7 reasons why journalists make perfect future UX writers
From the talk of Patrick Stafford with the design director of the UX Writing at Uber Roy West on the Writers of the Silicon Valley podcast
There are many discussions about what’s the right background for the UX writers. The discipline is quite young, so there aren’t that many people with years of experience exactly in this area, and the recruiters might want to expand their search and take a closer look to the writers shifting from other domains, such as content marketing or journalism. Of course, the list of possible backgrounds can be much longer, but I have my personal agenda here, since I’m transitioning from journalism.
I found what co-founder of UX Writers Collective Patrick Stafford and Roy West from Uber had to say on the matter very inspiring. I’ve made notes and wrote down some points they made during one of the episodes of the Silicon Valley podcast. So here’s why journalists make good UX writers.
1. They know how to research. «In journalism 90% of what you’re doing is research, the writing only comes at the very end. I can bang out 2K words in a couple of hours, that’s really not a problem. But if I haven’t done the 3 weeks of research beforehead, I’m not gonna get anything done», — says Patrick Stafford.
2. They know how to structure information correctly. The famous inverted pyramid structure works nearly in all types of writing, be it a newspaper with a catchy headline, or UI, where it’s called ‘the progressive disclosure’.
3. They’re used to deal with space constraints. No extras — words, phrases, other beats of information — just the valuable essence conveyed in the most concise manner to attract attention, cause reaction or, in case of UI, action.
4. They know how to ask the right questions. And they ask as many questions, as it’s needed to get to the bottom of things and to understand deeply the motivations, the reasons, the ‘whys’ and the ‘hows’ of all of the processes. Journalists, even the ones from the seemingly superficial glossy magazines, like me, are investigators in their hearts.
5. They know how to interact with multiple sources of information. The source can be a person, data or anything else, it doesn’t really matter. A good journalist knows how to analyze all of the obtained information and evaluate correctly what’s to emphasize and what’s to leave out of the equation.
6. They know how to communicate and explain their reasoning. This one is really important, given that the work in UX requires communicating with multiple stakeholders, customers and sometimes business owners—so basically all of the people involved in the process.
7. They’re usually very empathetic. This one’s not coming from the podcast, but from me personally. You don’t always have an insider’s point of view on the things you write about. But you need to become the ‘insider’ for a moment, to get into your story’s character’s mind and to capture a truly thrilling and worthy piece.
Given all of the above, what a journalist shifting to UX really needs is just to change focus and go from telling a story of an event to telling a story of a flow.
To wrap it all up, as another UX Writers Collective co-founder Bobbie Wood said during one of her recent webinars — ’Don’t apologize for the experience that you’re currently lacking, show off the experience that you already have and sell your value’.
