When You’re The New Guy On The UX Team
I recently published an article for UX writers breaking into the field, looking to land that first job. It’s a topic as ubiquitous in the UX cyberspace as screenshots of great and horrible copy and recommendations for resources for continuing education in the field, if not more so. It’s a hot, newish field, still without a clearcut career path. The TL/DR of the piece was to be yourself and to focus on the relevant things that make you unique because no one can talk to the users exactly like you can, and the right brand needs you for you.
But what about after you land the job? I mean, after the champagne and call to your mother (in that order, obviously). What happens when you show up on day one and actually start doing the work?
1) Don’t shit all over the existing copy (right away)
Most companies don’t have UX writers (yet). That means that most of us are carving out a novel, important role that has a massive impact on the product, essentially defining what it is we’re there to do while doing it.
This can get sticky, depending on the personalities around you and the company culture. But even with the warmest colleagues who naturally embrace change and are always excited to integrate the Next Big Thing to make their product great, people are people and there will always be some level of friction.
Think about it — before you got there, the app had words. They might have been clunky, non scannable, inconsistent words. But there were words and you didn’t write them. The person or people who did write them probably still work there, and if they don’t, they have friends who do. So respect the work that’s been done. Study it. Learn from it. Later you can rewrite it from scratch.
2) Listen
When my dad taught me to drive, he emphasized that you cannot take yield of way, you can only give it. In other words, even if the other guy has the yield sign and should stop, if he doesn’t, being right can get you killed while being smart will cost you about 2 seconds of your life.
Similarly, when you show up to an environment where you are the only, or at least the first, proper product writer, and writing the product is exactly what you were hired to do, setting up camp and building a fence around it will not get you anywhere even though you own the deed and they are squatters. It may even get you killed (fired).
I’m not saying not to do your job. I’m saying to tread lightly at the beginning. To make “recommendations” and to ask for advice from the people who wrote copy before you. I didn’t put “advice” in quotation marks in that last sentence because these people really do have a lot to offer you. They have history with a product you just met yesterday. They know the users you’ve never heard complain to Support or watched interact with the product in user testing sessions. You don’t know the industry like they do, and therefore can’t sell the USPs like they can.
At first, you are there to listen. The time will come for you to overhaul the voice, to align the voice with Marketing so that your product doesn’t sound like it has a personality disorder, to incorporate user language to nurture rapport, to take usability to a whole new level with your stellar microcopy. But that comes next. At the beginning, limit your input to typos and unequivocal grammatical errors.
3) Be nice
UX writing is one of the most collaborative roles in tech, maybe in the whole world. You cannot formulate messaging without Marketing and Support. You cannot design the content without… Design. You cannot optimize UX without Product. You cannot implement a damn thing without Dev. You are dependant on everyone, and if they know what’s good for them, they are dependant on you.
But like we said above, people are people and just because they should work with you doesn’t mean they want to or will put their all into the partnership. And the suboptimal UI that will result — that’s going in your portfolio. It behooves you to get them to like you and work with you as synergistically as possible. So be nice.
Put on a happy face even when you haven’t had enough coffee yet and your new shoes are pinching your toes. Chat just enough to both walk away feeling good, but not so much that the good is mixed with anxiety that work is falling behind. Ask questions — people love to talk about themselves — but nothing even remotely intrusive. Find out what you can do for your colleagues even if it’s just grabbing a coffee for them when you’re already up to make your own. Be genuinely interested in your colleagues — in my experience, the people who work in environments where UX writers roam tend to be fascinating folks with stories and experiences that are not only intriguing, but can probably teach you a few things, professionally and otherwise.
Trust me, later on they will bend over backwards to squeeze in that last-minute string change or consider your opinion on hierarchy. Yes, maybe they should do that anyway. But if they like you, they definitely will.
And let me make this part crystal clear in case it wasn’t until now: be authentic. You are not manipulating people, you are genuinely making each other better, which in turn will make your product better.
That’s my two cents.
