The Power of Words: Why Writing is Designing too Morgenbooster
26 de Mar de 2023•0 gostou
0 gostaram
Seja o primeiro a gostar disto
mostrar mais
•68 visualizações
visualizações
Vistos totais
0
No Slideshare
0
De incorporações
0
Número de incorporações
0
Baixar para ler offline
Denunciar
Design
Do you have a digital service, website or app? Then you probably need a UX writer. Find out how UX writing can tie together value proposition and user experience.
Kai Haley
“Words are pretty awesome, pretty important,
really crucial components in designing
experiences and engaging with your audience.
This makes UX content strategy and UX writing a
powerful tool for shaping products and potentially
shaping our future.”
• Names for apps, features, filters
and tools
• User flows
• Prototypes and wireframes
• Research, user interviews etc …
• Microcopy for apps and websites, CTAs,
empty states, 404s, error messages, push
notifications … you name it!
• Style guides and content standards
• Value propositions and messages
• Onboarding processes
UX writers design
user experiences:
• It’s easier for UX designers to design with
real copy and content.
• It speeds up the process.
• It’s possible to evaluate text and design
together early on and adjust accordingly.
• It’s possible to adjust the timeframe and the
budget (to have the time and money to
create an amazing experience).
Having a UX writer
on the team means:
• The way a product communicates with the
user.
• Answers the user’s questions, gives them
feedback, comfort, guidance,
encouragement and much more.
• If you get it wrong, or pay no attention to it
at all, it rubs the user in all the wrong
ways.
Microcopy
• Google found that users are 62% less likely
to purchase from a brand because of a
negative user experience.
• PwC found that 32% of customers say they
would leave even a favourite brand after
just one bad experience.
• Research carried out by Toptal shows that
88% of users are less likely to return to a
website with bad UX.
The cost of bad UX
• The design of a checkout flow can make or
break the user experience.
• Never force shoppers to register.
• By changing the button copy from Register
to Continue, the number of purchasing
customers increased by 45%.
• The extra purchases resulted in an extra
$15 million the first month.
• The annual revenue increased by
$300 million.
One tiny button can make
a huge difference
“Everyone building products has the
responsibility to prioritize inclusion.
Writing the language inside products is
an extremely powerful way to do so.”
♥️ What is the endless game we were born to play?
🤦 What is our long term vision of the future, right now?
♟ How do we intend to realise our vision on the short term?
What specific areas do we focus on?
🎯 What specific areas do we focus on?
🎯
🤦
🤦
✅
🚫
💡
🤦
🤦
🚫
🚫
✅
🤦
🤦
💡
💡
💡
What does the user experience today? What does the user experience today? What does the user experience today?
Aspiration state
What does the user aspire to experience?
Aspiration state
What does the user aspire to experience?
Aspiration state
What does the user aspire to experience?
Initiative
Solution A
Initiative
Solution B
Initiative
Solution C
Initiative
Solution A
Initiative
Solution B
Initiative
Solution C
Initiative
Solution A
Initiative
Solution B
Initiative
Solution C
THOUGHTS AND PERSPECTIVES
DEEPER UNDERSTANDING + NEW PERSPECTIVES
QUESTIONS ARE WELCOME
Good morning, everybody, great to see so many people here today. My name is Jonas, this is Emmy and we're looking forward to sharing some thoughts and perspectives on UX writing with you this morning. Hopefully, you'll walk away from the session with a deeper understanding of what UX writing is and can be - and maybe even new perspectives on how to work with words in your everyday operations. Before we get started, just a short introduction to me and Emmy...
USER INSIGHTS AND USER-CENTRIC SOLUTIONS
LOVE AND ATTENTION FOR WORDS AND COMM
I'm a UX Designer/UX Writer here at 1508. I started out as a copywriter some 10 years ago, but gradually got more interested in the field of UX design, specifically working with user insights, and creating user-centric solutions based on actual needs. My love for words and communication has never faded though, making the UX writer role a great fit for me - and fortunately, for my clients as well.
