Content Designing for Product Designers

Rishi Sharma at UXDX Community: Research & Content Design for Product Teams. Video: https://youtu.be/k4yUHpOZZk8

Readable transcript: edited from the recording's captions for readability (fillers and false starts removed, punctuation and section headings added). Wording is the speaker's own. Timestamps are positions in the video. Names marked [?] could not be verified against the audio.

How I got into content design

[00:00:00] Hey guys, we are going to talk about content design for product designers. I think content is one of the most important parts of UX design, because what I believe is that design alone cannot serve the purpose, cannot solve all the problems of your users.

[00:00:19] This is me. I've got around eight years of experience working as a content designer in multiple industries, and I've got some certifications and qualifications.

[00:00:36] If I have to start with my story, how I got into UX: back in 2015, it was the month of May, I was having a cup of tea with my colleagues. I was working there as a technical writer and I was documenting an API, and at that very moment I saw one of the pull requests that was fetching content that literally said: my Lord, we are so sorry, we could not find the record that you're searching for.

[00:01:07] I think this was the moment that ignited the fire of designing content from the perspective of UX for the end users. I just spoke to my manager and yeah, I somehow got into UX content writing. This is how I started.

[00:01:29] This is our agenda. We are going to talk about the introduction to content design, and we'll talk about voice and tone, and along with that we will take some more subjects.

What content design is, and voice and tone

[00:01:42] So what actually is content design? People mistake content design for UX writing, which is not actually wrong, but content design is a very vast topic. It is not concerned only with UX writing. It's a complete process that starts from scratch, from planning, creating, managing, brainstorming, ideating. You have to do a lot of things before you send your content to the final design. Whereas UX writing is just a subset of content design.

[00:02:21] In layman's language I can say, in content design you get to choose your own component. How you are going to showcase or display your message to your users, it is you as a content designer who decides which component to use, how you are going to express that text, how it is going to be showcased to the user. Whereas in UX writing the product designer provides you with a space, with a limited space, with a component, and asks you to fill that with the necessary information, the text that they want on that screen.

[00:03:00] Now what's more important in designing content is voice and tone. I think this is one of the most popular subjects that people ask about.

[00:03:15] Voice and tone is how you represent your brand to your users. It is your verbal identity, it's your ownable content. It's an ownable verbal content that is consistent across all the channels, whether it's your product, it's your LinkedIn, your Facebook, any other social media channel. Your voice remains the same.

[00:03:42] Because how do you want your users to recognize you? If your brand was a person, how would you recognize that it's them? It's how the person walks, it's how they speak. However, the tone can be manipulated. You can choose the way you express your emotions, the way you want to convey your message. So tone is very selective, you can choose how you want to express your feelings.

[00:04:13] I think it is clear: voice is, if you are a brand, how you want your brand to be recognized, and tone is how you are going to express, how you want to convey that message. If I have to convey a message to a person, I need to make sure that I am aware of the purpose that I'm expressing that information to them for, what is my vision, why I am expressing that emotion or expressing that text to them. This is how you can set your tone.

Style guides

[00:04:55] Style guides, we can see, are the protocols. These are the set of rules that you need to take care of while writing content. It's how you present your content, and you keep them consistent across all the channels, all the screens, all the frames on Figma or whatever the tool that you use.

[00:05:23] There are certain benefits of using style guides. First is definitely you get consistency. However, you just need to make sure that you are following just one style guide, not more than one, because every style guide has some set of rules which may be different for a specific subject. The proper nouns, pronouns may be different in multiple style guides.

[00:05:49] So first of all you just need to pick one style guide for your brand and stick to the rules that are described in it. You can set your brand voice using that style guide, and you can improve the readability and you can improve the way you convey your messages.

[00:06:09] And above all, using a style guide for designing content brings professionalism to your design. This is how you set your brand apart from your competitors. If you have got certain words that are written in a specific form across all the channels, all the screens, this is how you recognize professionalism. It shows how dedicated you are and how much importance you provide to such things.

[00:06:45] Here are some of the most popular style guides that you can refer to. I personally have used the AP Stylebook and the Chicago Manual of Style. I am not sure how good you may find them, but yeah, they are worthwhile. You can certainly spend some time and design content using them.

