Scorecard for evaluating UX content
Some heuristics for looking critically at the content in your product
Every bit of content in your product has a job to do, a purpose to fulfill. Take, for example, the lowly dialog. That hardworking little component can save our users from making unintentional mistakes just by asking them to reconsider before taking action.
Or it can drive engagement with just a few words and an image.
But I’ve been surprised a few times by the writing I’ve seen in dialogs, even from really good designers.
As a writer, I think of a dialogs as having just 2 types: decision or information.
If we are asking the user to make a decision:
- Write the title as a question.
- Provide additional context or info about consequences in the body text.
- Then make sure that the actions listed work as answers to the question.
If there’s a mismatch between the question the dialog asks and the answers it offers with the buttons, users will be confused.
You can boil that down to a simple heuristic, which is a fancy-pants word that just means a simple and practical rule for understanding something.
Get your scorecard here!
I’ve put together a scorecard you can use to evaluate the UX writing in your product. The scorecard can help you to look critically at a form or a dashboard, for example, and do a quick check to see if it “passes” the heuristic for that component.
The scorecard for a confirmation dialog asks these questions:
Is the writing direct?
Check that the dialog communicates a single message or asks a single question.
Is the writing distinct?
Check that the buttons clearly define the actions and answer the question.
If the answer to both of these is ‘yes’ then the dialog passes muster.
Let’s take a look at another example. Here’s an empty state with some copy that looks pretty good.
In the heuristics scorecard, our evaluation criteria for empty states are:
Positive
The message focuses on user benefit, and encourages action.
- PASS, this one does the job.
Clear
Text explicitly states what action the user can take to get started.
- PASS, this text works well because it informs the user that students must take action to see results.
Holistic
Images and messaging complement each other.
- PASS, the grayed out leaderboard is a decent representation of the future state.
This empty state passes all our heuristics. Super!
How about a poor example? Let’s check out an error message.
Alright. So we know this is bad. But what makes it bad?
The scorecard asks us to check whether the error message is:
Useful
Error says what happened and what the user should do next
- FAIL, we hear you, twice, about what happened. But what should we do next? It’s a mystery.
- In the Action Items column on our scoresheet, we can write, “Tell the user what to do next.”
Appropriate
Language and tone match the severity
- PASS (mostly). The word “fail” sounds pretty severe. That said, if you failed to save my long screen recording I’d probably think that was a pretty serious error.
For voice and tone, the heuristics focus on appropriate tone, consistent voice and terminology, and remind us to avoid humor that’s culturally inaccessible.
So you get the idea! Use the scorecard as needed to evaluate content at the component level. The heuristics cover:
- Overall writing
- Voice & tone
- Onboarding
- Dashboards
- Modals & dialogs
- Instructional text & tooltips
- Error messages
- Notifications & alerts
- Empty states
- Transactional emails
- Accessibility
I hope the scorecard helps when you’re doing the hard work of evaluating the usefulness and appropriateness of your UI content.
Take an online course in UX writing
The UX Writers Collective will be offering a UX Writing Fundamentals course soon to teach people how to write successfully for apps and products. If you think you‘d be interested, follow us on LinkedIn to receive an early invite good for a 20% discount.
Thanks for reading!
