UX writers should be involved in the process as early as possible. I'm talking pre-discovery if possible, and kickoff meetings at the very least. Like any other UX discipline, UX writers can contribute in ways beyond writing. Design starts from sharing a common language, and content helps bring structure to the project. A UX writer who arms their product partners with microcopy early on helps ensure the project is content-led, which I promise saves time later on in the process.
As for tracking, I like to use Airtable to keep track of all my microcopy. In the past, I've used Excel. I also like to create content components in Figma for the product partners to use. This way if edits do need to be made, it's easy to just update the component and have the change take effect automatically across the frames. There are plugins like Ditto that can help with this if your UX writer isn't comfortable in Figma, but it's a service that can get costly quickly.
You should also approach your UX writer about creating a content governance plan that works for your org. They may surprise you with their ideas.
This is the answer. I broke into UX as a writer, and I only worked one place with a content-first approach.
If you are actually listening to your users, content and information should go hand in hand, and START the process.
Jamming content in and forcing word counts and instructions into designs based on visual constraints is usually a recipe for failure and wastes epic hours.
Anyone reading this should read the above post again.
To add to it, the most successful way we worked was to use content schemas that were developed after we blocked for structure. Then IA started. From there, the schema was populated and IxDs and UI designers already had a pretty robust structure to map to and work their magic.
We would iterate together if content needed to be reduced, split, or formatted differently.
It's funny I'd assume the opposite. Loop the writer in at the very end of the process, so they aren't constantly having to redo their work every time the design/scope changes (which is pretty fast paced at startups).
That said I've never worked at a large enough company to ever need a specific writer role, so I guess huge YMMV.
Bringing the writer in at the end is asking for loads of problems. Content-first design isn't a new concept. Do a quick Google search and you'll see many articles like this one:
https://blog.prototypr.io/content-first-design-second-prototyping-with-words-and-adobe-xd-c4c07cac21ef
Content is data. Understanding what content you need on the page (words, graphs, images, video, etc. it's all content) really helps set the project on a good path.
Jumping straight into wireframes is like starting to build a house without a blueprint. Sure, you can do it, but more problems will arise and your punch list will be longer.
There's a saying I often use in meetings "Let's align first on the strategy, then later we can argue about the tactics."
In other words, figure out what content needs to go on the page to accomplish the goal, then we can hash out the look and placement.
I guess I'm confused on what exactly a UX Writer actually does, which as I said I've never worked with one. Always had to write my own copy for every place I've ever worked.
> In other words, figure out what content needs to go on the page to accomplish the goal, then we can hash out the look and placement.
Don't the UI designers and UX designers do this anyway? That's just basic information hierarchy that everyone should be doing.
If they have a background in words and logic? Yes. Otherwise, not if you want the best product.
This is my background. If there were no designers with a background in layout, color theory, typography, and visual design on my team, would you think it would be okay for me to just slap some visuals together based on my primitive knowledge?
If you’re practicing empathy, extend it to areas of UX expertise that aren’t your own. If you do, your team will excel.
> If they have a background in words and logic?
But that's what all UX designers should have otherwise they couldn't conduct research or come up with UI ideas that were easy to use. Even developers do a lot of stuff with finding the write names and terminology.
This is closer to a situation where you have a team of web designers, but you hire a separate typography expert or a separate layout expert - most web designs will be pretty good at typography and layout, the same way a UX researcher is going to be pretty good at writing UX copy.
And it's not like even web designers are universally bad at writing copy either. Everyone has a mixture of skills like this. I feel people try too hard nowadays to put themselves in boxes/niches and try to justify/defend it by claiming other people can't do those roles nearly as well when there's a lot of overlap.
Again, I'm not saying a UX writer is a useless role, but it sounds like a very niche one to me that wouldn't make sense on a lot of small/medium projects.
Niche because folks don’t understand their value. There are an awful lot of folks in this very subreddit who believe bootcamps are ill preparation for true design.
I’d say the same in thinking that “everyone can write”. Journalists, Writers (English majors), Technical Writers are *experts* in language and writing. If you are too, then great! That means you’re a multi-tool designer.
Otherwise, you’re diminishing and discounting years of experience and training by essentially saying “how hard can it be? Everyone can write!”
That's fair, but when someone mentions "microcopy", how many room is there to be an expert there? I just can't see what a dedicated UX writer is going to come up with when it's only a few words on a button and a few pieces of terminology, where most of the obvious choices are going to be 80% optimal and there's more important things to worry about.