This quote comes from a great talk about the role of words and language in design. (It’s on Youtube, go check it out!) It really highlights the importance of words when designing user experiences – and how words and design are equally important for a great result.
You might ask yourselves: Why is communication important to design? Well, interfaces are all about communicating with the user.
Everywhere we go in digital interfaces, we have interactions, and the words in those interactions can make or break the user experience. So I want you to think of an interface LIKE A CONVERSATION (where everything you say matters).
By using the right words in our interface, we help our user achieve their goals. So, we should invest as much time, love and attention to designing the words, as everything else in the interface.
UX Writer is a fairly new title and whenever you have ”writer” in your title, people often assume that all you do is write, when it’s actually just the end result of all your hard work.
To complicate it even more, UX Writer isn’t the only title for my job: Content Designer, Content Strategist, UX Copywriter or Product Writer…
The title isn’t the most important part, but to recognize that the UX writer’s a crucial part of designing the user experience. That’s also why the UX writer should be on the team from the very beginning.
”Novelists think a lot about the kinds of people who read their books. About how long they want their book to be, the plot points they wanna cover, the characters and how they interact and react. For novelists – as for UX writers – writing is the last step of the process.”Quote by Hazel Jennings – Content Strategist, Instagram (from "Applying Kurt Vonnegut's 8 Rules For writing to User Experience")
So yeah, it all starts with research: about the people who use, will use or should use your product or service. It’s about understanding the target group/s, the challenges and the flow. Once you’ve done that, it’s time to start creating the so-called proto-content – it’s not final copy, but not lorem ipsum either. Kind of like a design draft.Lorem ipsum is the devil really, because when we use it, we can’t judge the words together with the design. But more on that later.
The reason why research is so important, is that without it, all we do will just be based on assumptions instead of real data.
UX Writers make sure that all text follows a brand’s voice and tone in each given situation. Just like graphic guidelines or brand platforms, voice-and tone-manuals and style guides exist for this very reason.
SO. THERE’S A LOT OF…
SKILLS AND RESPONSIBILITY AREAS
UX WRITER VS COPYWRITER – MINDSET AND METHODS
So. Theres a lot of skills and responsibility areas that typically might differentiate a UX writer from a copywriter. But as we see it, mindset and methods are just as important.
WE USE DESIGN THINKING….
EXPLORE IDEAS, CONCEPTS, TESTING
SPLITTESTING, NARROWLY DEFINED MESSAGES, EARLY USER TESTING IS TESTING COMMUNICATIVE STRATEGIES
INNOCOUS OR WELL-INTENDED CAN BE ESTRANGING
We use design thinking methods for exploring ideas and concepts, but essentially also for user testing.
Value propopsition and copy testing often comes down to splittesting of narrowly defined messages, but involving users early in the process through prototype testing, and letting them guide our decissions, is also applicable to testing communicative strategies.
Something that might seem innocuous or well-intended in the prototype, might come off as offensive or estranging to some users – which obviously is essential to find out sooner rather than later.
AS A UX WRITER…SAME TOOLS, BECAUSE SERVICES CHANGE, FLOWS CHANGE, REQUIREMENTS CHANGE
ENERGY SECTOR, TARGETS, MESSAGES, BACKGROUND KNOWLEDGE CHANGES
FIGMA –DOCUMENT PERSONALISED FLOWS, COLLABORATE ON TANGIBLE
SPECIFIC CONTEXT, STORRYTELLING. SEE WHAT USER SEES, NOT WORD
BRINGS US TO HAVING A UX WRITER ON THE TEAM
As a UX Writer you need to work in design tools – preferably the same as visual counterparts – because services change, flows change, requirements change, while we’re developing new products.
For instance, this is from a current work with a client from the energy sector, where obviously the targets, the messages, the assumed level of background knowledge the end user posseses, changes rapidly as the months go by.
This is from Figma, where we can easily document different flows, including different personalised versions of the same pages or modules. It allows us to collaborate with colleagues – be it in-house designers or clientside stakeholders – around something tangible.
