Understanding the Basic Principles in UX Writing: Clear, Concise, and Useful
A simple yet powerful guide to apply this trio effectively!
As a UX Writer who started my career as a Content Writer, I thought every job related to writing was about grammar and structure. It took me a while to realize that it isn’t always the case. I used to write long articles — up to 1500 words per article — which really trained my hard writing skills and my creative thinking on how to structure the content and be as informative as possible. I relied a lot on KBBI (Great Dictionary of the Indonesian Language or Kamus Besar Bahasa Indonesia) to double-check my spelling and often got feedback from my editor to learn to write in various tones.
Fast forward to 2019 when I jumped into the UX field, I learned that while my writing skills are helpful, I had yet to learn about the principles of UX Writing: clear, concise, and useful. Well oh well, imagine as someone who got so used to writing 500–1000-ish word articles, clear and concise are obviously not my best friends back then 😅 My ego as a content writer was also too big at that time when I found out that wrongly spelled “karier”* as “karir” actually are not that important in UX writing. In the end, whether you use the first or latter ones, users still have an equal understanding that it means “career”, and that’s exactly what your goal is: to make them understand.
*To note: “Karier” is the formal form and technically the right spelling according to KBBI. “Karir” is the informal form. Both mean “Career” in the Indonesian language and are widely used and accepted regardless of the different spelling.
So, for everyone interested in learning about UX writing, let me explain the easy ways to utilize this powerful trio and examples of how we apply them in the Jago app.
Meet the trio: Clear, concise, and useful
Every UX writing course will start with these three as the basic principles for you to understand, especially if you are new to the world of UX writing (like me in 2019 🙋🏻). As straightforward as they are, each of them still has a certain application in the case of UX writing:
Clear
Clear copy means it’s easy to understand, and it can be manifested in various ways. It can be achieved by using everyday language (as opposed to the more technical and complicated terms); or giving users complete information on what conditions they are facing and what action they are expected to take in certain pages.
One example of this is the copy on Jago’s dormant Pocket. As much as I want to break down all the steps to inform users about the dormant state and how to re-activate their Pocket, all I have is this small section that can only contain a maximum of 4 lines of copies. So, I only wrote the most essential information for them to know:
- What is happening to their Pocket: “This Pocket is dormant”
- Why is this happening to their Pocket (in the hope of helping them understand the reason and avoid the same condition in the future): “You have no transaction in the last 18 months.”
- How they can solve this (with a bit of reassurance to help them understand that this condition is reversible): “Worry not, you can re-activate this Pocket by adding money!”
Completed with the icing on the cake to make it easier for users to follow the expected journey: the call-to-action buttons to help them undo the dormancy (“Add Money”) and learn more about this state (“Learn More”) which redirects to the FAQ page that contains a longer explanation about the situation.
Concise
Have you ever seen the meme about users ticking the Terms & Conditions without actually reading it all? Though it’s funny and hurts at the same time for us writers, I have to admit that it perfectly resonates in real life where users don’t have time (or are even too lazy — there I said it!) to read through the screen. So, what we UX writers need to do is ensure they can understand the message even when they only scan the screen, and this is precisely why you need to understand conciseness in UX writing.
And no, concise doesn’t always mean your copies must consist of 5 words only. It’s more about structuring your content so users can get the message as soon as they start scanning the screen.
One of the techniques to achieve this is through frontloading, where you essentially put the most important information at the top of the screen or the start of the sentence, following the F structure where people’s eyes are naturally moved when they read something on the screen.
An example of this is from the term deposit creation in the Jago app. When users create the term deposit in Jago, they have 2 options to choose the rollover mode: with or without the automatic rollover. For the rollover option, they also can choose between renewing the principal only or the principal and interest earned.
On this screen, I tried to put the important keywords first so users could get the ideas seconds into reading the screen.
- Grayed text “Auto-withdrawal” and “Auto-renewal” to indicate the 2 opposite options
- Mentioning the subject of renewal in front of the sentence for options (2) and (3): “Principal will be…” and “Principal and interest will be…”. Even though the active voice is generally more encouraged to be used in UX writing, in this case, the passive voice helps frontload the copies better because the focus will be on renewal.
- Then, the descriptions are there to clarify further and explain the options available if they want to read more to find out.
Useful
Imagine navigating the app with “Lorem ipsum” copy all over the screen, from the title and description to the call-to-action button. You surely won’t be able to navigate properly because you don’t know what to expect. This is why it’s important to write useful copies: to make users successfully navigate and fulfill whatever action they need to do.
A small but important example is writing a descriptive call-to-action button that matches the action on the next screen. This will give users a heads-up on what they are expected to do and where they will be redirected.
The screen above is the drawer users will get when they want to set automated budgeting, but they have yet to create Pockets in Jago (aside from the Main Pocket). The information we want to convey is pretty simple, to let them know that they don’t have any Pocket to be used to receive the budgeting, hence they will need to create some first. So, the call-to-action button copy is a simple yet straightforward “Create Pocket”. It wouldn’t be as clear if the button copy only shows “Next” or “Continue”.
While it’s generally better to write as short and straightforwardly as possible, you must also find the balance between the three. There are certain conditions and factors when writing shorter or longer copies is okay, such as whether you have space constraints in the design or need to elaborate a complex condition to users. Ultimately, it’s up to you to decide what’s best for your copies.
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