Methods to improve copywriting in your interfaces
In my previous article, I highlighted the principles of writing for interfaces. However, nothing counts until you start learning from your users. UX work can be part of a writing workflow as with any user-center design, verifying your application with your user is essential.
Caveat: In this article, we are concentrating on content and copywriting rather than visual or interactive elements.
Verify your message with users
Below are a few methods on how to verify your message. With all the testing, it is crucial that you test it on your actual users and not proxy users!
Content testing
Many UX designers focus on interactive and visual elements, whilst neglecting testing on the content itself. Content Testing helps to verify that your message does not cause confusion and frustration with users.
Highlighter exercise — Share with your participants a printout of your screens and get them to highlight sections of the screen.
- Highlight in red: The section of the interface if it makes the user uneasy or frustrated.
- Highlight in yellow: Where they feel confused or less confident.
- Highlight in green: The sections that make them more confident.
Compare the results with multiple areas and you will be able to find out quickly which areas needs to be worked on.
Circle & underline exercise — Ask participants to circle what is helpful and underline what is unhelpful. Then, find out why do users find the areas helpful or unhelpful.
Comprehension survey — Ask users to read your content, and ask them the describe what the understand to measure their comprehension. This allows you to find information gaps in your content if it varies from the intended outcome.
Usability testing
You can learn a lot from observing your users interacting with your application. Run usability tests by giving users a series of tasks and observe the user interacting with your application, during the process prompt the participant to verbalise their motivation, expectation and perception at every stage.
Take note of their language. — Listen to how users describe what they’re doing and what they’re looking for. You can incorporate those vocabulary into your writing later.
Identify information gaps. — Observe moments where users are confused, stuck in the journey or are looking for information they can’t find.
As with writing error messages, if you are unsure if users understands your error messages, set some task for the user to resolve those errors, write a couple of possible error message solutions instead of asking users how should you write your errors (big, no no!).
Useful processes to take your UI to the next level
An Overview:
- Set the Voice
- Develop a Tone Framework
- Text Auditing
Set the voice
If Voice is the character of the brand, Tone is the expression. Voice is a reflection of the brand.
Some examples of brand voice are:
Shopify’s voice — We want our voice to sound like a business mentor with zero ego.
Atlassian’s voice — traits of bold, optimistic and practical (with a wink) and is always the same — providing a consistent, friendly, helpful guide to our users.
Develop a tone framework
Tone changes throughout the interface but Voice does not. To avoid being tone deaf in your application, develop a framework for your product. Demarcate your product into different areas and build the tone profiles for each stage.
Tones should be adapted for different situations, for instance, having a friendly tone in your onboarding messages, and a more supportive and professional tone in the support section.
In the bottom example, it shows a Welcome page to sign up for free wifi. The text on the first screen gives a very neutral tone, however for returning users, they are shown the exact screen with much more friendly tone. From “Welcome to Paya Lebar Quarter” to a much friendlier “Hi, Nice to see you again Nicole!”, while this example is not a usability killer, it would be nicer if the tone was more consistent throughout the journey.
Based on Michael J Mett’s Writing is Designing, Tones maybe different depending on the following information:
• Where users are in the journey
• How experienced they are in using the interface
• What their intentions are
• What their mood is: how receptive they are to what you are guiding them to do.
Also consider:
• Scenario: In what situation would a user be encountering this message?
• User’s State of Mind: How might the user be feeling upon receiving this message? How receptive might they be?
• Product Intent: What’s your goal? What do you want the user to accomplish?
• Tone Attributes: What further characteristics might this tone share with a character archetype? (Is it supportive? Nurturing? Trusted? Patient?)
An example of Atlassian’s Tone Principles
When we want to be more bold
Person is feeling: confident, interested, trust, anticipation
Eg: power users, admins, every day users
When we need to be less optimistic
Person is feeling: anticipation, unsupported, confused, uncertain
Eg: New to Atlassian, evaluators, or when introducing a new concept, feature, or product
When we want to be more optimistic
Person is feeling: ambitious, inspired, curious, admiration
Eg: power users, admins, every day users
When we need to be practical
Person is feeling: All of the emotions.
Some places we use this principle: In truth we aim to be practical wherever we can. In product, we are always cognizant of being practical in warning messages, information messages, and error messages.
Useful content style guide references
Use the following content style guides if you are having trouble determining tones within your product. These give you some sense on how to develop your own.
Text auditing
An audit is the process of reviewing an application, and an inventory is the result of an audit. For an audit, scope out the pages and then proceed to take inventory of all the screen grabs. Pick a few key-flows and go through the content and review them for conciseness, context, tone, consistency, basically review the principles of writing for interfaces.
In the end of the audit, you should have an inventory of your key screens to flag the inappropriate content. Mark them out in red for the ones to fix them immediately, yellow to fix gradually, and another colour for those “nice to fix” area.
Closing statement
With UX, the product improves with more iterations and so does copywriting. If you have not read the principles of copywritting in interfaces please spend some time to do so! Otherwise, any feedback on this article is much appreciated!
