UX writing: behind the words
Almost two years ago, I was a soon-to-be fresh graduate looking for a full time job when I stumbled upon this position called Web Content Executive at Titansoft Singapore.
Long story short, I applied for it and got the job. As the title might suggest, the Content team covers a lot of ground, but a big part of what we do is writing the UI text for webs, games, and apps — basically our clients’ products. It’s during this time I found that UX writing is a thing, and decided to dig deeper ever since.
Writing doesn’t come out of nowhere
Most probably… this won’t be the most spectacular article about UX writing that you’ve read (go to my Medium profile and view the articles that I clapped for if you want to find some really great ones). But what I hope this article will do, is to bring you one layer deeper, to the cooking behind the text you see on screens. Essentially, the process of UX writing.
First come the brief.
I used the brief from UX Writing Hub, which comes in a series of email. I won’t spill much details, so you can still sign up and tackle it your own way. In a sentence, here is the task: create the empty state for a gardening app. It would be the first screen that user sees after they download your app and open it.
Thinking before writing
This is the one most important point to take away from this whole article. When writing for experience that would be seen by other people, being concise and other best practices can be good, but it takes more than those to connect to the users.
Can you speak your user’s language?
Age, gender, job, hobby and interest. 4 of the many things in which we, as a UX writer, may differ from our target audience. That’s why a big part of the job is to really learn about them. In this case, our user would be gardening enthusiasts. People want to grow plants, start a garden, and download our app to get gardening tips.
To find out how they speak and what they care about, I used a method called conversation / social mining. What I did was going through social media, forums, and even gardening products review section to find out how our users speak to each other. From there, I noted down some keywords.
Surely not all of them would be used in the final version. Maybe even none. However, this step gives us more understanding and context about the gardening niche that we previously knew little about.
The app and the user, a conversation of two
It’s always important to remember that when writing for user experience, we are writing for one person. As in.. you’ll want it to be conversational, tailored to this user using the app instead of sounding like we’re speaking to the mass.
A step forward from there is to build trust between the app and the user. One way to achieve this is to be consistent with your voice. While voice and tone is a broad topic on its own, and deserve a whole separate article to talk about it, I’d try to reach the same goal by imagining that my app is a person.
For this gardening app, I chose to personify it as Captain America in the Avengers movie. Minus the masculine side (our app is not targeted to specific gender) and a lil bit more fun-loving. Let’s write it out:
We are dependable like Chris Evans in the movie. It means that we’re a credible expert in our field (in this case, gardening). We’re generous with helpful tips to get you on the right rack, and we’re always there for you to rely on.
We are confident in conversing with our users, beaming with positive energy. Friendly and approachable, without sounding like a jokester. And we’ll be encouraging and motivating you to get the best results possible.
We don’t try to sound smarter than our users. Also, we won’t be too formal and rigid like a robot. Nor do we give command and sound forcing; we simply provide tips.
Now that we’ve carved out a distinct personality for the app, it puts us in a good spot to move onto the next step.
*p.s. a friend looked through my draft and made a remark that Captain America ain’t the first figure that comes to mind when you think about “dependable and friendly”. And I’ll say it may be true. However, it’s alright as long as it works for you and helps give your app a well-defined voice.
Crafting the welcome message
Yup, this is the part where we start to write. From my personal experience, a standard welcome message screen will have a headline, a body, and a call-to-action (CTA) button. Let’s stick to the format this time.
Rules may differ according to your page layout and maybe the target user (some countries are used to longer sentences). But for English language, I try to not have more than one line for the headline, and maximum two line for the body copy.
An empty state is one of the best opportunity to show your app’s personality. And to do this, we’re gonna use what we’ve gained from the previous steps: include phrases that are relatable to the users, and speak in a voice that distinguish your app, making it recognizable. The consistency part can’t really be shown here since I’m writing for only one screen, but a clear voice would be super useful when we’re writing for a real app with let’s say hundreds of different screens.
The final results
Ta-da!
I got excited and come up with two versions.
You can see how in both of them, the previous research contributed to the headline and body copy ideas. And then of course a little word-play and choosing words that go smooth together help to make them sound nicer. One good way to test is by reading the text aloud yourself, see if it sounds natural or awkward instead.
While it’s tempting for me to go on and talk more about how I made word choice decisions and more, let’s leave the topic for another time, yea? This article has served its intended purpose and thus I sign off 👋😀
Credit goes to Freepik for the images and icons used in the prototypes, and to UX Writing Hub for providing the project brief (including guidelines)!
Apart from scrolling through my Claps, I’d highly recommend this brilliant article by Andrea Drugay for anyone who wants to start learning more about UX writing:
What’s the difference between UX writing and content strategy?
And this article by Galih Pambudi will give you a glimpse of how UX writing is involved in a real-life app redesign:
Design with love: the creative process behind GOJEK redesign — A UX writing case study