This allows us to design for specific contexts, also from a storyteling point of view. We need to see what the user will see, to design the best experience. Word templates for content production just doesn’t offer the same level of alignment with what ultimately comes out.
Frankly, we should’t talk design without mentioning content. Judging a brilliant new design with no content/lorem ipsum or the old, outdated content will be like judging a prototype like it was a finished product.
So, what are the advantages of involving a UX writer early on?Punkt 3. instead of designers having to create new designs just because the content calls for it
Microcopy is all the short little text snippets you find on websites and in apps. It could be call to actions, buttons, headlines, hints/explainers, empty state-messages in between different steps of a flow, 404s or other error messages, push notifications…you name it!
1. How a product communicates with the user = super important!3. This tells the user that we can’t or don’t want to help – or that we simply don’t care. Imagine what that does to the customer experience.
By using the right words in our interface, we help our user achieve their goals – i.e. the whole reason they’re using your product.
The right words make it easier for people to do right and therefore increases the conversion rate.This is an example from Google. They realised that maybe the users weren’t ready to book a hotel room here and now, but just wanted to check which dates where available (to find great deals/the best price).
This little microcopy tweak made hotel search on Google increase by 17% = 💰 💰 💰
So it’s all about meeting the user where they are at in their mindset.
People do read on the Internet, even if some claim they don’t. I would like you all to try and imagine a digital product with zero words. Who knows, you could accidentally buy 10,000 pairs of sneakers or delete an entire database of critical health information! No biggie, right?
A great way to illustrate the importance of words in an interface is to simply remove them from a screen. Imagine going to a website and be met by this:
Without any guiding text, it’s all pretty confusing, right? You might recognize this as the Airbnb interface bc it’s well-known, but without the words, would you know how to navigate it? And if an error occured, would you know how to solve it?
Some golden rules of good UX copy: Human, friendly, guiding and simple
Now, let’s look at some examples of good and bad UX writing!
• Help the user – they should be able to quickly scan the message and understand what they’re supposed to do
• Be consistent: use the same words to avoid confusion. When the button is consistent with the title, it drives more user action. • Match the verb in your headline. If you use "Cancel" in your headline, use "Cancel" in your button copy, rather than "End". Consistency helps keep the message clear. • Options should be clear and distinct. Each option should be distinctly different and there should be no opportunity to mix them up.
• Add context to reaffirm the action. Instead of just "Yes," use "Yes, cancel.”
Use clear, understandable language
A good user experience means using words the user understands, and takes action on. Unfortunately, highly specialized applications often fall into the trap of using highly technical jargon.
Even if a user understands, or can make sense of the terminology, highly technical language can lead to user-error and costly mistakes.
Let's take a closer look at the copy in the example at the bottom: ”There is an IP address conflict with another system on the network”. Some serious Microsoft poetry, right? The average user is not going to know what that means, and there’s no information whatsoever on how to resolve the issue. The result? Frustration!!
As a general rule, always avoid BIG TECHNICAL WORDS.
In general, it takes a few steps to make a purchase or sign up for a subscription.
But many apps and websites use the same CTA:s at each step, like Continue rather than Confirm or Place your order. This may actually cause higher refund rates, since not all users realize that the word Continue or Next means that they will be billed as soon as they click the button.Yes, the initial conversion rate may be higher because it's misleading, but the refund rate and % of angry customers will counteract the cash. This is true for bad CTA buttons at any step of a flow. If the next thing that happens doesn't match what the call-to-action says, the user will be confused, and confusion equals unhappy users.
Feedback and errors: some general rules
Even if the user caused the error, avoid language that blames them. "You entered an invalid username" assigns blame. Try an alternative like, "We couldn't find an account with that username.”
Avoid negative language and user blaming to soften the blow of the error experience. This includes using the words "error" or "failure". Nobody likes an error message and seeing the words ERROR or FAILURE can be jarring. So try to avoid using them. Focus on what went wrong and how to solve it, rather than the fact that an error occurred.
Effective feedback means being constructive. To be constructive is to be useful, which is one of the main pillars of microcopy.So, instead of just saying ”You can’t log in”, you can provide a reason – ”You can’t log in because your password was incorrect. Please try again or recover your password.”