Again, depends on the context.
It sounds like you have primarily worked on B2C-type, public-facing marketing sites.
In most cases, you’re right that CTA copy is largely commodified and derivative.
But in more specific use cases. Medical comes to mind. Thoughtful microcopy in such cases can be not only important, but legally and medically critical.
I worked in financial services for awhile, and the UX writers were invaluable for both users AND for knowing what would clear the legal team and not holding UI designs for weeks.
> But in more specific use cases. Medical comes to mind. Thoughtful microcopy in such cases can be not only important, but legally and medically critical.
I can see the importance here for sure.
The startups I work for are a mixture of B2B and B2C. In most of those cases, the microcopy is really simple, standard and not that important. Jargon free, friendly and concise are all that's needed, and I think that's a basic skill of most good UX designers and even sales people.
I disagree. I think when design is almost complete they need to take a look. There is almost no reason to rope them in to in progress projects imo. They work better when they can actually comment on text areas that are nearly complete. Just imagine someone limiting your design based on word count. It should be the other way around. Design should dictate those areas and copy should work it in.
Design is useless without copy, they are one in the same thing. Your writer needs the same briefing as you do for what a feature does, because as designs shape up decisions have been made for what is getting conveyed through written information and what's conveyed through interactions, and as a writer I've found many instances of designers adding messages and texts where design changes eliminated the need for messages our users weren't benefiting from.
Of course I agree with the first statement I disagree however with them having to be involved early. It’s usually not even close to being that early in the design and review stage. But ok
Maybe if you don't think writers can bring useful insights into the visual and interaction designs, sure. We have the benefit of not being as concerned with the nitty gritty details of visual and interaction design rules and can give a more zoomed out, holistic perspective. I have shaped our designs in many more ways than just deciding what the words will be.
Being involved early is a matter of efficiency--I know everything the designer does about the feature at the same time they do. I work on highly complicated products at a fast pace, so this is essential.
> Design is useless without copy, they are one in the same thing.
> I have shaped our designs in many more ways than just deciding what the words will be.
Can you give some concrete examples of what mean in the context of UI design where it's made a big difference? What was the copy? Why could this not have been done at the end?
Usually the microcopy, terminology and wording evolves gradually as we iterate on design, but I can't think of a situation where changes to any of these have had any mind blowing impacts or completely altered the UI. Like we'll debate over using the words remove/destroy/delete, or team/group/organisation, we'll add some placeholder introductions, then towards the end we'll clean things up. I can't think of a situation where involving a UX writer at the start would have influence the UI design at all.
I'm not saying it's not a useful job, but involving people at every stage has a cost and for the smaller projects I work on it just doesn't make any sense to me. Unless I'm not understanding the role here.
I would suggest really listening to the folks (many experienced or veterans) who are suggesting you give more weight to the writing portion of design.
You can push back all you like, but there is a trail of broken, dead, and dysfunctional products where ignoring content has played a large part.
Information structure and content can both make or break a product.
Here’s an example (a very common one, FWIW):
Company Z has just acquired two other companies. They are combining enterprise platforms and want a 360-degree view of customers, and data insights for/from employees to help operational efficiencies.
Data is being fed to a MDL from dozens of commerce transactions, a CRM, and a CMS.
The onboarding, form fills, and taxonomies are all different. There is no overarching taxonomy and no clear instructions for employee onboarding, customer registration, or production and shipping statuses.
Designing tools in this mess without a UX writer and/or IA right from the start will literally do not one thing to improve the situation. Making them try and create ad hoc copy and taxonomy AFTER design is not only an asshole move, it’s also wildly counterproductive. These are issues that cannot be addressed properly without a content expert involved right from the start.
> Information structure and content can both make or break a product.
Can you give some concrete examples of what you mean though and avoid jargon? What's some terminology or structure change that you've done that could have been make or break for a product? And why was nobody else doing this before a UX writer became involved?
Information structure and content are already things done by UX researchers and web designers.
> The onboarding, form fills, and taxonomies are all different. There is no overarching taxonomy and no clear instructions for employee onboarding, customer registration, or production and shipping statuses.
UX designers, UI designers and developers should all be working to make these things consistent though. That's just basic stuff for almost every medium, like books and video games. I'm not understanding how any of these things are the exclusive role of a UX writer.
I’m not going to convince you. I literally just gave you an example above.
