Controversial opinion warning: forget “content first”.

In my opinion, content first is an overcorrection to the waterfall process of lorem ipsum. Designers used to bring containers to writers to fill and that’s not cool. Sometimes writers would be forced to create content to fill an oversized container when it was not in the users’ best interest; or they would not have the space to effectively communicate all of the information their users needed; or they would not be able to structure the content optimally because a container was set up for bullets or paragraphs or something else which was not…

I’ll never forget the first time I heard “UX”. I had apparently been doing UX writing as 50% of my job (the other 50% was marketing copywriting). I wrote a popup which was presented in a meeting and a UX design lead pointed out that the title and buttons were not continuous, that the user had to read the body text in between to make sense of the message, and that goes against a known UX practice.

“UX?” I asked him later.

He generously took the time to teach me and as soon as he’d defined the term I understood…

200 rockets were fired at us last night and they’ve continued through the morning. All public bomb shelters have been opened and prepped and schools are running drills and confirming that all processes are in place. My 4, 5, and 8 year olds have 90 seconds to get to safety when the warning siren goes off, and that’s a long time; my friends closer to the border have 15.

Sarah Richards and Content Design London regularly publish content around a medical use case, where a panicked parent whose kid has a high fever in the middle of the night, for…

I’ve had the privilege of speaking to UX writing communities around the world. One of the most interesting and exciting parts for me is learning about the different communities’ unique challenges. Lately though, it’s the similarities that made me stop and think. In San Francisco, Tel Aviv, Lausanne, Portugal, and at global conferences, some of the same questions come up again and again.

I heard a podcast once with Torrey Podmajersky, who said that she was inspired to write her book, Strategic Writing for UX, after sitting down to lunch at a UX writer conference and hearing writers raise challenges…

I love UX writing. All of it. Not just the microcopy.

“Microcopy” is a hot buzzword, and for good reason. UI copy has not gotten enough attention in the past and it’s certainly overdue for some serious recognition, thought, and community to leverage for developing best practices and solving common challenges. However, as a UX writer, writing microcopy is only about 50% of what I do. Here are other aspects of the work that I love.

Content design

I love working with designers to make sure the design fits the copy and not just the other way around. …

You’re writing a new screen and you have so much you can say. You can manage expectations for the flow; you can deep dive into value props; you can take the space to build rapport and really express your voice; and so much more. So how do you decide how much to say? How much is so much that they won’t read a thing, and how much is so little that you’ll come off cryptic and leave them more confused than before they started reading?

Everything necessary and nothing else

Give your users the information they need. Don’t leave them stranded or guessing. Concise is…

I’m often asked, “We don’t have a UX writer — what should we do?” The answer is simple: Hire one! But when that’s not possible, what can the stakeholders do who end up writing the product copy? Sometimes that’s product owners or designers or developers. It can also be marketers and technical writers. In some companies it’s simply anyone who speaks the language of the interface. I’ve collected some tips for people who find themselves in this position.

Ask if it’s clear, concise, helpful

This may seem pretty basic but when you treat this dogma as a checklist, you might find yourself making revisions. Maybe you…

When I was a stupid teenager, we had a thing where we’d add “in bed” to fortunes in fortune cookies at Chinese restaurants. “You will have much success this year… in bed”. “Great things will come to you if you are open to them… in bed”. Teenagers 🤷‍♀️

It just struck me that there’s a parallel in the world of UX writing/content design and best practices. To every best practice, add, “if it serves your users”. “Be concise… if it serves your users”. “Use plain language if it serves your users”. And so on.

Concise

I’ve been saying this about “be…