Write for humans, and be careful with acronyms

[00:07:09] Now we can talk about some of the best practices when it comes to content designing, because I think this is what we are here for. First of all we just need to make sure that whatever content is there, it is designed and written for humans. We may be writing content using a machine and maybe for computer software, but we need to make sure, we need to remember, that our users are human. And that is why we need to keep our tone, we need to keep our language conversational, clear, and it has to be transparent. You must not make false promises and you should refrain from showing any false data.

[00:07:55] Acronyms. I think most of us have been using acronyms anywhere and everywhere. We can use them, but it is always better to use only the acronyms that are related to your industry. They have to be standardized. And you need to spare them, do not try acronyms everywhere on your design, otherwise it will look a little unprofessional.

[00:08:25] Along with that, it may impact your design as well. No matter how much effort you have put in to solve a problem of the user, using acronyms every now and then makes the user frustrated. So I'd say you need to be very careful while using acronyms.

[00:08:44] Active voice. Whether you're designing your content or you're designing your product, I think whenever you search over the internet how to design content for UX, this is the first rule that comes in: use active voice. Why? Because this is how you make your language conversational with your users. Avoiding passive voice actually makes it conversational automatically. You are referring to your users directly. This is how you create a bond with your user. So always use active voice of speech.

Ampersands, Oxford commas and casing

[00:09:27] Using ampersands. I think many of us are already using the ampersand interchangeably with the word and, which I believe is not a very good practice. Because see, this is just a symbol, it actually doesn't stand for and. You can certainly use it if there's brevity that you're looking for, if you need to save some space. You can use it in your content writing, or writing titles for your blogs and articles. But in a product it is always better to refrain from using an ampersand, because if there are some developers using your product, or if some developers are even developing your product, this ampersand may confuse them, because this is also used in some coding languages as an operator.

[00:10:30] Oxford comma. I think this is a very new topic that has come up in the English language. Oxford University and their researchers[?] introduced this Oxford comma. Whenever you are introducing three or more subjects or objects, you need to include an Oxford comma after the second one as well, right before the word and. So if you need to introduce one, two, three, you say one comma two comma and three. It is for better clarity and it definitely makes your content less ambiguous.

[00:11:16] Casing. I think this is where most of the folks face problems. The only problem that we face with casing is that we do not keep it consistent. You need to pick one way, whether you want to use title case, sentence case. If you're a developer you can use snake case, camel case, whatever. But you can define your brand, you can define the voice and tone, and define the casing as well: how are you going to showcase the text. And keep it consistent.

[00:11:58] If you have to take my advice, I would always suggest to go with sentence case, because it looks more professional and it improves the readability for the user as well. However, using all caps is always not recommended. Because imagine you are reading a piece of content and there comes some special text that is all capital. It gives us an impression of yelling and shouting at the user, which I think is all against the principles of UX. So always avoid capital letters, all caps, in your writing.

Jargon, pronouns and grammar

[00:12:46] Jargon. Jargon and terminologies are two different things, and you need to understand and identify what are all the jargon terms that you can use across your product. There may be some terminologies that may come up as jargon, but in your industry, in the domain that you're working in, they may be very well addressed and very well understandable by the users. So if there are some jargon terms that need an explanation, please provide them. Either you send the user to your community article, or just give a brief introduction to the word that you're talking about right below that jargon.

[00:13:35] Pronouns. I think it's 2023 and we all have gone through gender equality, there are some movements as well, so we need to introduce that to our designs as well. If you're not sure whom you're referring to, which I think in most of the cases you would not know which gender is actually using your content, it is always better to use some generic pronouns like they and them instead of he or she. It's a more professional approach to reaching out to your users.

[00:14:21] Another thing is to address your users in the second person point of view. Instead of saying username needs to click on it, say you need to click on this link. Address your user as you. Keep it conversational, keep it two-way, don't make it sound robotic. You're not a robot and you are not talking to a robot as well. So keep your content in the second person.