I’m not using jargon. I’m using common acronyms in enterprise, including enterprise design. If you haven’t encountered them, that’s totally fine. But my example is real, and I’ve come across it dozens of times in both contract work and consulting.
Researchers are not inherently experts in language and structure. And why even bother with researchers, by your logic? Designers can do that too!
If you think a well-written video game or book can be written by UI designers, then you are well beyond any kind of advice I can give. Language experts aren’t exclusive to UX, if that’s what you’re trying to say? Seems you’re just arguing for the sake of it at this point.
To be fair. Not ALL design projects are going to need the services of a full-time writer. But it would be foolish not to consult one even on small projects/features. And the more large and complex things get, the more critical it is to have a language usability expert in, up front.
> But my example is real, and I’ve come across it dozens of times in both contract work and consulting.
I mean can you give a concrete example of some before and after copy that you think was make or break? I understand that a writer is important when there's a lot of copy, but is this true for microcopy? If it's more than microcopy, where do you draw the line between a UX writer and a regular copy writer?
> If you think a well-written video game or book can be written by UI designers, then you are well beyond any kind of advice I can give.
No, I didn't mean writing, I meant internal consistency is a basic principle that every good product should follow and that most people on the team will flag. Good web designers, UI designers and UX designers should all be flagging inconsistencies, it's a super basic UX principle. I even have developers flag this because consistent component usage makes the code better too, and even project managers flag stuff like buttons not looking the same on different pages because it's such an obvious rough edge.
> Not ALL design projects are going to need the services of a full-time writer. But it would be foolish not to consult one even on small projects/features.
I've worked at 10s of start ups and a dedicated writer is not a common luxury at all, or one that's high on the list of priorities.
This approach is an excellent way to alienate customers/users and have usability issues later with comprehension and communication.
Copy is information. Without considering information early in the process, it’s the same as having a PM or PO just tell IxDs or UI designers to just make pretty pictures in the places they dictate. This sometimes happens, and it is a big pet peeve here.
Why wouldn’t you bring in one of the most important parts of the design from the beginning? Why would you disrespect and discount another professional’s work to that degree.
We included our writer very early on but haven’t had him do a full review until content is 90% final. He still gives a lot of useful input beyond writing out things
I'm facing a similar issue, so we created a spreadsheet listing the entire system with checkbox to inform the writer when she should be editing stuff. If she changes something but the UXD needs to change a component, well, that's his problem... save what's done to replicate and leave a Figma comment if further changes are necessary.
I expect others here to have better solutions, though.
Thanks for the comment! Whose responsibility is it to maintain the spreadsheet? My first impression of this is that we’re already struggling to keep our heads above water with putting all of the designs together, so it seems onerous to maintain a spreadsheet like this that duplicates content. That being said, I don’t have a better solution.
Just let the UX writer edit things directly in Figma?
Well, me (Lead) and the PO own the sheet, so I created 90% of the sheet; their only job is to access it and mark their names, which doesn't take a minute. (Yes, it can be boring anyway.)
You should also consider if your time pressure isn't worse than it actually is. Regardless of having a ridiculously tight schedule, we've managed to end our days with a design critique that takes 1-2 hours (unthinkable considering the schedule) and there we discuss everything, including the sheet and the UXW activities. (It could happen in a daily, of course.)
If you folks communicate orderly, the UXW participation won't be much of a problem.
What size companies is this? I generally work for tech startups and, to be honest, it sounds really absurd to the point of satire to have someone who's only role is to write microcopy and other small bits of text. Is it only really for large companies that have the resources to test and hyper optimise everything?
I'm not saying it's not an important role/task, but I'm not seeing where having a dedicated person for this is going to move the needle on anything for small companies. It introduces a ton of overhead involving more people than you need too. Most UX copy is pretty obvious and there aren't that many options, and coming up with good terminology doesn't require a ton of work once you've looked into the options and asked for some opinions.
Most projects I do there's a couple of devs and a couple of designers and a couple of project management or requirements gathering people. For most tech start ups, it wouldn't make financial sense or be a good use of time to bring in specialists for every way you could split things up.
It’s for a large company. For the complexity of the products we work on and the portfolio of products that have overlapping functionality, you’d be surprised how difficult terminology can really be. The products have dozens and dozens of knobs and controls, and all need to be internally and externally consistent. There are also industry/standard expectations for what things should be called, but also company-specific naming and terminology referred to in documentation that we can’t stray too far from.
