How writing for highly regulated industries can be beautiful
In middle school I had a teacher who graded all of our papers in purple ink. The short story is he believed purple was a relaxing color that wouldn’t stress students out when they saw his marks on the page. Far less hostile than red, purple was the mellow alternative that would make his corrections seem friendly. Essentially, you could be failing his class, but at least you failed in a totally cool, chill way.
Well, my papers were always returned as purple Jackson Pollocks. The premier critique: beautiful descriptions, but get to the point. Now, I wasn’t quite offended. My adolescent ego was fragile, sure. But I secretly took pride in being misunderstood. And what Mr. ___ didn’t understand was that I was a romantic. There was a method to my ornate circumlocution.
This was all my family’s doing, by the way. I was raised by conversationalists. It was not my fault that I came from a flamboyant, Caribbean household where everyone spoke in folklore, metaphor, and diatribe. My style was editorial, not academic. And if I needed it to be scholarly, it was certainly going to be filled with all the colorful adjectives I had acquired from home.
This is perhaps the antithesis of being a UX writer, who is often focused on writing for usability. People don’t visit an app or website to admire the words, especially not when you’re writing within a highly regulated industry. They’re coming to your platform to pay a bill, interpret the status of their account, and ultimately solve a problem. All of this, bolstered by an aptness to synthesize complex concepts into digestible language, is the talent of a UX writer.
Knowing this, you’d think I would galavant down a separate written path. But I didn’t. I entered the world of tech through insurance. Then, I moved on to mortgage servicing — something I had never even heard of. I was a writer in fintech, navigating stakeholder buy-in from underwriters, compliance officers, and lawyers (oh my!). I was polishing and pioneering copy to be both economical and technical. I was writing to inform, while still maintaining the integrity of my personality: finding the beauty in all things, especially the ordinary.
There is beauty in creating user-centric product interactions. Born from the challenge of achieving usability, the question becomes: how can you add a moment of delight to something as small as a call to action button? How do you add tone and voice to a legally required notification? How do you lead with empathy when writing for multiple user personas?
I’ll focus on one of my favorite answers: naming. I love naming things. Building vocabulary to standardize the way we refer to products, features, and processes is my jam. Often, in regulated spaces, there is a lot of jargon that already exists. But because a company’s platform functions as its own ecosystem, there’s room to create your own terminology so users can glide through your interface with confidence. This is how we create better content systems where reusable components are a little more playful, and a lot more human.
Being a UX writer means you’re designing entire worlds with words. And though there may be limitations to how detailed your language can be, bringing a human touch to any product is a mark of beauty. There’s an art to nomenclature. And there is a personal triumph in making brevity look good.
Let me ask a question. Have you ever admired the athletic prowess of a dancer, and the way they look so elegant when pushing their body to its physical limits? Why are we so captivated? The beauty is in how easy they make it look.
Making anything look easy is a skill in itself. And to be fair, writing in fintech is kind of difficult. You’re trying to maintain consistent readability, cater to individuals whose native tongue might not be English, and also recognize that most of your audience is not well versed in financial literacy. It’s a lot to harmonize, especially when you’re just a girl.
Being just a girl is a phrase you might have heard in the cultural lexicon. Cynically speaking, it’s a sexist way to debase and belittle the capabilities of women. It happens all the time in the workforce: “Being called a girl, especially in hierarchical settings like the workplace, can be unintentionally patronizing at best and demeaning at worst.”
Small tangent, but I can’t help but allude to the 1961 West Side Story film where all the Jets spend the entire movie insulting and ostracizing the tomboy character, Anybodys. In the end, even when she still tries to help the gang and has already proven her value, Tony rejects Anbodys with this: “You’re a girl! Be a girl and beat it!” In this context, being a girl is the one thing holding Anybodys back from acceptance (more film analysis posts incoming).
Other times, being just a girl is an act of reclamation that can push women forward into self-acceptance. The adage can definitely take a more spirited, feminist tone — think No Doubt’s 1995 song “Just a Girl.” Defaulting to the more redemptive perspective, there is a unique advantage to being perceived as an outsider, just like Anybodys.
As a writer, being “othered” gives you the voice to write for everyone else, including yourself. You see things not everyone else can. In fact, a company’s mission statement is only as meaningful as its ability to champion their most “othered” user. Your writing is only as clear as its ability to be understood by your most marginalized audience member. Being able to write for people like myself (Black, woman, and lacking generational wealth) is, indeed, beautiful.
So yes, I am just a girl in fintech. But I am also just a girl who writes for the accessibility of other outsiders who deserve intuitive user experiences filled with words that generate solutions. Every day I show up as being just a girl who makes writing look easy. And that is how I find beauty in something as ordinary as naming the button on your favorite app.