Language, tone and design all play important parts here. Provide a clear and understandable reason for an error (where possible), and give instructions on how to solve the problem. Colour is also a great way of indicating the severity of an error or warning.It’s also important to think of the positioning and context of error messages. In the right example, the error could apply to any of the fields, or to nothing at all.
In the left example, the correlation is clear as the troubled field is highlighted in the same error colour to indicate that the message is referring to it. The message is also positioned directly below the field.
GOOD AND BAD COPY…
AUTOMATED PROPOSITIONS
RECOMMENDATION SYSTEMS
Good and bad copy is also essential, working with automated propositions.
We’ve used UX of AI as an inspiration for working purposefully with AI, for instance different recommendation systems based on user behavior or supplied data.
CATERED TO THEIR NEEDS + VALUE - SCARCE DATA – NOT OVERSELL RECOMMENDATIONS,TONE DOWN
At UX of AI, they empasize the importance of striking the right balance between 1) Setting the right expectations and 2) Degrading gracefully.
On the one hand, you probably want to make the user aware, that what they see is specifically catered to their needs – and presumably experienced as something of value.
On the other hand, and equally important, you also want to degrade gracefully – when data is scarce or borderline non-existing, you don’t want to oversell your recommendations, but probably not be too generic either.
QUESTION ON VALUE PROPOSITION IN RELATION TO AUTOMATION
MAKING VARIATIONS TO ALGORITHM LOGICS
DEVIL IN DETAIL – KEY TO SUCCESS
Q: How many have worked with value propositions in relation to automation, recommendation systems and so on?
There’s an abyss between ”Handpicked for you” and ”Related content”.
Finding this balance, making variations according to algoritm logics, and sticking to an enriching brand experience is for the UX writer to solve. The devil is in the detail and could very well be key to the experienced value of your expensivily developed tool.
Demonstrate value – the way to keep businesses and users happySay we’re asking the user for information or wanting them to do something. That’s essentially stopping them from reaching their goals.As a user, you always ask yourself ”What’s in it for me?” So we need to show them what they get in return.
We always have to make sure to balance requests and benefits, by combining business objectives with user benefits.
…and next steps
While also trying to anticipate questions, doubts or fears the user might have.
Progress bars is a great way to ensure users know exactly where they are in the flow, like Netflix when you sign up for a subscription.
I really love this super clear way of ensuring the user that they won’t be charged yet and that they can cancel online anytime. No ambiguities there.
A scenario from a major e-commerce site1+2. Having filled their shopping cart with products they wanted to purchase from a major e-commerce site, users would press the Checkout button. Before they could enter their information to pay for the products, a form would prompt them to register for an account.
The intent behind the form was to enable repeat customers to purchase faster. First-time purchasers wouldn’t mind the extra effort of registering because, after all, they would come back for more and appreciate the expediency in subsequent purchases. Everybody wins, right?
Turned out they were SO wrong. Usability tests with people who needed to buy products from the site showed that first-time shoppers resented having to register when they encountered the page. As one shopper said: “I’m not here to enter into a relationship. I just want to buy something.”
Both test groups had trouble filling in the form correctly. First-time shoppers didn’t remember if it was their first time shopping at the site, and repeat customers didn’t remember their login information. In the end, the register form turned out to prevent sales – a lot of sales.Many users vocalized how the retailer only wanted their information to pester them with marketing messages they didn’t want.
The problem was easy to fix. The Register button was replaced by a Continue button together with a simple message: “You do not need to create an account to make purchases on our site. Simply click Continue to proceed to checkout. To make your future purchases even faster, you can create an account during checkout.”And now: let's steer into some troubled waters...
Deceptive design is when user interface patterns are designed to trick the user into making a choice they wouldn’t want to make. When the words in your product frustrate, shame, or manipulate people into taking actions they wouldn’t otherwise have taken, the user experience fails.
