Published on | Prototyping: From UX to Front End — Medium Yuval Keshtcher

It’s not a secret anymore, a huge part of the success of digital products is due to the role of writers in the product team.

Why is that?

The role has emerged over the last couple of years along with the increased popularity of creating great experiences for digital products.

So far, Iv’e heard a lot of names for defining this role; UX writer, content strategist, interface writer, Content Designer, UX copywriter and much much more.

Many tech companies are looking for a writers this days

Even though the clustered definitions of this role, one thing is guaranteed for sure, there is demand for writers in the tech industry that we can’t deny.

If you are a writer that want to improve your abilities to fit into the tech industry, you came to to right place.

This are 4 tips (plus a bonus section) that would help you to dip your toe in the water of UX writing.

1. Master the creation of voice and tone

If you want to connect with our users on a human level, your products must have a consistent voice and tone.

Otherwise the product would be characterless and dull.

For example, if the product team of mail chimp need to add a new feature to the service, they have to maintain the previous amusing and straightforward features customers have been used to.

So, how could they possibly achieve this?

Obviously, with a team of writers that characterize the voice and tone of the company.

The person that founded UX practice at MailChimp is Aarron Walter VP of Design Education at InVision.

That guide can be used to write anything related to the product, starting from marketing materials all the way to the product’s copy itself to the smallest button’s text on the interface (also knows as microcopy).

404 error page example by mailchimp

Writing a tone and voice guide for the product is not an easy task but are in luck because MailChimp also released an open source version of the company’s voice and tone guide for all of us to enjoy.

Looking to get into more depth with writing the voice and tone guide?

No worries! Design your brand’s voice and tone with the step-by-step guide made by the amazing microcopy artist, Kinneret Yifrah.

2. Learn basic user experience methodologies

The first thing we need to understand that essentially, your primary objectives as a writer in the tech niche is to create content that will help your product team to enhance customer experience, and that your costumers that using your products could understand better what is that product is all about.

Let’s take for example MailChimp, a platform that allows users to create newsletters easily.

When you start the process of sending the newslatter, an animated monkey appears on the screen acting as your assistant, encouraging you to go through the steps required to complete the task. Upon completion, you will be celebrated by the monkey because it is a glorious achievement.

When a user is about to send a newsletter to a great number of subscribers, a stressed out sweaty monkey appears while mentioning that this is the user’s moment of glory.

After launching the campaign, MailChimp (the monkey on screen) heaves a sigh of relief and gives the user a “high five” for doing a great job.

‪Great success‬‏

This experience could never succeed that without someone writes it down before sending it to production.

The mission of the writer of the team starts before the actual design and development process begins.

The writer is required to describe the action plan and ideas for the project on paper, writing a motif and emphasize with user’s emotions.

The writer has to know when the user is going to feel sad (incorrect password or trying to cancel a service for example) and when the user is feeling happy (order confirmation or after sign up for example).

If you are looking to develop content that enhance user experience start by following this 3 methods:

3. Learn the language of developers and designers

Writing content for a product after the design and development processes have been concluded is like trying to put already squeezed toothpaste back into the tube, it is a “recipe for disaster.”

Writing content after design be like

The process of “product writing” as an activity which involves a contribution from the writers, product managers, designers, and developers.

If the writer wants to invent a creative interaction or a feature for example, he must know what would be the technical difficulties the team might have in order to send it to developments and design.

Working together as a team will be required from the writer in order to launch the project and achieve project completion with the creation of an award-winning digital product.

My general agenda is the there shouldn’t be designers, developers, and writers by definition on a product team.

There should be instead a team of product people with different skills so that designers could be a bit of writes, the developer could be a bit of designer and writers could tie this process together with UX practices.

As Netflix brilliantly put it while talking about their product teams, “ Highly Aligned, Loosely Coupled”

UX Writing effective call to action example from Netflix

4. Consider yourself as a conversation designer

Allow me to introduce you to the term “microcopy,” it refers to the pieces of text that enlighten and lowers our concerns regarding the interfaces created in a product team.

For better understanding, microcopy is a representation of a conversational interface, and regarding our topic, the words that humanize our interface that improve or reduce the user experience with products.

Example of brilliant Mailchinp microcopy that was presented in a lecture of Cholit Blau a UX writer from Fiverr

The duty of a writer in a product team is to create an engaging conversation between the product and its users; it will be easier to attain the company’s goals when the users understand the value they stand to gain from the products.

The primary objective of capable writers is to discover information which will be useful to the target audience. It is easier for a writer to understand customer needs which are his readers hence he will be in the best position to act as internal advocates for all users within the company.

Bonus resources for becoming a writer in the tech industry

Talking Microcopy Writing UX — The first hub for UX writers around the world

Bring out your inner UX writer — article by Rachael Mullins

Everything by John Saito, UX Writer at Dropbox

How Words Can Make Your Product Stand Out — 3 UX writers from Google talk about their writing methodologies(Google I/O ‘17)

That’s about it

There’s a lot of work to be done in the area where writing meets design since UX Writing can improve user experience of a product in so many ways. My mission as the founder of Talking microcopy writing UX is to make the field of UX writing accessible to any writer that want to join this fascinating world.

Never stop writing

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4 ESSENTIAL TIPS FOR WRITERS IN THE TECH INDUSTRY was originally published in Prototypr on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

4 ESSENTIAL TIPS FOR WRITERS IN THE TECH INDUSTRY

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