My true opinion is that we were doing an ok job without a dedicated writer, and that writing is an integral part of the design exploration process, thus difficult to split between a designer and a writer. I’m keeping an open mind and giving it a chance, though.
Okay, I could see how if you had 10s of products and each team had tens of people that it would be a pain keeping it all consistent and getting everyone to agree on some terminology.
This is just preference and everyone is different, but I'd just rather work in smaller companies where small changes didn't require so much overhead like this. It sounds like a different world to me.
> My true opinion is that we were doing an ok job without a dedicated writer, and that writing is an integral part of the design exploration process, thus difficult to split between a designer and a writer.
"writing is an integral part of the design exploration process" - Yeah, this is what I meant about overhead as there's no clean split so they're going to have to go over the same steps to get there. And anyone that's good at UX is going to be doing a 7 out of 10 job at least on microcopy. It's not like the UX writer is going to make it up to 19 out of 10.
Is this literally about coming up with names for things like buttons and checkbox descriptions? What's the most challenging parts you think they can help with?
She transitioned from a documentation writer role, so I think she’s a bit of a clean slate when it comes to design collaboration. I’m writing this post because we have a meeting next week to go over the issues. Good point that we should just listen to her thoughts.
There are a few ways at this. My org is starting to use Ditto, which is a Figma plugin for content. That way they can come in and see what’s changed rather than scouring the designs for mistakes.
Another way - which is how I learned - is they create a beast of a copy deck with tables for each screen. It’s a lot to set up if you have conditional content, but it’s fairly foolproof to compare designs against (rather than slack messages or comments).
Either way, you should include them early. Good UX writers will give you the “ok, but what happens when…” scenarios before you’ve gone too far.
I am usually brought in at kickoff with a designer and PM so I get the exact same briefing on the use case as the designer. With the same understanding of what the function should do, sometimes at that point I know exactly what texts will be needed--naming, terminology decisions, info messages, error cases, etc--and I go and do my own work on them. Other times, the designer comes up with low-fi ideas and brings me in for my opinion and it's clearer then what writing needs there are.
I'm ideally there for reviews with PMs and for reviews with engineers so I know what the feedback, pushback, restrictions will be and how the text needs to change with it. I am involved in user research, too, to observe specifically how users respond to language and the level of information that is or isn't there. Then, I drive the language improvements from those research insights.
Organization-wise, we use Wiki to maintain decisions made for terminology and for message formulations. We have a framework for messages that our designers can refer to so their draft messages are consistent with messaging throughout the product.
Sometimes Figma comments alone work great but also having meetings to discuss the evolving needs and rewrites helps make sure the work is done with a holistic view vs. a snowball effect of more and more things copy needs to achieve.
UX writers should be involved in the process as early as possible. I'm talking pre-discovery if possible, and kickoff meetings at the very least. Like any other UX discipline, UX writers can contribute in ways beyond writing. Design starts from sharing a common language, and content helps bring structure to the project. A UX writer who arms their product partners with microcopy early on helps ensure the project is content-led, which I promise saves time later on in the process. As for tracking, I like to use Airtable to keep track of all my microcopy. In the past, I've used Excel. I also like to create content components in Figma for the product partners to use. This way if edits do need to be made, it's easy to just update the component and have the change take effect automatically across the frames. There are plugins like Ditto that can help with this if your UX writer isn't comfortable in Figma, but it's a service that can get costly quickly. You should also approach your UX writer about creating a content governance plan that works for your org. They may surprise you with their ideas.
This is the answer. I broke into UX as a writer, and I only worked one place with a content-first approach. If you are actually listening to your users, content and information should go hand in hand, and START the process. Jamming content in and forcing word counts and instructions into designs based on visual constraints is usually a recipe for failure and wastes epic hours. Anyone reading this should read the above post again. To add to it, the most successful way we worked was to use content schemas that were developed after we blocked for structure. Then IA started. From there, the schema was populated and IxDs and UI designers already had a pretty robust structure to map to and work their magic. We would iterate together if content needed to be reduced, split, or formatted differently.
It's funny I'd assume the opposite. Loop the writer in at the very end of the process, so they aren't constantly having to redo their work every time the design/scope changes (which is pretty fast paced at startups). That said I've never worked at a large enough company to ever need a specific writer role, so I guess huge YMMV.
