5 Hard and 5 Soft Skills Any UX Writer Should Develop
Essential skills to land a job or improve on current position
As UX writing is a relatively new and quite a broad sphere, job descriptions vary a lot in terms of responsibilities and requirements. However, most of them feature similar core skills, and employers expect applicants to show their knowledge in roughly the same areas.
Let’s take a look at what you’ll need to learn and develop in a pursuit to become better at UX writing.
Hard skills
First, let’s look at hard skills — the professional skills and abilities necessary to do your job well. They can be measured and relatively easily improved.
- Writing UX copy
This is, of course, essential. You need to know the syntax of interface elements, understand which UI element requires what kind of copy. And you must be able to create texts that are clear, concise, useful, consistent, and ethical.
2. Basics of UI/UX desgin
Knowledge of interface design helps to better understand scenarios and user flows, not violate design principles, and provide information at the right moment for the user.
3. Language proficiency
Literacy, the ability to review someone else’s or your own text, editing skills — everything is valuable and necessary. This also includes knowledge of language references and sources of truth, such as dictionaries, style guides, and manuals.
4. Working with style guides
Almost every company has its own style policy or guide on tone and voice. A writer will inevitably have to work with them, so it’s important to know how to use style guides and develop them.
5. Graphic editing skills
This is a more technical skill, but it’s also crucial to master it: even basic skills in a graphic editor like Figma will facilitate collaborative work with designers. At the very least, you need to be able to edit text, leave comments, and understand the composition of layouts.
Soft skills
Now, on to soft skills! Learning soft skills is said to be much more challenging than acquiring hard skills. It’s not enough to just take an online course or attend a workshop. It requires self-work and improving one’s own character and habits.
Like everyone else, writers also need the well-known stress-resistance and proactivity, but some skills can be particularly beneficial for them.
- Empathy
This includes being able to read the copy through the user’s eyes and therefore prevent manipulative texts from being released. Also, being empathetic means that you can sense slight connotations in words and phrases and choose vocabulary wisely not to offens anybody who will read your copy.
2. Persistence and inquisitiveness
A skilled UX writer is never shy or hesitant if they really need to ask 200 questions to get to the truth. And if they have to argue about their decisions and advocate for user’s convenience and smooth experience, they will do it.
3. Openness to communication
At the very least, a UX writer should not be afraid to talk or write to colleagues whom they don’t know yet. And at most, to be able to conduct interviews with users.
4. Non-isolation
Definitely not sitting silently in the corner minding your own copywriting business and pretending that you don’t exist, but solving tasks together with designers, developers, and managers.
5. Ability to process feedback
Any UX writer and editor should learn to separate themselves from their written copy and also distinguish critical edits from personal preferences.
❗ It’s important to understand that in each company, writers will have their own set of competencies depending on the industry’s specifics, types of tasks, technical stack, presence/absence of localizations, etc. However, a set of these core skills, which I described above, will be relevant for almost everyone.
Good luck developing these skills and improving your writing and work processes!
