Highlights from my chat with Jane Portman on UI Breakfast
I love Jane Portman’s podcast. When I heard her first episode on UX writing, I was dying to be part of the conversation and I let her know. She invited me on and we covered a lot: from voice and tone to process, defining a bunch of terms and titles, what to read to get started, and so much more. Here I’ll cover some highlights, but IMHO, it’s worth a proper listen ;)
What’s your story? How did you get to UX writing?
I tried journalism. I tried neuroscience. I decided to combine them into UX writing for complex products.
For more see UX writing: a love story
What do you do all day?
- Write new features for multiple products
- Test and optimize existing microcopy
- Own the voice and tone and maintain and train on the style guide
- Write, maintain, and test hundreds of product emails and dozens of SMS notifications and other stuff like that
- Plus user research and documentation
- Drink all the coffee
For more see What do UX writers do all day?
Can you share your style guide? How can listeners create their own?
I aim to have internal and external versions within the next quarter or two. The external would probably be structured something like MailChimp’s. To start creating your own, follow the steps in Kinneret Yifrach’s book, The Ultimate Guide to Microcopy.
What is voice and tone anyway?
Voice is how you express your personality — keep it consistent! Don’t sound like a weirdo with a personality disorder.
Tone is how you adjust how you speak to the context. Like a serious person laughing at a joke or a class clown expressing condolences.
What is microcopy?
The bits of in-product text that help the user get their job done. UX writing covers more than microcopy though; it’s also emails, notifications, and a bunch of other stuff.
Content design?
Originally coined by Sarah Richards to be designing the type and shape of content a user needs, even if that’s not text. In-product content design though is something a little different in my opinion. It’s also about information architecture, but also hierarchy, and essentially designing the way the content is set up on the page and then building the visual design around that.
Titles?
UX writers, content strategists, and content designers may be the ones doing all this stuff. It’s not that important what you call yourself.
Content writers however are working with long form content like blog posts and white papers, while copywriters are writing short marketing text like landing pages. So those two are different.
For more see A UX writer by any other name… and UX writers, content strategists, and content designers — oh my!
What advice do you have for our listeners who are not all UX writers?
- Hire one. The ROI is worth it! For more see Good copy is good business: the ROI of microcopy and Why your organization needs a UX writer
- Ask whether what you’re writing is clear, concise, and helpful
- Bounce it off non-native speakers of whatever language you’re writing in
- Be consistent, In voice, style, terminology, etc.
- Read what you write out loud
Recommended resources?
- Don’t Make Me Think by Steve Krug
- Letting Go of the Words by Ginny Reddish
- The Ultimate Guide to Microcopy by Kinneret Yifrach
- Content Design by Sarah Richards
- Conversational Design by Erika Hall