Why writing is important for UX designers
Many would assume that writing is unrelated or not important to a UX designers role, but as well said by Scott Kubie in his book Writing for Designers, words are one of the most powerful design materials in our toolkit. Choosing words and writing what appears in an interface forces us, the designer, to name components, articulate choices, and explain things to the user in a meaningful way beyond the visual aspects of our design.
Words are everywhere. You will find them in error messages and recovery flows, confirmation screens, user-visible metadata, support documentation, feature descriptions and marketing copy, just to name a few. Our choice of words within these design elements can determine whether or not a user will understand or even enjoy interacting with what we’ve created. Writing reinforces how you want users to think and feel about your design and helps explain the approach, guide users through complex processes, and help support storytelling in our designs.
Here are 3 general categories of writing that you might use to support design work..
Microcopy
This is the critical text that’s deeply integrated within our interfaces such as text on buttons, navigation labels, error messages, etc. This is often made up of single words or short phrases and considering the interface would “break” or be very hard to use if you removed this text, its important designers have the skills to be brief with their word choices without compromising accuracy or clarity. This can easily make or break the usability of an app or website.
Product copy
This is essentially writing that’s integral to the function of the website, app, or product experience such as descriptions of an update to an app found in a changelog, or detailed product descriptions. This content is focused on helping and supporting the reader, and when written in a simplistic yet intriguing way, it provides meaningful context for readers.
Marketing Copy
This is writing that is primarily filling a sales role, and is focused on persuading the reader. At this stage of the design, it’s a good idea to incorporate pathos, lathos, and ethos into your writing. This can influence your readers thoughts, change their minds, and change how they see things which is a powerful tool every designer should take advantage of (ethically, of course). Ethos will convince your users by incorporating trust. If your reader doesn’t trust you, your argument isn’t going to be too convincing. Ethos relies on your reputation, you’ll find design examples of this in brand values and mission statements, and by providing proof that your product or app is going to bring value to your users. Pathos convinces by appealing to emotion. Through your writing, the best way to persuade a reader is by relying on your human responses such as humour, sadness, love and anger, to reflect theirs. Review your user research to help draw these personal conclusions of your ideal reader. Logos convinces by appealing to logic. Including fact-based claims and statistics or graphs when possible works well on many people, and can easily be the reason a users mind changes in your favour while simultaneously establishing trust (Ilyin 2019).
Take Away
As UX designers, our job is to design for our users which means writing for our users as well! It’s important to use familiar jargon, establish trust, as well as appeal to the thoughts and emotions relevant to the target audience. Great writing won’t instantly result in amazing designs, but it will definitely contribute to the usability and quality of the design. To become a better writer, all you have to do is start practising! I can guarantee you will produce more effective work, and develop an a new style of communicating.
References
Ilyin, N. (2019). Writing for the Design Mind. New York: Bloomsbury Visual Arts.
Kubie, S. (2018). Writing for designers. New York, NY: A Book Apart.
