Published on | Prototyping: From UX to Front End — Medium Laurah Mwirichia

Helpful UX Principles To Improve Your Copy

Oh, hi there. I understand you’re a writer. Maybe you’re one of those people who’s always naturally been good at writing. Maybe English (or whatever your native language is) was always your strongest subject in school. Maybe you attended a few creative writing courses, dabbled in poetry, or just know that writing is in your blood. So you decided to become a writer.

But in your perfectly content world as a writer, you might have come across a new term: UX Writing. Maybe it captured your attention and now you’re wondering how UX writing is different from Copywriting. Maybe that’s why you’re here.

So what is UX writing, and why would you want to do it? UX writing is a type of writing that is primarily done for online platforms (apps, websites etc) to help guide the user through a process. It’s the lubrication, so to speak, between the user and the machine. Without any UX writing, the process can be counter-intuitive, and confusing. With terrible writing, the process is convoluted, messy and worst of all… frustrating.

Exhibit A: Bad UX Writing that must surely exist to make all our lives worse.

UX writing is unique in that it is writing that was born with an for the digital age. However, like all other forms of writing, it takes practice. Sure, you can be born with a knack for it and that certainly helps. But there are some helpful UX Principles that can help you improve your copy, regardless of what type of writing you do.

Brevity Is Key

First and foremost, UX writing is heavily catered toward writing for an online or digital platform. This means brevity is key. Learning the basic principles for writing on the web is not only beneficial, it’s vital. I can’t stress it enough, despite how much we as writers love to cling to what we know. Writing for the web is different than writing for print. Most things in 2018 are read on a kindle, a smartphone or a laptop. We as writers, need to adapt, and learn to write for these platforms.

Microcopy

Secondly, UX writing encompasses microcopy. Microcopy are the little things that you see (as in the terrible DVD player example above) that are prompts, error states, forms, logins, etc that slowly walk you through the process of completing a task. The DVD example fails on so many fronts- you don’t know what went wrong. The DVD doesn’t know what went wrong. Everyone is passive and nothing is happening, and the only option you have is “OK.” I’m mad just thinking about it, so here’s an example of good UX microcopy to help soothe your mind.

Lemonade’s “Maya” Onboarding process. Easy to use, understandable, human.

The Triad

The third thing to keep in mind is the three principles of UX writing (AKA, “The Triad”). Your copy has to be Clear, Concise and Useful. These three principles can work together, or sometimes fight against each other in the process. It is your job as a UX writer to find a way to balance them. Sometimes you may find a way to write copy that is clear and concise, but it’s not useful to the process. Sometimes you might have to sacrifice a bit of the concise to make something more clear. It’s your call, and your job to know. And as always, ruthlessly edit everything.

So, I’m not saying quit your day job and apply to be a UX writer at Google (but if you do, good for you!). I’m just advocating that writers who write for the web should keep in mind the user experience. Adding a basic toolkit of UX principles and applying it to your writing will help keep your reader in mind at all times, and improve your writing.

Want to learn more? Click that Follow button for a new article on UX writing every week for the next month of the series. And meanwhile, here’s some reading homework:

UX Writing: How to do it like Google with this powerful checklist — I basically consider this my inspiration for UX writing. When it doubt, do what Google does, right?
UX writing vs Copywriting– Ok, I’lI admit it. I wrote this one. But it’s a good breakdown of the different roles that UX writing and Copywriting play in product development.

See you next week!

If you enjoyed reading, please follow and clap! You can also find me and connect on LinkedIn, Behance and Twitter.

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Why Every Writer Should Learn UX Writing was originally published in Prototypr on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Why Every Writer Should Learn UX Writing

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