The Magic Trick of UX Writing
What does it take to thrive in UX writing? Let’s break it down!
Not familiar with UX writing yet? Come back after reading this article to get a better understanding. It will help you get the most out of my article below.
What’s up with UX writing?
In the professional landscape, UX writers are well known as a valuable and rare resource. This applies especially for startups. The role is gaining popularity for bringing specific values that levels up the game. One might even say it’s the defining line between a good and bad company product.
But you still have doubts.
Does writing on the small details help that much?
Allow me to tell you that even the giant companies are going crazy about improving their UX writing. Take a look at Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, and Google (yes, I’m using FAANG for scale). They realized the importance of UX writing from way back and began recruiting UX writers to improve and differentiate their company’s products. That’s one of the X factors on why they’re able to become the titans of tech companies.
Now that you know the status quo of the black horse known as UX writing, let’s actually discuss what the hype is all about.
What’s UX writing all about anyway?
UX writing involves a specific set of writing skills to build a product (e.g. applications, websites) with a focus on empathizing with the users.
Simply put, UX writing means writing every text (copy) for a product to help users achieve their goals. It’s minor at first glance, but these texts hold a major role in achieving user satisfaction.
Elegantly put, UX writing is the art of connecting to users on an emotional level. This means knowing what matters to them and guiding them in solving their problems. It provides successful conversations for the users and good impressions of the product.
We identify UX writing with different job titles, which is part of the problem when you try to make sense of it all. Take your pick: UX writers, content designers, product writers, or even content strategists. This inconsistent naming convention confuses companies and applicants alike. Ultimately, the main job remains the same — to write copy for products.
Here’s the thing: product development is a broad industry. Building a product comes with lots of things to think about. This leads to the fact that the words you use for buttons are most often put in the lowest priority. People tend to underestimate the power of good copy.
But specialists claim that good UX copy can raise user engagement as much as 17% with a single button. That’s how significant UX writing is for a product’s success. It’s undeniable that having a UX writer from day one is the first step to excellence.
Here’s the problem: people simplify the matter by saying any ‘writer’ from any background can do UX writing. This makes people think that UX writing is easy and accessible to everyone on the planet. In reality, being able to write well for blogs or articles doesn’t always mean you’ll be brilliant in UX writing.
Don’t get me wrong. There’s nothing wrong with people from various backgrounds to get into UX writing. I am one of those people as well. I used to be a technology consultant that somehow made my way into my current UX writing job.
The point here is people often forget that you do need a specific skill set to thrive in UX writing.
Here’s the mainstream UX writer requirements that you’ll see:
• General design thinking
• User-centric mindset
• Fluency with digital interfaces (app, web, etc.)
• Fluency in language(s)
• People skills
It’s not really helpful, is it? Try combining the list above with all the buzzwords going around. Most people will find themselves lost in blinding lights. That’s exactly why I wrote this article — to push you forward and see through all the smoke and mirrors.
What does it take to thrive in UX Writing?
Here’s the real deal: learning UX writing is not a one-day effort. People may make it sound magical as if you’ll be creating something out of thin air. In reality, we need conscious and consistent effort to actually learn UX writing. Pin this to your mind: everything in life demands a process. Your very first step in the process is to learn, live, and love the basics.
UX writing is an art of semantics — relating to logic and language. But what does that mean? Let’s break down the magic trick.
Logic is the organization and connection of concepts within your writing. This relates to the general-level features of your text (e.g. brand personality and voice & tone). We use logic to describe how the concepts in your writing connect to each other. If your writing is logical, its parts will be well-connected and heading in the same direction. Without logic, your writing may be readable but it won’t make sense to the users.
Language is the organization and connection of words and sentences in your writing. This relates to the specific-level features of the text (i.e. your vocabulary and grammar). We use language to describe the readability of your words and sentences. It’s important to make sure each word’s meaning and relation connects well to each other.
As an example, if your writing has:
• Good logic, bad language. Your writing will make sense but it’s hard to read.
• Bad logic, good language. Your writing won’t make sense but it’s easy to read.
Both examples don’t really spell out as good writing, do they? This is why you must learn and practice the basics of both logic and language. The basic is the key to improve your writing by leaps and bounds.
Logic and Language are important aspects of UX writing. They will directly impact your copy quality. Improve yourself in these basic aspects and you’ll start to see dramatic improvements in your writing.
Where do we go from here?
There is so much more to UX writing that we can’t afford to explore in a single article. But the key takeaway is to polish our basics to enable ourselves to become better in UX writing each step of the way. For starters, learn to embrace logic and language in your writing. This will improve not only your writing but your communication skill as well.
Food for thought: how many times have you miscommunicated due to a lack of basic logic and language?
Hey, thanks for reading until the end. Hope this article helps you take your UX writing to the next level. Until next time, cheers!
P.S. visit DANA Product & Tech’s Medium page for more insights like this.
