Let's talk about UX Writing

Yuval Keshtcher at UXDX Community: UX writing, UX in Construction and Product Values. Video: https://youtu.be/YLnbhTGVeyE

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.

Writing is designing

[00:00:00] My name is Yuval. I am the founder of the UX Writing Hub, host of the Writers in Tech podcast, and I've been working as a UX writer as well, and as a UX writing project manager, for the past few years, in addition to being a UX writing educator. I've had a chance to implement this methodology in many different companies around the world, and today I will tell you all about it.

[00:00:26] As a few of you might know, better design means better business. So the better our design is going to be, the better our business is going to be. And not many people know about it, but writing is designing. So writing is designing, so the better design you're going to have, the better business you're going to have. Equals: the better writing you're going to have, the better business you're going to have. That's more or less about it.

The Hawaii missile alert

[00:00:52] So let me share with you just this case study. In 2018 every person in Hawaii got this alert to their pocket, to their mobile devices. It says, emergency alert, ballistic missile threat inbound to Hawaii, seek immediate shelter, this is not a drill. And many, many people got this notification to their mobile device.

[00:01:14] People didn't understand why it happened. Everybody was frightened[?], everybody actually went to shelter, and it cost a lot of money, because millions of people thought that they were under attack, which was not true, it was a false alarm. And there was a reason. What made this alarm happen is, there's a story behind it.

[00:01:43] So the story is — oh, hey. "I'm starting to study UX and the area is most interesting, so excited." Awesome, that's great, Brenda.

[00:01:56] So basically, people should not have got this message. The reason that they got this message is because of a human error, and the human error that happened was this one. Basically there is a guy that is in charge of doing all of the drill exercises and the system of the missile alerts, in a way, and its user interface. And while he was supposed to press this button, the drill button, "drill PACOM[?] state only", he actually pressed this button, "state only". It looks slightly similar. So because of the word drill and the way that it was designed, which was not really designed, he pressed the wrong button, and that's how he launched this emergency alert. Everybody got it into their pocket, created a huge clusterstorm, and it wasn't that ideal.

[00:02:54] So we learn here that bad design, bad writing can really, really hurt your business and damage it. And it's not only about the fact that good writing will do good for a business, but bad writing and bad design will be bad for your business.

[00:03:08] So it's about that. This is an example by Google, you can check it in Google I/O 2017, a pretty awesome talk by the UX writers team at Google. And they said that they changed the text here from "book a room" to "check availability". That's it, they just changed the microcopy, and that changed a lot alone, increased the engagement of these clicks, of the amount of people that actually check the availability of Google Hotels in 2017. So it basically created better business for them, because it had better microcopy. So this is another example how better writing can be better for a business. This is an example by Google.

What a UX writer actually does

[00:03:48] So what does the UX writer actually do? This is a screen by Slack. I don't know if you're familiar with Slack, or if you use it in your daily job. Slack is a very famous app that many people use in their work to communicate, chat with each other and so on. So this is a notification you see when you're about to send a message and you're about to tag people on Slack, so it's about to notify them. So this is the notification.

[00:04:23] Now I want you to see the notification without writing. So without writing it doesn't say anything. This is lorem ipsum, it's dummy content, it's not real content, it doesn't mean anything. This is the exact same screen without the design, so you can see that you don't have any hierarchy, nothing is actually clear, so it doesn't make a lot of sense. It does make sense, but not a lot of sense.

[00:04:51] And this is the screen with the design and with the content, and you can see that when you take technology and you communicate it and design it in a good and positive way, you can actually end up creating a really positive user experience. The reason that the user experience of this screen is good is because it makes sure that people would not wake up in the middle of the night because of a Slack notification. It creates some kind of a friction. So this is a very good design and very good writing communicated in an interaction, in an app.

[00:05:22] So words matter, have a real impact on people and businesses. If there is one thing you need to take from this call today, it's that. And this is an example by Greta Van Der Ma[?], and this is a very common example for UX writers. So people think UX writing is easy, and designers say to the UX writer, hey, can you write this so it fits into two lines? And people really underestimate the value of UX writing.

[00:05:53] And just know that easy reading is hard writing. It takes time, it takes effort to create a positive user experience. You need to do a massive amount of research, you need to do user interviews, you need to analyze your users' conversations doing a methodology called conversation mining. We need to analyze the user, see how they talk to each other, and then communicate our app in the best possible way for them. Because easy reading is hard writing, it is very, very difficult to do this type of writing. But we're doing our best. So if any of you work as a designer, just know UX writing is not easy.

Whiskey: choosing one word

[00:06:33] Let me give you an example by a company that I had a chance to work with. So the name of that company is Whiskey[?]. Whiskey is an app to tell people to book ski trips, and we had a really big challenge in Whiskey. The problem that we had is that we had a dilemma, because we weren't sure how we should call the ski trip in the app. Should we call it a ski trip or a ski holiday? So we had to do a massive amount of research and we had to learn the UK market and the US market, and to see how people are used to saying this word, how they used to say a ski holiday or ski trip.

