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Learning to measure UX writing allows you to create better designs
The right words are often just as important as the right visual element
Many UX Designers feel weird with objective measures, which is not surprising.
Most design thinking is about being open to new ideas, especially in collaborative environments. We even have steps dedicated to being as flexible and creative as possible (like divergent thinking). So adding an objective measure, as if to say this is the ‘best’ design, feels strange and anti-design.
But working in low UX-maturity environments has taught me the power of understanding and using these measures. While we shouldn’t define a ‘best’ design, utilizing these measures allows us to push for ‘better’ designs. The clearest example of this comes from learning to improve your UX writing.
You don’t need to be some creative writing genius to improve the written user experience of your website. Instead, you need to learn how UX content can be measured and understand where you’re lacking.
We need to understand how to measure your UX writing content.
UX writing, unlike creative writing, can and should be measured
UX writing seems like a subdomain of UX that designers never consider. There are tons of UX Writing guidelines that many Designers might not be familiar with, and a skilled UX writer is worth their weight in gold. But I’ve often found myself in projects where there isn’t a UX writer.
In those cases, UX Designers are the first people that can significantly impact your UX writing content. Why? You’re sketching out the first drafts of wireframes, mockups, and prototypes.
So you can make one of two choices when you do so:
- You can leave everything as lorem ipsum, waiting for your team to fill in the blanks
- You can add words to your sketches, causing your team to think about the words on the page from the very beginning
After being part of projects nearly failing because of poor UX writing, I never want to choose the first option again.