[00:14:52] Grammar, absolutely. It can definitely break or make your brand. This is how you showcase to your users how deliberately you are working towards your designs. This is how you show your professionalism. If I've received an email and the grammar is broken, I understand that it's either a scam or a spam email. No matter how personalized that email looks, if the grammar is broken I understand that whoever the person was, however great the email is designed, there is something fishy. Same goes with product design as well. If the content that goes live is not good with grammar it can definitely break the trust of your users, and the thread of professionalism may break.

Error messages, competitors, cursing and humor

[00:15:52] Error messages. I think this is one of the most used components in every design. People do face some issues, there are some 404s, there are some instances where you cannot pull that record that your user is searching for. One of the best practices in designing error messages is to never blame your user. You need to empathize with them. Put yourself in the place of the user and think, if that error would have come to you, how would you reflect on it?

[00:16:26] How are you going to do that is: that error message should not sound like invalid command, or you have put in the wrong information. Instead what you can do is you can create a constructive error message that not only conveys what actually has gone wrong but also suggests a way using which the user can resolve that issue. So it's a two-way path. When the user knows what's gone wrong and how they can fix it, I think the purpose of the error message is solved. The user gets what they want.

[00:17:16] Competitors. I've seen in many designs where product designers are actually using competitors' names everywhere, whether it's a comparison of features or anything, they are using it very boldly, which I think, and even legally, is not a good practice. So keep it for the comparison of prices, but you can also use it for features as well. Just do not keep naming your competitor every now and then under your designs or any other content.

[00:17:55] PG-13 version. I think cursing is not literally cursing. When we try to go conversational with our users it's always good to show our emotions, and how we do that is we come up with some selective words. It is not advised to do it all the time, but yeah, at some places, in certain products. These PG-13 curses cannot be used in enterprise software, I'm talking only about the B2C product line. PG-13 is parental guidance for pre-teens. The government or some industry has recognized these terms, so there are some terms that come under this category that can be used in your product design while designing content, just to keep your message conversational and not look robotic. One of the examples is damn, hell. So yeah, you can use some of them, but it is very subjective. Only use it if you have to.

[00:19:24] Humor. I would say you need to be very careful with humor. Take it as a professional way of, how would you react or how do you behave at your workplace? You need to behave the same way even while designing content. A deadpan humor is all good, you can certainly do it, but make sure that your humor is not hurting your users, it is not impacting their self-respect or their own image.

Accessibility

[00:20:09] Accessibility. I think this is the area where we have to address all the people. Accessibility is keeping your content for everyone, not for a specific group of people but for everyone. There are some best practices, although it is a very, very big topic. It would require another session if we really want to talk about it, but in the interest of time these are some takeaways.

[00:20:40] Instead of writing click here and providing the link with the here, you can write a descriptive link text. That link text must include what and where that link is heading towards. This is how you introduce accessibility in your content. The same way, if there's an image and the person is visually impaired, you can add in some alt text, so that if the person clicks on that or if the person wants to know what that image is all about, your alt text, the alternate text, must be able to define what that image represents.

Psychology in content: fiero, cognitive ease, decoy and priming

[00:21:30] Now here comes the very interesting part of content. There are some psychologies that you can include in your content. One is fiero. Fiero is a feeling when you accomplish something or when you overcome something, so the pride, that feeling, I would say that satisfaction of the triumph that comes to a user. Congratulations, well done: you can include these words, and that is going to be very appealing for your users.

[00:22:15] Cognitive ease. You can take it as just the opposite of cognitive load. Cognitive ease is when your user doesn't have to pay much attention to what is written. Keep your content straight and concise. When your content is brief, it delivers what it wants, it is solved, your user doesn't have to pay much attention to it.

[00:22:45] Decoy strategy. I think everyone must have been through these situations where you have to choose one of these popcorn buckets. When you provide your users with multiple options, this is when they feel more comfortable in selecting one option. So instead of two, you can provide them with three options, wherein the difference between the second and third option is very small. So you know when and how to use that psychology.

[00:23:23] Priming. Priming is when you want your users to know what's coming for them. If I want my users to buy a cup of coffee, I will have an advertisement run in the background so that they have this image of coffee, and then they're going to go and grab it. So this is priming, and you must have heard people saying I was primed by this and this company. What you can do, how you include priming, is if there's a CTA you can include some visual thing, or maybe an arrow that says start, and then there's an arrow that goes this way. It means the user understands, okay, when I click on this start I'm going to get to the other screen, I'm going to lose that screen that I'm on right now.