UX writers are responsible for making sure the language is clear, correct, and helpful. It should also be inclusive and accessible, and we’ve got an immensely important role in making sure it doesn’t unfairly manipulate the user. This is where we have to educate stakeholders and tell them why we shouldn’t take shortcuts to quick conversions, that’ll end up hurting both users AND the brand.Deceptive design often goes under the term ”dark patterns”, which is problematic. That’s also why I use the term ”deceptive design”.
There are many types of deceptive design. I thought I'd mention two of them: Confirm shaming and Price Comparison Prevention.
Don't you just love passive-aggressive pop-ups? It's not fun when someone tries to guilt you into things, so why suffer the same misery in microcopy? Unfortunately, this is just one of many examples of confirm shaming out there.So why do people still do this? The intent is usually to try and push or scare the user into changing their mind. In reality, it just alienates them further. Even if someone does convert out of shame, they probably won't stick around for long.
Some companies also confuse users by keeping information from them, particularly like-for-like prices. This makes it harder for users to compare prices and make an informed decision.
In this example for a grocery store, some apples are priced by weight and others by pack, making it hard to compare prices.
You may well ask yourselves “do we really need to hire someone to write Click Here on buttons?” Yes, you do (several reasons).
First of all, “click here” is not a good choice for a CTA, because it’s not specific. This makes it unclear for everyone, including people with screen readers who often use the screen reader to read out link CTAs on a page. “Click here” means that they have no idea where the link leads.
You could say this is the UX equivalent of the famous catch phrase from ”Mean Girls”: ”You can’t sit with us”. So yeah, don’t be Regina George.And, in fact, Accessibility is not only a so-called ”nice to have”. Official websites are required by law to follow the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), but from June 2025, this will also apply to private companies’ websites and e-commerce sites. So it’s really high time to get onboard.
This is an example from Adobe's Accessibility Guidelines.
A great Swedish example is the expression ”bensträckare” (benstraekker), when you can just use ”paus”=break. Try to always be mindful about the words you use.
By creating content that’s easy to read, you’re helping people with a wide variety of cognitive and neurological abilities. But you’re also helping people who might not have English, Swedish etc as their first language, people of many ages, and more.• Choose words consciously
• Write universally/avoid internal jargon (also complicates localization)
• Avoid colloquial language and slang
Quote from Adobe’s Accessiblity Guidelines.
It’s still very common to categorize people into only male and female – or even other. If you’re unsure about someone’s pronouns, use ”they”.Always consider if it’s really necessary to ask for a person’s gender. Even though data collection and forms are useful when building a product, it can feel intrusive to ask about gender.If you need this kind of information, make sure you allow for more open responses, and that users can choose not to answer.
A note on AI and machine learning: As a friendly reminder, it wasn’t until June 2018 that the WHO declassified being transgender as a mental illness. Athough we as humans are becoming more aware, it's important to take into consideration that machine learning and AI are not as adaptable. As AI is becoming more and more common, it’s important to teach AI that people identify with different genders and sexualities.
In technology industry jargon, it’s pretty common to throw around the terms ”guru” or ”ninja” (pretty common in job ads). Just like the terms ”sherpa” and ”spirit animal”, you should always be cautious of using appropriating terms from underrepresented groups.
It's also important to be aware that words that are often associated with physical and mental healthare used as metaphors to describe interactions and product functionality.
• Choose words carefully and understand historical significance: Be cautious of appropriating terms from marginalized communities.
With imagery and language, avoid implying that a person has to look a certain way, be a certain size, or have a certain cognitive ability to do something. Depict more types of people as typical.
• Be clear and avoid stereotypes: Be on the lookout for proxy questions and statements, which appeal to generalizations and stereotypes. For example, saying, “just buy more storage” is a proxy statement on economic status, while “view additional storage options” doesn’t make those assumptions.
There are also many examples of software terms that are derogative, such as blacklist/whitelist or master/slave.
Some final comments on how writing is - or can be - strategy too.
TIES UP WITH WHAT WE TALKED ABOUT.