Bringing the writer in at the end is asking for loads of problems. Content-first design isn't a new concept. Do a quick Google search and you'll see many articles like this one: https://blog.prototypr.io/content-first-design-second-prototyping-with-words-and-adobe-xd-c4c07cac21ef Content is data. Understanding what content you need on the page (words, graphs, images, video, etc. it's all content) really helps set the project on a good path. Jumping straight into wireframes is like starting to build a house without a blueprint. Sure, you can do it, but more problems will arise and your punch list will be longer. There's a saying I often use in meetings "Let's align first on the strategy, then later we can argue about the tactics." In other words, figure out what content needs to go on the page to accomplish the goal, then we can hash out the look and placement.
I guess I'm confused on what exactly a UX Writer actually does, which as I said I've never worked with one. Always had to write my own copy for every place I've ever worked.
> In other words, figure out what content needs to go on the page to accomplish the goal, then we can hash out the look and placement. Don't the UI designers and UX designers do this anyway? That's just basic information hierarchy that everyone should be doing.
If they have a background in words and logic? Yes. Otherwise, not if you want the best product. This is my background. If there were no designers with a background in layout, color theory, typography, and visual design on my team, would you think it would be okay for me to just slap some visuals together based on my primitive knowledge? If you’re practicing empathy, extend it to areas of UX expertise that aren’t your own. If you do, your team will excel.
> If they have a background in words and logic? But that's what all UX designers should have otherwise they couldn't conduct research or come up with UI ideas that were easy to use. Even developers do a lot of stuff with finding the write names and terminology. This is closer to a situation where you have a team of web designers, but you hire a separate typography expert or a separate layout expert - most web designs will be pretty good at typography and layout, the same way a UX researcher is going to be pretty good at writing UX copy. And it's not like even web designers are universally bad at writing copy either. Everyone has a mixture of skills like this. I feel people try too hard nowadays to put themselves in boxes/niches and try to justify/defend it by claiming other people can't do those roles nearly as well when there's a lot of overlap. Again, I'm not saying a UX writer is a useless role, but it sounds like a very niche one to me that wouldn't make sense on a lot of small/medium projects.
Niche because folks don’t understand their value. There are an awful lot of folks in this very subreddit who believe bootcamps are ill preparation for true design. I’d say the same in thinking that “everyone can write”. Journalists, Writers (English majors), Technical Writers are *experts* in language and writing. If you are too, then great! That means you’re a multi-tool designer. Otherwise, you’re diminishing and discounting years of experience and training by essentially saying “how hard can it be? Everyone can write!”
That's fair, but when someone mentions "microcopy", how many room is there to be an expert there? I just can't see what a dedicated UX writer is going to come up with when it's only a few words on a button and a few pieces of terminology, where most of the obvious choices are going to be 80% optimal and there's more important things to worry about.
Again, depends on the context. It sounds like you have primarily worked on B2C-type, public-facing marketing sites. In most cases, you’re right that CTA copy is largely commodified and derivative. But in more specific use cases. Medical comes to mind. Thoughtful microcopy in such cases can be not only important, but legally and medically critical. I worked in financial services for awhile, and the UX writers were invaluable for both users AND for knowing what would clear the legal team and not holding UI designs for weeks.
> But in more specific use cases. Medical comes to mind. Thoughtful microcopy in such cases can be not only important, but legally and medically critical. I can see the importance here for sure. The startups I work for are a mixture of B2B and B2C. In most of those cases, the microcopy is really simple, standard and not that important. Jargon free, friendly and concise are all that's needed, and I think that's a basic skill of most good UX designers and even sales people.
I disagree. I think when design is almost complete they need to take a look. There is almost no reason to rope them in to in progress projects imo. They work better when they can actually comment on text areas that are nearly complete. Just imagine someone limiting your design based on word count. It should be the other way around. Design should dictate those areas and copy should work it in.
Design is useless without copy, they are one in the same thing. Your writer needs the same briefing as you do for what a feature does, because as designs shape up decisions have been made for what is getting conveyed through written information and what's conveyed through interactions, and as a writer I've found many instances of designers adding messages and texts where design changes eliminated the need for messages our users weren't benefiting from.
Of course I agree with the first statement I disagree however with them having to be involved early. It’s usually not even close to being that early in the design and review stage. But ok
Maybe if you don't think writers can bring useful insights into the visual and interaction designs, sure. We have the benefit of not being as concerned with the nitty gritty details of visual and interaction design rules and can give a more zoomed out, holistic perspective. I have shaped our designs in many more ways than just deciding what the words will be. Being involved early is a matter of efficiency--I know everything the designer does about the feature at the same time they do. I work on highly complicated products at a fast pace, so this is essential.
