How writing for health made me a better UX writer
Learnings from my time at Doctolib
Have you ever visited your doctor over a video call? Around 400 million video consultations worldwide were predicted to happen in 2021.
This is still only 5% of all consultations together. At Doctolib, we want to make healthcare even more accessible and efficient for all.
With the goal of transforming a physical experience, like a doctor‘s appointment, into a digital one, good writing becomes more important than ever.
The learnings that have changed the way I work:
- Empathise
- Speak with users
- Join forces
- Be honest
🙌 Empathise
Designing a healthcare product carries great challenges in terms of inclusivity, privacy and accessibility. Writing is an essential part of it.
We defined our voice as understandable, helpful and positive. Also, we adapt our voice depending on who we’re writing for:
- Patients: personal, encouraging and direct. We avoid medical jargon, abbreviations and technical terms. If unavoidable, we explain technical terms as simply as possible.
- Healthcare professionals: supportive, precise and professional. Here, technical terms are allowed and necessary. With no practical background in healthcare, it can be hard to set medical terms accurately. This goes along with lots of research to use the same professional language.
Overly positive writing is inappropriate in many situations users are facing. We just can’t say if patients are happy about having booked an appointment, or not.
Neutrality, on the other hand, can feel robotic and uncaring.
When in doubt, we keep it neutral, but optimistic. This adds a human and conversational tone to many interactions.
This seems easy in situations where users feel confident, for example when we notify them about an earlier appointment that has become available.
When users feel angry, however, it becomes harder to back up our writing by our voice, for example when an appointment got cancelled.
The truth is, our voice will never change. It stays the same in all these situations. But our voice has a range of tones that are adaptable depending on our users’ feelings.
To use the appropriate tone, we think about how our users might feel: satisfied, neutral or angry. Afterwards, we put the right tone in our writing:
😊 = Be confident and positive
😐 = Be motivational and supportive
😡 = Be honest and precise
For example, when users feel angry, our voice would always be positive, but we’d keep our tone honest and simpler than usual. Also, we’d avoid writing enthusiastically or adding confusing information.
As we design, we cannot predict how users feel. But we can support users by reflecting about their feelings in different situations. UX writing always starts with empathy.
🗣️ Speak with users
At Doctolib, UX writing and user research teams work closely together and we’re always looking for ways to improve our collaboration.
I try my best to take part in as many interviews as possible, but always ensure that I’m included in debriefs following the interviews to iterate on our writing.
As many questions focus on usability and design, there’s time to ask questions about our writing, too.
Tips for UX writers on questions during user interviews:
- Avoid closed questions with only two answers such as ‘yes’ or ‘no’. Ask ‘What would happen when you click this button?’ not ‘Is the button clear to you?’.
- Avoid questions that contain the answer. Ask ‘What did you understand from reading the label?’ not ‘Would a tooltip help you better understand the label?’.
- Ask users at the end of a task to describe what they just did in their own words to make sure your writing is simple, and identify the words they use.
Every interview is a chance to be inspired and learn something new about our users. For example, what their goals are, what they like, or what they’re missing in our product.
With this feedback in mind, it’s easier to advocate my ideas when we discuss potential solutions for our users within the team.
A lot of times, user research gave me the opportunity to try new things beyond just writing, for example interviewing users and hosting workshops. And this helped me become a more well-rounded UX writer.
💪 Join forces
Doctolib had already existed for 4 years in Germany, when I joined as the first German-speaking UX writer.
Often, our writing lacked consistency which had a bad impact on usability. I’ve been fixing big parts of the existing copy, while working on new features with the team.
New features such as the COVID-19 vaccination campaign would always have priority. As a consequence, it can be harder to prioritise making improvements to existing copy.
The bigger Doctolib gets, the more specialised roles we have. We have writers on the product team, brand team, marketing team and even writers for standardised content such as visit motives, keywords or specialties.
This is great, but it can be hard to keep track of who’s responsible for what part of the website.
Imagine you spot a typo on your company’s website and want it to be reported and fixed. Would you know which channel to use to share your feedback, or know the person in charge?
What if there was a way to fix errors faster and easier? And to enable our colleagues to easily report errors, and improve our product?
A few months ago, all content owners from product, brand and marketing teams defined their scope and documented together who’s responsible for which part of the website.
Afterwards, we created and then shared an online form on Asana with everyone at Doctolib. The form can be filled to report typos, mistakes, unclear or wrong wordings.
The content owner gets notified and can fix the error. In my case, I would receive most of the feedback related to the product. As soon as the error is fixed, I update and close the ticket.
The great thing about this system is that there’s one simple way of reporting inconsistencies in our writing. Plus, we have more visibility than before on who owns what type of content. We’ve improved our product, and everyone saves precious time to create new features at Doctolib.
💙 Be honest
Do you regularly ask others for feedback? In the beginning, it wasn’t always easy for me to ask for feedback on my work, for example a piece of writing.
As I was new to UX writing, I must have been afraid of people thinking I wouldn’t be good enough for the job.
On the design team, we have a few rituals to present our work to others. As I shared my work more often in UX writing critiques, workshops and all hands presentations, I felt more comfortable and, most of all, learned new things from many amazing colleagues.
Some of the advice I got from my colleague Sophie is when you’re about to share your work with the team: Don’t belittle your work by saying ‘I quickly prepared something for you’.
It hasn’t been done ‘quickly’. You’ve put time and effort into it. Let everyone know that you worked on it with reflection, and the best of your knowledge and dedication.
It’s a reminder that, at the end of the day, we’re pretty good at what we do — and to be proud of it.
As I look back, I’m impressed by how the UX writing team has contributed so far to a product built for people’s health — their life.
Writing for health brings value and improves how people live. It has changed the way I work forever and will always help me wherever I go in my career.
Want more from the Doctolib team? Follow our design page, or join us!
👉🏼 Find out what I learned during my first 3 months as a UX writer.