Framing, the moment of yes, and divestiture aversion

[00:24:22] Framing. Framing is very important, because how you are going to frame your content is very important and this is the foundation of the success of your product. What you can do, there are multiple ways to use it. If you want to sell some sugar, you're going to call it zero fat or zero percent fat, but you are not letting your users know that it is full of carbohydrates. Framing is vastly used in the advertisement domain, but you can use it for positive impact. It is very important that you do not misuse any of the content psychologies.

[00:25:18] Moment of yes. In case you want your users to click on yes, and there is some legal constraint that you have to take permission from your user, maybe you want them to subscribe to your newsletter, then the moment of yes, what you can do is you can ask multiple questions for which the user is going to give yes as an answer, and amid those questions you can put in your question, would you like to subscribe to our newsletter, and there are higher chances that they are going to say yes to that. This is the moment of yes.

[00:25:58] Slothing[?]. I don't know how you are going to introduce it to your content, because it is very subjective and may not apply to all the domains. But slothing can be used this way: instead of putting multiple options, you can have just one option available for your users. If I have to put it that way, suppose there are multiple examples that you need to choose from, just give them one example that is more relatable to your users.

[00:26:51] Another psychology is reason for request. What you can do is you need to provide some reason when you're asking for any permission or you're requesting something from your users. This is also called the power of because. When you are informing your users why you need certain information or certain permission, they are more likely to grant that to you.

[00:27:18] Divestiture aversion. I think this is the best part of human psychology. Whatever you have, whatever is there in your possession, you're always going to value it. How are you going to use it with your content design is, take an example of Netflix premium membership. Once you have it, you are less likely to leave it. So you can frame your content according to the benefits that you're providing to your users and that's going to be very helpful.

Institutionalizing content design

[00:27:57] Now we can talk about some institutionalization, I'll not take much of your time with that. How are you going to practice these content things to improve your content is: you can create a content culture at your workplace, let others be involved in framing those sentences that you're looking forward to. Or you can onboard a specialist, you can have a content designer onboard, hire a content designer.

[00:28:29] Then what you can do is you can do a competitor analysis according to the content, whatever content that they are providing, and you can just take a list of the jargon, the standard industry terms that you want to include.

[00:28:46] After that you can design your own content. Why I'm saying that is because there are times when developers are working on something and they just end up including one or two pop-up messages or some soft errors, and they skip reaching out to the designers for the content and they write it on their own, which I think breaks the bridge. So design your own content.

[00:29:18] At last, you can create a content community or a Slack channel with any fancy name, the content game or the content shorteners[?], and you can challenge your co-workers, provide them with a scenario, with the persona, and let them come up with some great ideas. Pick one of them, if you want you can just polish it and place it up into your component.

[00:29:47] Well, that was all about it. You can reach out to me if you have any questions. This is my LinkedIn profile, I'm always available. And yep, we can open up for questions.

Q&A

[00:30:02] Host: Excellent, thank you Rishi. That was a very detailed and in-depth covering of all of the different elements of a style guide, so thank you for sharing.

[00:30:13] Rishi: Thanks.

[00:30:14] Host: We have run a little bit over time, but we have one question coming from Natalia[?], who said sorry, I missed the bit about competitor names, please repeat if you can. So if you can just give a quick recap of that, that would be great.

[00:30:24] Rishi: What happens is, whenever you are comparing your competitors you keep on taking their names. It is always recommended that you do not directly call out the names of your competitors. Instead you can take a very indirect approach, you can say this is my brand and this is other brands. Do not name it out, do not call their names. It is not advised and it is against legal practices as well.

[00:30:55] Host: Yeah, I've seen places that say the leading cola in the market, and we all pretty much know who the leading cola in the market is. Exactly the same way. Excellent, well thank you very much Rishi, I really enjoyed it and I hope everybody else did too.

[00:31:13] Rishi: Thanks a lot, thanks for having me.