All the content things from UX Australia 2018

Rachael Mullins
Sep 7, 2018 · 7 min read

Last week, 850 people gathered in Melbourne for the 10th anniversary of Australia’s premier User Experience Design conference: UX Australia. The two days of local and international presentations covered design, research, creativity, culture, diversity, disability, ethics, politics, machine learning, AI, and a whole lot more.

But as a word person, I’m always looking at the world through a linguistic lens. And UX Australia 2018 had a whole lot of content stuff to make me… content (ugh, sorry).

So here are my top content takeaways.

Nobody likes a chirpy idiot

Tim Elliott, Senior Experience Designer at Jade Software, shared his learnings from designing conversational experiences.

When coming up with content for bots and conversational experiences, he urged everyone to KISS (keep it simple, stupid). Choose dialogue that fosters simple, capable, robust conversation. Unless these conditions are met, don’t even think about trying to add personality.

If it jokes but it ain’t useful, you’ve failed.

Tim also encouraged anyone creating conversational experiences to use writers. Once more for the people up the back? Use writers. 🙌

Bonus resource: Conversational Design by Erika Hall.

Think like a journalist

Patrick Stafford of Stafford Content and MYOB told us that to write better UX copy, we should think like a journalist.

Here are his suggestions for how to go about it:

  1. Research > writing — Most of the work should be done before you actually put pen to paper. And if you can’t write simply about the thing, you haven’t done enough research. Have UX writers create copy for prototypes and wireframes, get them involved in sketching, and hold dedicated user testing just for copy.
  2. Create a culture of editors — Journos are comfortable saying, “my words don’t matter — what matters is the end product”. We need to cultivate this same editorial culture in UX writing. Don’t hire people precious about their words, do lots of drafts, become aware of the editorial advice you’re qualified to give, and create a collective of writers to give feedback — formal, informal, large or small.
  3. Length is less important than clarity — Longer copy can answer objections, tell a story and establish tone, giving you more space to convey your brand’s tone and personality. Start thinking with content-led design, so the length of what you need to say can inform the design.
  4. Piss off your sources — Users, stakeholders, data and product usage are all valuable sources of information, but sometimes they can lie. If you’ve got a copy idea that goes against what your sources are telling you, give it a try and see how it fares. You might be surprised.
  5. Become an expert — As UX writers, we need to know everything about our product or service so we can write about it with authority.

Providing context + setting expectations = confident actions

Richard Sison, User Experience Lead at PreviousNext (and founder of http://goodmicrocopy.com/) took us on a deep-dive into microcopy: what it is, where to find it, and what it can be used for.

He reminded us that context is key. Consider these examples from Spark and MailChimp — they’re both telling the user the same thing, but their context is different. That means the tone of voice, the amount of words, and the design should all be different, too.

Spark’s everyday, no-big-deal ‘Message sent’ vs MailChimp’s ‘omg you just did something HUGE’ version

Because sometimes you want to give people confirmation without getting in their way, but sometimes you want them to slow down and pay attention.

It’s also important to set expectations. Imagine you’re trying to permanently delete something. The right microcopy can result in a more intentional decision-making process, and ensure that you know exactly what will happen next.

Abstract really doesn’t want you to delete your project

When you provide context and set expectations, that’s when your users feel empowered to make confident actions.

Be responsible

Mirroring the big-picture talks on design ethics, Richard also touched on the fact that writing for experience comes with its own set of responsibilities.

Choose your words carefully, because otherwise you’re wasting people’s time.

The more you add, the more noise you’re adding to the interface — Richard Sison

Also remember that users expect that you’re acting in their best interests. So don’t betray their trust by tricking them into doing things they’re not trying to do. That means no dark patterns. Seriously. Just say no.

Dark pattern upon dark pattern from very.co.uk

Yes, you can improve content on the cheap

In Measure the thing, Dan Craddock of Consumer Affairs Victoria demonstrated how digital teams can sense and respond to key UX metrics and user feedback to continuously improve the performance of their website’s informational content.

You don’t need a big budget to make a big difference — Dan Craddock

With a simple set of metrics, Dan found out a whole lot:

  • % of ‘Yes’ responses to ‘Was this page helpful?’ — You should be asking this question on every content page.
  • Ratio of pageviews to unique pageviews — If users are ‘backtracking’, they could be lost.
  • % of internal searches — If users are searching within the site, they didn’t find what the page title promised.
  • % of referrals to ‘contact us’ section — If users don’t find what they need, they give up and contact you instead.
  • % of entrances to pageviews —If users are finding their own way to a page, they’re not finding it in search.

Add some qualitative data to that (user feedback collected via the ‘Was this helpful?’ tool on content pages, and via a similar tool on form success pages), and Dan was able to gain valuable insights into the health of his content. And on a small budget, too.

Want more? He’s written the bible on the subject:

Ditch dense disclaimers

Disclaimers can be complex, jargony beasts, especially when you have to work closely with legal and compliance teams to get them right. Ailie McAleenan and Bree Hoskin from Bankwest took on the challenge and applied their UX writing skillz to transforming the disclaimer.

If it doesn’t make sense, how useful can it be? — Ailie McAleenan and Bree Hoskin

Their aim was to remove the mystery that typically surrounds disclaimers. This would help increase users’ understanding, allow them to make more confident and informed decisions, steer them to self-educate, and reduce fear and confusion.

Some of the key things Ailie and Bree learnt were:

  • Strong relationships are important — The closer you are to your legal and compliance teams, the better results you’ll get.
  • Keep asking “y tho” — You’ll get lots of excuses when you try to change the status quo, but it’s worth persisting.
  • There’s always something you can do — Even little changes — like improving the content surrounding the unchangeable part, or putting the content in a place that makes more sense — can make a big difference.

Context-sensitive help can save lives

Gordon McNenney, content strategy director at AKQA, gave us a tour of context-sensitive help — help content that’s concise, is based on the current state of the user, and causes minimal disruption.

Why’s it important? Well, context-sensitive help can save lives. Really. Think of ‘look right’ signs on roads that warns pedestrians about oncoming traffic.

“Look Right” by J B is licensed under CC BY 2.0

In the digital world, there are many types of context-sensitive help: inline help, tooltips, embedded help content, and walk-throughs. How can you make sure you get it right?

  • Make yourself a subject matter expert on the product/service/organisation — You can’t write help content if you don’t know the thing you’re talking about inside out.
  • Make yourself a context-sensitive help expert — Read up on best practices and patterns.
  • Scope it, cost it, and plan it upfront — If you don’t, it’ll be forgotten.
  • Personalise it — On eBay, when you go to a help topic about items that haven’t arrived, it shows you photos of your recently purchased items with the option to follow up on them.
  • Have fun with it — Don’t be afraid to give it a dose of your brand’s personality.

Also think about the cost compared to other methods of education. You’ll likely find that context-sensitive help is worth the comparatively small investment.

So don’t let it be an afterthought.

In fact, that’s an apt way to sum up UX Australia 2018 from a word-person perspective: don’t let content be an afterthought.



Thanks to the UX Australia 2018 presenters and organisers, Kylie Nicholson, Dan Craddock, and Rohan Irvine’s mad tweet skillz.

Rachael Mullins

Written by

Product content strategist @OpenCitiesInc & @OpenForms. Co-organiser @ContentMelb. The arts, feminism, language, tech, food, pop culture. Melbourne, Australia.