Not a Writer? Not a Problem: Five Questions You Can Ask Yourself To Improve Your UX Writing
Sometimes simply changing a word can make all the difference for a user — and save you hours of time moving pixels.
A lot of words show up throughout our screens: in buttons, tabs, cards, and all the other items that make up a digital product. Even though they’re always there, it’s pretty easy to forget how important those words are. I mean, they’re just words, right? You don’t need fancy software to make them — just your keyboard.
But they are important. The choices we make with our copy and content have a huge impact on usability — they are the foundation of understanding the purpose of a product. You’d be an insane person to get rid of them all.
Thus, the UX Writer
During my 5+ years working with digital products at Invoke — a delightful place where we make products with everyone from enterprise-level brands to emerging startups — I’ve seen the idea of a UX writer go from “not a thing” to “hey, this might be a thing!”
UX design and UX writing, while having unique focuses, are two sides of the same coin. Where UX designers work relentlessly to help users understand the practical matters of how to tap, click, and otherwise interact with a digital product, UX writers bring that level of discipline to helping users understand why they’re taking those actions.
Still, it’s an emerging field. Small teams may not be ready to hire a dedicated UX writer, and large companies may need to be convinced it’s not just a trend. It might be up to you.
Luckily, by asking yourself a few questions, you and anyone else on your team can help push the UX writing in your digital products to the next level.
As long as you have a keyboard.
Improving UX writing starts by knowing what it is not
But before we start asking ourselves questions, let’s understand the goal of UX writing.
This is far from the first time that people have recognized the importance of words. You may already work with some type of copywriter, and it’s tempting to just hand them the keys and ask them to be the UX writer. First, you need to make sure the distinct goals of UX writing are clear.
Across industries, I often see UX writing fall to whoever was writing content for the company website — usually a marketing copywriter. But marketing has a very different goal than UX. Marketing asks you to believe in the product. UX asks you to understand the product.
In the absence of a UX Writer, any writer in an organization is a valuable resource, but it’s important to review the goal of UX copy. Chris Cameron of booking.com has said that the single most important quality UX writing can have is clarity. It might not be as flashy as a marketing copywriter is capable of being, but as long as it clearly communicates the actions the user is ready to take, then it’s doing its job.
Use your resources — and don’t ignore your brand’s voice and tone guidelines — but make sure yourself, your writers, and anyone giving you feedback understands the purpose of UX writing.
How to put yourself in a writing state of mind
Your goal here is to start thinking like a UX writer. If you can ask the same questions that UX writers ask themselves, you’ll be moving in the right direction.
Question 1: “Can you walk me through the user experience?”
No matter how involved you are in creating a product, get someone to explain it to you. As they tell you about interactions and describe what happens on screen, they’re probably going to end up mentioning a bit of context or an instruction that isn’t on the screen. Congratulations, you’ve just recognized an opportunity for improved UX writing!
If something is important enough to the user experience that it is explained to you during a walk through, then it’s important enough to be communicated on screen.
A common example is password requirements. Does your product require all passwords to include a capital letter, lowercase letter, number, special character, and the last name of at least one winner of the Best Actress Oscar? Add a line of UX writing that outlines these requirements and you’ll prevent users from ending up frustrated when they try out a password and get a screen of red errors thrown at them.
Question 2: “What questions will users have about this screen?”
Nothing replaces actually talking to users — user testing is just as important for UX writing as it is for UX design — but you can take small steps in your company by trying to think like a user. By asking these questions during the initial design phase, you can avoid obvious mistakes and ensure user testing is focused on refinement.
I like to place the potential questions a user might ask into a “how, what, why” framework. This framework helps balance the need for direct instructions with the need for a gentle guidance.
”How do I do this?” — This user needs some instructions. Give them guidelines and requirements, and remember to be clear and efficient. They’re trying to get something done.
”What does this mean/do?” — The user needs you to define something for them. Provide context and help, and remember that this may be a chance to be a bit warmer and introduce a more unique voice.
”Why would I do this?” — This user doesn’t have a firm sense of your value proposition or how this aspect of the product connects to it. This is where UX writing and marketing writing can really work together. You’re selling the user on using this feature — time to have a perspective and connect your product to their real lives.
Question 3: “Does a user want to have a conversation with us or not?”
A digital experience that feels like a natural conversation is wonderful. Maybe you’re figuring out where to eat, and it feels like talking to a friend that used to run a restaurant in the city. In the right context, it can make a product feel purposeful, warm, and reliable.
For this reason, many brands aspire to be conversational. What is often forgotten is that isn’t always the right communication style. This may seem obvious, but a conversational tone only makes sense for an exchange that could feasibly resemble a conversation. Consider if a trusted business was asking you what your address and social insurance number was, would you consider that a “conversation”? Or was it just a required exchange of information?
Conversational tone is meant to convey humanity, but sometimes the human thing to do is just get to the point. Choose words that your users easily understand, but remember that sometimes the efficiency of a robot is bliss. And if you don’t think of yourself as a strong writer, aiming for efficiency over conversation can be an easier target to consistently hit.
Question 4: “Am I trying too hard?”
Sometimes the right word or phrase in UX writing is so painfully simple and obvious that you feel like you haven’t done your job yet. That you aren’t being “enough of a writer.” Relax, you did your job. You did a great job.
UX writing works best when it’s consistent. In other scenarios, consistency can be shorthand for boring, but here it results in a product that is scannable and predictable. When we apply consistency to labels, instructions, and more, it results in products that are faster and easier to understand.
That means that instead of parsing a creative sentence for meaning, users can quickly scan a screen, figure out what they need, and just do it. Instead of having to click a button to figure what something does, users can compare it to a similarly-phrased button they already clicked. It may not hit some arbitrary standard of creativity, but the person using your product that just wants to complete a task in the middle of a stressful day is better off.
Question 5: “Is this making the product better to use?”
Every element that is added to the screen can change how the user perceives the product; make sure each of these changes is a positive one.
When I ask myself if this makes a product better to use, I think of three categories: simpler to use, easier to understand, or making it a fun time.
If a screen has a line of copy that’s not making the product better to use, you have two actions you can take.
Option one, rewrite it. Ask yourself any of the previous questions on this list, think about what the user needs, and turn this into something that provides value to the user.
Option two, scrap it. Your eye as an editor is just as important as your eye as a writer. If other screens and areas of copy have already provided the context your user needs, you can simplify the user experience by cutting content — and it feels good.
I often think of it like a well-crafted joke — probably because when I’m not working as a UX writer, I am a touring stand-up comedian here in Canada. Early in my career, an old pro with decades of experience defined the setup to a joke as “everything you need to understand the punchline, and nothing more.” Whether it’s getting a laugh or using a digital product, tell people everything they need to know, then stop. Don’t waste their time with a bunch of unnecessary nonsense.
What have you learned as a UX writer?
Like I’ve said, this is an emerging field. I’m always coming across articles that dive into some super specific use case — like what a button should say when a user wants to cancel their attempt to cancel something — and it’s fascinating.
Whether it’s on Medium in response to this, in an email to me, or yelled from outside our offices, let me know how you get into the right mindset for being a UX writer.
