When there’s a dearth of feedback
UX writing is probably one of the most collaborative roles in the world. We basically can’t do anything by ourselves. We need Product to brief us: what are the goals? What’s the scope? Timeline? We need to word together fluidly from end to end with Design, iterating content design and visual design together. We need Dev: what are our technical limitations? We need Translations & Localization: can this be communicated in other markets? If not, weighing together changing the original vs. maintaining multiple versions. And the list goes on.
We rely on feedback to do our best work. But there are a number of reasons we don’t always get the feedback we need. Stakeholders are busy. Or shy. Or whatever, and we may be told it’s a compliment, that the team trusts our expertise, but it doesn’t totally work that way. Yes, at the end of the day we write the copy but there is so much that needs to happen first. If you find yourself without enough team input, there are a few things you can do, from my experience.
Ask Questions
Don’t just wait for comments — proactively seek them out. Ping stakeholders and ping them again. Remind them how valuable their opinions are (leverage ego, we’re human after all). Offer to meet when it’s convenient for them, or to accept feedback in the channel they find most comfortable whether that be face-to-face, email, Slack, Google Doc comments, etc.
You can also ask for feedback in some cases from people outside of the team, people in your personal circles. Fresh eyes are important. “When you read this, what do you expect to be on the next screen?” If someone who has never worked on your product before gets that question wrong, you need to go back to the drawing board.
Ask the Data
MixPanel, Google Analytics, Tableau and other tools can give you insights you can leverage. Ask question the data can answer — that’s feedback, too. Are users doing what we want when they see this copy? If not, hypothesize about why not and try again. Did the numbers improve? That’s a valuable feedback loop.
Ask the User
The data can give you part of the picture — uses aren’t clicking the button — but it can’t tell you why. You can guess, but before deploying your test, you can ask users for the qualitative data to improve the aim of your next stab at the string. A designer on our team is spending this week literally picking up the phone and calling users to ask them why they do what we see them doing in the data and trying to drill down into what we can do better.
Use user interviews — even better if you conduct them in their natural habitat — usertesting.com, focus groups, surveys. Listen to Support calls to hear what users are saying without even being asked. Understand the pain points your copy is not solving sufficiently.
That’s what I would do because copy without feedback may sound good and look pretty. You may feel like a genius when you’re done. But it won’t be right for the product if you did without enough of the right feedback. It is a huge part of your job to get that feedback even when it doesn’t come easily.
