooms to learn that.

Specific labels put the useful part in the message itself, so whoever goes arrives with the right thing in their hands. The gain is largest exactly where distance is largest — a workshop floor, an upstairs bedroom, a back office.

Watch for the label that is specific about the wrong thing. Naming a feeling (uncomfortable) tells the answerer nothing they can act on. Naming a request (need repositioning, window open) tells them what to do before they arrive.

Always keep one general button

This is the single most common omission, and it quietly undoes everything else. A well-made set of five specific buttons will not cover the thing that happens on Thursday, and a person who cannot find the right button very often presses nothing at all rather than press an approximately-right one.

One plain button — I need help, Come here — is the escape hatch that keeps the whole set honest. It is also the one to keep if you are ever cutting down.

Four or five, not ten

Every additional button costs something on both sides. For the presser it is one more thing to read before acting, which matters most for the people this is most useful to. For the answerer, a long list stops being scanned and starts being ignored.

Start with three: the general one, and the two things asked for most. Add a fourth only after you have watched somebody want it and not have it. Buttons added speculatively are the ones that never get pressed, and they make the ones that matter harder to find.

Expect to rewrite them, and treat that as success

The first set is a guess. What people actually ask for is different from what anyone predicts, and it changes with the season, a new routine, or a change in what somebody can manage.

After a fortnight, look at what was pressed. A button used every day earns clearer wording. A button never pressed is either badly worded or unnecessary — and you can tell which by asking. A button pressed for the wrong thing is the most useful signal of all: somebody needed something the set does not contain, and picked the nearest.

If one button is doing all the work, that is not a failure. It usually means the general one is right and the specific ones were somebody’s theory.

Small wording choices that change the count

• Use their vocabulary, including the family words. If tea means coffee in that house, write tea.
• Avoid words that imply a cost to the answerer. “Sorry to bother” and “when you have a minute” read as considerate and act as a brake. The button already implies patience; the label does not need to apologise.
• Avoid urgency grading. Asking somebody to pick between urgent and non-urgent makes them responsible for a judgement they cannot make and often gets the answer wrong in both directions.
• Keep it short enough to read at a glance, and put the distinguishing word first. Tea, please beats Could I have a cup of tea — the eye lands on “tea”.
• Say the thing, not the category. Bins is a button. Household task is a form field.

What this page will not tell you

We build software for sending a short message to somebody who agreed to receive it. That is the entire extent of what we know, and these pages stay inside it.

• Whether somebody needs help in the first place, or how much. That is a conversation with them, and where relevant with whoever supports them.
• Anything clinical. If the reason a request is not being made is medical, this page is the wrong tool entirely.
• How to word anything for an emergency. Nothing here is written for a situation where somebody is in danger, and a button is the wrong instrument for one.
• Assessed communication support. If somebody needs a way to say things nobody has thought of in advance, that is AAC and a speech and language therapist, not a list of fixed labels.