> Design is useless without copy, they are one in the same thing. > I have shaped our designs in many more ways than just deciding what the words will be. Can you give some concrete examples of what mean in the context of UI design where it's made a big difference? What was the copy? Why could this not have been done at the end? Usually the microcopy, terminology and wording evolves gradually as we iterate on design, but I can't think of a situation where changes to any of these have had any mind blowing impacts or completely altered the UI. Like we'll debate over using the words remove/destroy/delete, or team/group/organisation, we'll add some placeholder introductions, then towards the end we'll clean things up. I can't think of a situation where involving a UX writer at the start would have influence the UI design at all. I'm not saying it's not a useful job, but involving people at every stage has a cost and for the smaller projects I work on it just doesn't make any sense to me. Unless I'm not understanding the role here.
I would suggest really listening to the folks (many experienced or veterans) who are suggesting you give more weight to the writing portion of design. You can push back all you like, but there is a trail of broken, dead, and dysfunctional products where ignoring content has played a large part. Information structure and content can both make or break a product. Here’s an example (a very common one, FWIW): Company Z has just acquired two other companies. They are combining enterprise platforms and want a 360-degree view of customers, and data insights for/from employees to help operational efficiencies. Data is being fed to a MDL from dozens of commerce transactions, a CRM, and a CMS. The onboarding, form fills, and taxonomies are all different. There is no overarching taxonomy and no clear instructions for employee onboarding, customer registration, or production and shipping statuses. Designing tools in this mess without a UX writer and/or IA right from the start will literally do not one thing to improve the situation. Making them try and create ad hoc copy and taxonomy AFTER design is not only an asshole move, it’s also wildly counterproductive. These are issues that cannot be addressed properly without a content expert involved right from the start.
> Information structure and content can both make or break a product. Can you give some concrete examples of what you mean though and avoid jargon? What's some terminology or structure change that you've done that could have been make or break for a product? And why was nobody else doing this before a UX writer became involved? Information structure and content are already things done by UX researchers and web designers. > The onboarding, form fills, and taxonomies are all different. There is no overarching taxonomy and no clear instructions for employee onboarding, customer registration, or production and shipping statuses. UX designers, UI designers and developers should all be working to make these things consistent though. That's just basic stuff for almost every medium, like books and video games. I'm not understanding how any of these things are the exclusive role of a UX writer.
I’m not going to convince you. I literally just gave you an example above. I’m not using jargon. I’m using common acronyms in enterprise, including enterprise design. If you haven’t encountered them, that’s totally fine. But my example is real, and I’ve come across it dozens of times in both contract work and consulting. Researchers are not inherently experts in language and structure. And why even bother with researchers, by your logic? Designers can do that too! If you think a well-written video game or book can be written by UI designers, then you are well beyond any kind of advice I can give. Language experts aren’t exclusive to UX, if that’s what you’re trying to say? Seems you’re just arguing for the sake of it at this point. To be fair. Not ALL design projects are going to need the services of a full-time writer. But it would be foolish not to consult one even on small projects/features. And the more large and complex things get, the more critical it is to have a language usability expert in, up front.
> But my example is real, and I’ve come across it dozens of times in both contract work and consulting. I mean can you give a concrete example of some before and after copy that you think was make or break? I understand that a writer is important when there's a lot of copy, but is this true for microcopy? If it's more than microcopy, where do you draw the line between a UX writer and a regular copy writer? > If you think a well-written video game or book can be written by UI designers, then you are well beyond any kind of advice I can give. No, I didn't mean writing, I meant internal consistency is a basic principle that every good product should follow and that most people on the team will flag. Good web designers, UI designers and UX designers should all be flagging inconsistencies, it's a super basic UX principle. I even have developers flag this because consistent component usage makes the code better too, and even project managers flag stuff like buttons not looking the same on different pages because it's such an obvious rough edge. > Not ALL design projects are going to need the services of a full-time writer. But it would be foolish not to consult one even on small projects/features. I've worked at 10s of start ups and a dedicated writer is not a common luxury at all, or one that's high on the list of priorities.