[00:07:22] And then when we decided that we will use the term ski trip, we had to implement the word trip all over the interface so it will be consistent, because we can't use the word ski holiday in one area and ski trip in another area. So just this small word, just picking one single word in your interface, in your product, might be fairly challenging, and might have very intensive impact on the business and on the user experience as well. Because if people will see ski holidays here and ski holidays there, and there's ski trips, they will be very confused. So we want to make sure we will avoid this confusion and we will make sure to create consistent language, so our user will get it, and at the end of the day it will be better for our business.

Copywriting versus UX writing: the bike store

[00:08:14] So what is a good UX writer like? Not many people understand the difference between copywriting and marketing and UX writing, so I want to take you to a trip right now. I want you to imagine that you're going to a bike store, and in the bike store you have a salesperson, a bike salesperson, and this person tries to explain to you why you should buy the bike. The bike person will tell you all of the features of the bike and why they're good, and how the pedals are working, and will show you the benefits of it so you will end up buying it.

[00:08:55] So a salesperson is practically a copywriter, because you need to sell. So if you will imagine that the bike store is not virtual, so the person that's trying to sell the bike will be the copywriter.

[00:09:10] But if we'll go into our bike learning experience, we'll have another type of person that will teach us basically how to use the bike, maybe an older sibling, maybe your father. But this person is not going to sell the features of the bike. This person will show us how to use this bike, will show us what will be the best practicalities of using these bikes, will guide us in every step of the way. And that person will be the UX writer.

[00:09:49] So the difference between copywriters and UX writers would be basically the type of approaches that you have when you communicate a digital product. The salesperson, the copywriter, will focus on the benefits, they will try to make a hard sale. And the UX writer, also the older sibling, will educate, they will teach us, because they would like us to use the product. They don't want the bike to lay in our storage, right? We want basically our users to use the bike, to use the product, so we will educate them, we will communicate the way that it's being used. So that's more or less about the difference between copywriting and UX writing.

[00:10:33] And know that it's not the same thing. For example, copywriters use a sexy voice to attract customers, whereas UX writers use simple words to explain. Copywriters are sales oriented, UX writers are product oriented. Copywriters work with marketers, UX writers work with designers. Copywriters tell stories, UX writers share conversations. Copywriters — and I don't agree with this — that copywriters and UX writers can work alone. Because none of them can work alone, both of them need to work with the team. When you work in UX writing you need to work with your product team, when you work as a copywriter you need to work with your team of the marketing people.

[00:11:17] Now if you have any questions about UX writing, just drop it here in the chat, and I'm moving forward because I know there is a slight delay right now, but I'd love to answer all of your questions, make sure that everything is clear, so you wouldn't have anything that you're not sure about when it comes to UX writing.

Scenarios and guidelines at HiBob

[00:11:41] Okay, so the next thing that you need to do as a UX writer is to create some kind of scenarios in the screens of the app. You need to define different scenarios and communicate them to the end user. Let me give you an example for a product that I've been working on with my team. It's called HiBob, it's an Israeli unicorn company, and the team of students at the UX Writing Academy by the UX Writing Hub, and myself, worked on this product.

[00:12:13] So one of the things that we had to create was notifications for their dashboard. So we created some kind of guidelines that educated the whole of the company, not only the UX writers, not only the designers, but it educated all of the company about the way that notifications need to be communicated. We took the old notifications and we said, we're not going to do it like that, we're going to change that, and we're going to tell users exactly what has just been done. For example the name of the person, the financials update that just happened, and what exactly happened. And even we will leave the CTA, the call to action, so they could remove the notification. And so we've built some kind of a guideline for the product people of HiBob.

[00:13:06] So this is one example. Another example is how to create a specific success message. So this is the old one. So we said that the tone is not like HiBob, it's not conversational, and we need to add value to the information in order to elevate the UX. So first of all, what happened before is that for every task we sent, it just created another notification and another notification and another notification. So we just united all of the notifications, and we said what task was reassigned to who. And since then, that's how people can create notifications.

[00:13:48] Last example by HiBob. We said, hey, please avoid sorry, oops and other emotive language. Notifications appear in a bulleted list with seven days' history, so these words might be annoying to the user if they appear one after the other. So no more sorry, no more please, no more that kind of stuff. So that's the old one: please submit your time off sheet, please fill in your feedback requests. So not like that, but tell them exactly what to do, be clear, concise and useful: submit your time off sheet, and not using this type of words that might be annoying if they just repeat time after time after time after time.

[00:14:32] One more example, so avoid end of sentence or end of phrase punctuation. Why? Because these are repetitive as well. So, low alert notification, a user might receive seven shout-outs in a row, so no exclamation marks, because it's jarring. So we removed the punctuation as well.

UX writing is in demand

[00:14:59] And now, UX writing is in high demand. I know that there is a tech recession right now, so there are layoffs, Google just laid off people last week, but UX writing is still hiring in companies that are doing well. You can still see that many companies are still hiring UX writers like crazy, it's happening. And because of the business value that UX writing has, UX writing doesn't go anywhere. Even if there is a tech recession, we still need people to communicate our products and services to our end users.

