Why designing content leads to better UX

Ardena Gonzalez
Aug 31, 2018 · 3 min read
Illustration by João Ramos

I recently read a post about content-first design that said:

“Design is communication. And you can’t communicate if you don’t know what you want to say.”

It’s no mystery that design and content should go hand-in-hand. But how things look often seems more important than what is said. There are many stories about UX writers trying to get involved earlier in the design process. Because content that is thrown-in last minute, or (worse) not really thought about at all, does service to no one. Especially not users.

While there are many reasons for prioritizing the words on the screen, here are a few that I think stand out:

The user’s language should become our own

In one of our products, for the longest time, we were calling a certain area ‘Inbox’. In some ways it looked like an inbox, but wasn’t really a spitting image of Gmail, and didn’t entirely work like one either. So, after some research, we discovered two main problems:

  • How this area looked and worked did not match what users associate to an inbox.
  • ‘Inbox’ was not the first term (or even second) used when participants were asked to describe it.

Someone, years ago, decided that ‘Inbox’ was the word. But the term was never validated. By learning our users’ language, we learn to understand how they think.

Consistency, consistency, consistency

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Ardena Gonzalez

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UX Writer | Designer-in-the-making

Visma | Raet Design

A team's journey to creating smart and simple experiences.

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