OPPORTUNITIES AND PITFALLS
RIGHT MESSAGE, RIGHT TIME, RIGHT PEOPLE. USER-CENTRIC DESIGN APPROACH
THE SETUP: WRITING GUIDE, TONE OF VOICE, GLOSSARY
ON BRAND, RECOGNIZABILITY, POSITIONING
BUT ALSO MEANS TO DELIVER ON TACTICAL GOALS
UX Writing is a craft, dependant on knowledge about - and creative use - of language. Exploiting communicative opportunities and avoiding pittfalls, for instance not being inclusive, in how you present your product or service.
It is designing too, as delivering the right messages at the right time to the right people is a holistic approach to whatever digital product you're working on. And this requires a more user-centric design approach.
But it should also be a way - or a means - for executing your strategy, reaching your goals.
Perhaps you recognize the setup: You might have a writing guide as part of a brand platform, a tone-of-voice. Perhaps you have a glossary, which you use to create you messages.
Q: Anyone who HASN'T worked with this approach to copy?
It works to a certain degree, as it keeps your communication on-brand, in best case scenarios it adds to your brand's unique recognizability, it strengthens you brand positioning. Which is good.
But words - and the emotions they evoke - are also means to deliver on very specific tactical goals and we believe that they - the words - should form part of whatever strategic setup you have.
EXPLAIN – TIE A TO OPERATIONAL, TACTICAL APROACHES TO…
WHAT ARE WE TRYING TO SOLVE + HYPOTHESES, TEST
COMMUNICATIVE STRATEGIES IN SPECIFIC CONTEXTS
If you've been at any other of our Morgenboosters the last couple of years, there's a good chance you've heard about the Dynamic Roadmap.
How you tie your overall purpose, vision and strategy together with a more operational, tactical approach to focus areas, and how we move towards more desireable, aspirational states.
Key to this set-up is asking yourself what problem we’re really trying to solve and form hypotheses about it that we can test. And hopefully get to the aspirational state. And these initiatives can easily be a communicative strategy in very specific contexts.
In this way, UX writing can become an integrated part of strategy execution.
So, ChatGPT isn’t Google and it isn’t Alexa, but it also isn’t a human that you are giving instructions to. It is a machine you are programming with words, which is sometimes easy to forget.
• Many still think it’s easy to produce good AI-written material. But getting an AI to produce meaningful content requires both topic expertise and skill. Minimum effort prompts = low quality results.• Don’t trust anything it says. For any number or fact, assume it’s wrong unless you already know the answer or can cross-check it. Remember: it knows language, but lacks knowledge.
• You are writing a prompt, not having a conversation: the more you use AI, the more you realize that you need to spend time doing “prompt engineering”, meaning that you continue editing and playing with prompts to come up with the results you want. These prompts can get very elaborate, and can often seem abstract, or almost poetic. We can look at prompts like the program the AI is following, where the goal is to generate f.ex. a great image through trial-and-error and pushing the AI in the direction you want.
• Even if AI is creative, it’s unlikely that ChatGPT will generate your next great idea alone, because, no matter how well it scores on the RAT test, it isn’t really creative in the way a human is. But, by providing you with fluency, variance, and momentum, it can be a critical partner when you need to solve your own problems.
• The same goes for UX writing. Perhaps ChatGPT can come up with some great error messages, headlines, or CTA copy, but it can’t decide what information should be presented to users and when, which is arguably the most important aspect of the job. That’s something only a human UX writer can do. Decision-making is a profoundly human thing.
Yet, AI might be able to help us brainstorm. So, it’s all about humans and machines working together. I think we should embrace it.
The relationship between AI and human writers is not a zero-sum game. AI is only recycled data and statistics, which means in its current form, it can’t replace thinking humans—it can’t solve the problems of the future, because it can’t conceptualize it. Like any other shiny new toy, AI is ultimately a mirror, and it will reflect back exactly who we are – from the best of us, to the worst of us.
But yeah, we can use AI to be more productive in many ways. It can be our not-so-secret sidekick to help us with our current problems.
At this point, I don’t think the main question is whether AI will replace us or not. But I do think it'll make us better at what we do, since it forces us all to improve. What do you think?