Composing the user experience with letters, commas, and semicolons
When you think of a product designer, perhaps there’s this vision in your mind of someone deep in Sketch. He or she is shifting and aligning objects to and fro within the screen. The pixels and color values are just so, and ahhh, the screen looks oh-so-pleasing.
Now, hold on.
The design in itself needs to consider the verbs, nouns, and adjectives on the screen. What I’ve found the past couple of weeks is that for healthcare UX, the content really carries the ability to appropriately test with users. User testing in our specific domain rides on the content, not necessarily on the elegance of a solution.
Things I’ve learned from doing my fair share of UX writing for our prototype:
- Tone carries the experience just as much as an interaction.
Hey now, UX writing can be just as delightful as a fun animation. Have you ever tried a new product that a clear onboarding experience? I bet you that the jargon and syntax helped you figure out the product’s information architecture, general process, and personality. All these small tiny pieces clarify the user experience and are very much dependent on one another.
2. Personas determine content.
It may seem obvious, but whoever is viewing and engaging with the product is the person we should address. What does this mean for the product designer? Personas matter.
“I would never suggest adding this role to this portion of the clinical workflow. This just doesn’t make sense to me. Well, the rest of this page doesn’t make much sense.”
— Clinical provider during user testing
The clinical experts we presented our prototype and designs to were so lost when the content was wrong. They immediately read through all of our text and got stuck on what was said on the page, rather than working through the task we had at hand. This also made it had for us because was the failure to accomplish the task a results of poor information architecture or a byproduct of poor comprehension.
3. Write to empathize deeply for your users.
Aside from visuals, words are also a method for users to consume and develop a mental model of something works whether it’s a metro ticket machine or software. I’ve found that writing content for Chorus (our capstone product) has made me better understand the issues that arise for clinical providers and implementation consultants. It’s changed our navigation header time and time again. It’s helped our team better question our designs and iterate moving forward. Well-written copy elevated a medium-fidelity interface more than a polished interface with copy that is rough around the edges.
TLDR; writing well pays off, even in design.
It supports the end-to-end user experience. As users embark on a new journey to explore a piece of software, the little details matter. Yes, that means whether your pixels are aligned all left and right, or if the text tips are clear and succinct. Together, when UX writing and design work in harmony, adopting a product will be faster and easier.
