Recommended reading list for UX-writers (and designers) 2017
I was giving a talk earlier this week at UX Meetup in Umeå, northern Sweden, about how text is becoming more and more important in UX. After my talk I was asked to put together a reading list on the topic. This is it.
1. What is UX Writing?
“There’s a new job in town. Well, maybe not “new,” but certainly popping up with increasing frequency. Google’s looking. Amazon’s looking. Dropbox, Paypal…many of the big players in tech are now looking for User Experience Writers. It may seem like a bit of a fad, and a quiet one at that, but writing-focused user experience designers will be a critical part of the way we design for experiences from here on out.”
2. The State of UX in 2017
“The uxdesign.cc team has seen a lot this year: 48 issues published, 576 links curated, and sent to 98,381 designers around the world every week. When you spend that much time curating content, it’s natural to start identifying patterns. Here are the UX Trends we’re seeing in the amazing realm of User Experience Design.”
3. Why UX Design is a Lot Like Writing (Not Just Art-Making)
“Everyone agrees that digital User Experience (UX) Design is part “art,” part “science.” To meet the “science” requirement, a UX Designer must have enough technical knowledge to realistically design for the possibilities and limitations of a platform, and knowledge of some scientific principles of how computer interfaces can affect the brain. But the “art” part is trickier — what underlying creative skills does a UX Team really need to bring a feature-rich application to life? Just visual artistry?”
4. The Next Phase of UX: Designing Chatbot Personalities
“When the conversation is the interface, experience design is all about crafting the right words.”
5. Rise of the UX Writer
“Right now is a very interesting time to be a copywriter in the UK. As an industry, copywriting seems to be going through something of an identity crisis.”
6. Writers should be deeply involved in product design. Here’s how.
“Words shape design. Real words, not lorem ipsem, should form the ground-up basis for product design. Increasingly, the design community seems to take this truth to heart and has heartily paid lip service to the importance of “content” (words, the copy).”
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