[00:15:34] You can see also the trend here. This is from Google Trends, and you can see how the trend increased in the past decade, or half the decade, and many, many more companies are hiring these days UX writers and so on. The reason that they do it is because winning writing creates winning experiences, creates winning products.

[00:15:57] So invest in your content team. If there is one message you need to learn from this call today, it's that you need to invest in your content team, invest in your UX writing, because it's good for your business. My name is Yuval, I'm the founder of the UX Writing Hub, creator of the UX Writing Academy. I want to invite you, by the way, to join our free UX writing course. If you go to uxwritinghub.com you can also check our free UX writing course. And that's more or less about it. You can have questions right now.

Q&A

[00:16:34] Host: Listen, thank you Yuval, that was — I like some of the examples there because it kind of made it a bit more tangible. It's always quite hard to make things a bit tangible and digestible for people, so thanks for sharing.

[00:16:54] Host: Is there any questions? Brenda, maybe do you have a question about UX writing, because you're looking to get into that field? So we'll give Brenda a few seconds to write one. What I might ask is, I liked your point about the direct feedback, like the "sorry", "please", ignore those kind of words. Can you get the opposite reaction, where people find it very impersonal? I know a lot of brands now are trying to be a bit more casual and friendly, so could there be the adverse reaction?

[00:17:30] Yuval: Yeah, I don't think it's bad to be kind to your users and say sorry or please. I think it's good to be honest, I think it's really good. And I do think that if you have repetitive notifications that go after each other on a constant base, it will be annoying, if people would see sorry, but sorry about that, sorry but. It's annoying. So if it's like a one time thing, like an error that occurred and then the app apologizes, I think that's a good use case to apologize and be very personal as you said. But we need to make sure that it's appropriate and it's not annoying. Did it answer the question?

[00:18:17] Host: Yeah, yeah. I think it's very much contextual, what it is that you're looking at. So we do have a question coming from Brenda, but I know there are other people, so I'm just looking, anybody who's Jessica, Audrey, Heather, Harshada. So you're the people I've seen posing questions, so if you have other questions as well, please do ask them while we're answering Brenda's one.

[00:18:46] Host: So part of this question is, could you comment a little bit more about the difference between copywriting and UX writing? What I really didn't get was about UX writers share conversations.

[00:18:59] Yuval: Yep, so basically I had an example where I said copywriters tell stories, UX writers share conversations. Yeah, that's the one. So what I meant here basically is that as a copywriter you need to be a storyteller, so we try to create a hook and tell a story and to get emotional. But UX writer is more about writing conversations, sharing conversations, creating a conversation with the end user. And that's what I wanted to say basically.

[00:19:35] Yuval: To expand on that I will say that as a UX writer, like we said before, you write for context. So you can write for an error message or you can write for a notification, so you don't have to give your best shot in every screen that you're writing. You always need to think about the context and the user flow, and what the conversation is like within the user flow. So you always need to think, when you write a screen, what was the previous screen, what's going to be the next screen, how can I create a consistent and coherent conversation with the end user so it will make sense. And that's what I meant when I said share conversation, because it's not like a copywriter that needs to grab your attention and just put everything they got in like a landing page or a marketing website. But it needs to be a conversation that you take from one journey to another within a mobile, within a digital experience for an end user. I hope I answered the question.

[00:20:47] Host: Excellent. And Audrey had asked, what was the problem definition of the last case? Does that make sense to you?

[00:21:01] Yuval: Yes, so the problem in the definition of the last case is that it was written that copywriters and UX writers can work alone, which is false. Both copywriters and both UX writers can't work alone. You always have to have some kind of feedback loop with your clients, with your customers, with your users, and iterate on that. So both of them work with different people. When you are a UX writer you work in a product team, but you can't work alone. You can't work as a UX writer without UX designers and without product managers and without talking to your users. Same goes for copywriters: a copywriter can't work without listening to your customers' pains. You can't do anything without talking with your marketing department and understanding the business goals and so on. So that's why it was like a false claim here in this slide.

[00:22:03] Host: Great. Just one thing that popped into my head during your talk, because you gave that crucial example. Booking.com gave a talk a while ago where with their insurance, they have the three kinds of, if you're going on — they had their standard, premium and executive insurance, and they renamed them to basic, standard and premium, and nobody wanted basic anymore, so everybody was going with standard when that was the lowest one. But when they moved standard to the middle, and everyone picks them, literally, they massively — it was like a 40 increase in people taking up insurance.

[00:22:40] Yuval: That's amazing. I would say that this is also related to marketing copy and less UX writing, because at the end of the day it was all about increasing conversions and selling. So they tried to sell something and they did it very successfully, but I wouldn't consider that UX writing per se.

[00:22:58] Host: Okay, yeah, there's some overlap between UX writing and marketing obviously.

[00:23:03] Yuval: Good point.

[00:23:03] Host: So yeah, Audrey saying thanks, and Brenda I think as well. So I think that brings us to an end. I don't have any other questions, if anybody else wants to jump in with any last questions. Nope. So I think that brings us to an end. So thank you very much Yuval for sharing.

[00:23:25] Yuval: Thank you so much. I hope everybody out there enjoyed this.