3 unexpected ways working on a boat made me a better UX writer
Hint: expect the unexpected. It comes down to anticipating problems, trial and error, and never getting too comfortable.
So, I work on a scuba diving boat in Southeast Florida.
I take people drift diving on reefs and wrecks about one to three miles offshore.
Let me tell you, the diving in Florida is super underrated. I had low expectations when I moved here two years ago.
But that’s a story for another day.
In another post, I talked about how teaching scuba diving showed me the importance of user experience. There’s some overlap, but working on a dive boat is way different than teaching.
As an instructor, you're with your students for at least three to four days. You spend hours teaching and explaining, then get to watch them take their first breaths underwater. *Cue the warm, fuzzy feeling*
Working as a deckhand and dive guide is more fast-paced. You have limited time with each person, and you need to explain important information quickly.
Explaining this information in an engaging way isn’t an easy task. Especially when you’re competing for your audience’s attention with ocean vistas, other boaters, and the occasional pod of dolphins. Admittedly, I get distracted by that last one too.
In the last two years, I’ve learned a few things about giving an effective briefing. It comes down to three key takeaways.
These unexpected lessons made me better at understanding people and explaining things, which ultimately made me a better UX writer.
1. What seems perfect to you will be problematic for someone else.
A Goldilocks explanation doesn’t exist. You’re never going to get it just right.
When I first started working on a dive boat, I practiced my safety and dive briefings until I thought they were perfect. But when I actually announced them on the boat, I noticed divers who still had problems. I was frustrated because I thought I explained everything perfectly.
Over time I realized nothing will ever be completely perfect.
At least it’s never going to be perfect every day in every condition for every person.
Like the ocean conditions each day, every person is different. They don’t learn or communicate the same way. Even the same person might communicate differently depending on how they feel that day.
So, it fell on me to learn how to make my briefings better for each day and each set of divers.
Some days that means making little adjustments, like emphasizing where to go if someone felt sick because the seas were choppy. Other days it means talking more seriously about how drift diving is different than an out-and-back navigation dive.
The same is true in UX writing. There’s always going to be a way to improve an experience for someone. It might be as small as rewording a CTA. Or it could be as large as adding an explanation to the onboarding process so users don’t experience frustration or anxiety.
2. There’s no such thing as obvious.
When something seems obvious to you, someone else is oblivious.
I’m not kidding. This is Murphy’s Law of UX writing. If you think something is obvious, someone out there will inevitably come up with a way to prove you wrong.
But this is one of the beautiful truths of being human. We have minds that think, work, and see the world in different ways.
The moral of this takeaway is that you can’t effectively explain something alone. Your perspective simply isn’t enough.
There’s no way you can think of every problem and every solution for every person in every scenario. You need the perspectives and thought processes of your co-workers, users, and, in my case, other scuba divers.
3. Don’t let comfort lead to complacency.
Having an ‘I’m an expert’ mindset makes you worse at explaining things.
You lose empathy for beginners.
Many people think that more experience makes you better at a task. Perhaps that’s true, but here’s the catch. When you grow accustomed to something, you stop questioning the reasons behind your decision-making.
And the more you do something, the easier it is to forget what it feels like to be doing it for the first time.
The first time I went on the dive boat, I got nervous. I simply hadn’t been on that boat before and didn’t know what to expect.
The dive briefing had some important information, like the layout of the dive site and what we’d see underwater.
But I was left questioning: when do we gear up? How do we get in and out of the water? Was the dive guide going to wait for everyone on the surface? Did I need to ascend on my own?
As a dive guide now, I know how easy it is to forget to explain these things because they become second nature.
So, I try to remember the nerves and uncertainty that accompany diving on this boat for the first time.
The same applies to UX writing. We get used to terminology and user flows. We grow accustomed to the layout of our current project and forget how it might feel to be using an app or website for the first time.
It’s nice to feel comfortable in your role and confident about the information you know. But it’s important to never let that comfort turn into complacency.
Otherwise, you’ll miss something in your explanation and someone in your audience will be left confused.
In my role, I know problems sneak in when we get too comfortable. Most of the time, they’re a slow leak, one that could easily be ignored. But on a boat, even a small leak can turn bad quickly.
I carry these three takeaways with me in my career as a UX writer.
Writing for a specific audience is something I find very fulfilling. I love understanding people and being able to solve their problems.
But moreso, I love understanding an audience enough to stop problems before they happen.
