And keep your team happy — If you’ve ever worked on a small team with limited resources, you’ve probably felt it — that scrappy spirit. That itch that gets you going when the going gets tough. That burst of motivation when they say you aren’t good enough. Time and time again, I’ve seen how amazing things…

When you think about design, the word “documentation” probably isn’t the first thing that comes to mind. But documentation is a key part of the design process for many teams. In a casual Twitter poll, 1 in 3 product designers said they spend at least 25% of their time reviewing…

How metaphors can make or break your designs — If you’ve ever taken a writing class, you’ve probably played around with metaphors. A metaphor is when you talk about one thing in terms of another: Time is money Consumed by love The sweet smell of success A lot of people think of metaphors as a fancy writing tactic—a way…

What I learned from reading thousands of app reviews — I recently read thousands of reviews about our Dropbox app. Call me crazy, but it was the most riveting thing I’ve read all year. I laughed, I cried, I got warm fuzzies inside. Why in the world would anyone read so many app reviews? Well, I was on a mission…

Fake conversations, real situations — Over the years, I’ve been lucky enough to chat with UX writers from a bunch of different companies. Even though we work on completely different products, we face shockingly similar challenges. Below is my attempt at capturing a few of the challenges we face as UX writers. …

How to tell if your writing is any good — How many words do you see in a single day? Believe it or not, studies have shown that a typical social media user sees about 54,000 words a day. Heck, that’s more words than you’d find in a book! …

Writers + Designers = A match made in heaven — Lately, there’s been a lot of buzz about writing in design. Whether you call it UX writing, product writing, or content design, it’s clear that the words in your design matter. In his 2017 Design in Tech talk, John Maeda spelled it out for us: “Words are really important because…

Delight is in the details — When I think about the products I love, they all have one thing in common: delightful little details. There’s this coffee shop I visit almost every day. Whenever I order a drink, they always add a little artwork on top. It might be a fancy leaf one day, a swirly…

A parody about designer trends — Bad designers use green on purple. Good designers use grey on grey.