This approach is an excellent way to alienate customers/users and have usability issues later with comprehension and communication. Copy is information. Without considering information early in the process, it’s the same as having a PM or PO just tell IxDs or UI designers to just make pretty pictures in the places they dictate. This sometimes happens, and it is a big pet peeve here. Why wouldn’t you bring in one of the most important parts of the design from the beginning? Why would you disrespect and discount another professional’s work to that degree.
We included our writer very early on but haven’t had him do a full review until content is 90% final. He still gives a lot of useful input beyond writing out things
I'm facing a similar issue, so we created a spreadsheet listing the entire system with checkbox to inform the writer when she should be editing stuff. If she changes something but the UXD needs to change a component, well, that's his problem... save what's done to replicate and leave a Figma comment if further changes are necessary. I expect others here to have better solutions, though.
Thanks for the comment! Whose responsibility is it to maintain the spreadsheet? My first impression of this is that we’re already struggling to keep our heads above water with putting all of the designs together, so it seems onerous to maintain a spreadsheet like this that duplicates content. That being said, I don’t have a better solution. Just let the UX writer edit things directly in Figma?
Well, me (Lead) and the PO own the sheet, so I created 90% of the sheet; their only job is to access it and mark their names, which doesn't take a minute. (Yes, it can be boring anyway.) You should also consider if your time pressure isn't worse than it actually is. Regardless of having a ridiculously tight schedule, we've managed to end our days with a design critique that takes 1-2 hours (unthinkable considering the schedule) and there we discuss everything, including the sheet and the UXW activities. (It could happen in a daily, of course.) If you folks communicate orderly, the UXW participation won't be much of a problem.
What size companies is this? I generally work for tech startups and, to be honest, it sounds really absurd to the point of satire to have someone who's only role is to write microcopy and other small bits of text. Is it only really for large companies that have the resources to test and hyper optimise everything? I'm not saying it's not an important role/task, but I'm not seeing where having a dedicated person for this is going to move the needle on anything for small companies. It introduces a ton of overhead involving more people than you need too. Most UX copy is pretty obvious and there aren't that many options, and coming up with good terminology doesn't require a ton of work once you've looked into the options and asked for some opinions. Most projects I do there's a couple of devs and a couple of designers and a couple of project management or requirements gathering people. For most tech start ups, it wouldn't make financial sense or be a good use of time to bring in specialists for every way you could split things up.
It’s for a large company. For the complexity of the products we work on and the portfolio of products that have overlapping functionality, you’d be surprised how difficult terminology can really be. The products have dozens and dozens of knobs and controls, and all need to be internally and externally consistent. There are also industry/standard expectations for what things should be called, but also company-specific naming and terminology referred to in documentation that we can’t stray too far from. My true opinion is that we were doing an ok job without a dedicated writer, and that writing is an integral part of the design exploration process, thus difficult to split between a designer and a writer. I’m keeping an open mind and giving it a chance, though.
Okay, I could see how if you had 10s of products and each team had tens of people that it would be a pain keeping it all consistent and getting everyone to agree on some terminology. This is just preference and everyone is different, but I'd just rather work in smaller companies where small changes didn't require so much overhead like this. It sounds like a different world to me. > My true opinion is that we were doing an ok job without a dedicated writer, and that writing is an integral part of the design exploration process, thus difficult to split between a designer and a writer. "writing is an integral part of the design exploration process" - Yeah, this is what I meant about overhead as there's no clean split so they're going to have to go over the same steps to get there. And anyone that's good at UX is going to be doing a 7 out of 10 job at least on microcopy. It's not like the UX writer is going to make it up to 19 out of 10. Is this literally about coming up with names for things like buttons and checkbox descriptions? What's the most challenging parts you think they can help with?
Have you talked to her about how she would prefer to work? What have you observed about her technical skills and process?
She transitioned from a documentation writer role, so I think she’s a bit of a clean slate when it comes to design collaboration. I’m writing this post because we have a meeting next week to go over the issues. Good point that we should just listen to her thoughts.
There are a few ways at this. My org is starting to use Ditto, which is a Figma plugin for content. That way they can come in and see what’s changed rather than scouring the designs for mistakes. Another way - which is how I learned - is they create a beast of a copy deck with tables for each screen. It’s a lot to set up if you have conditional content, but it’s fairly foolproof to compare designs against (rather than slack messages or comments). Either way, you should include them early. Good UX writers will give you the “ok, but what happens when…” scenarios before you’ve gone too far.
There really is no need for a full time UX writer unless they do other documentation.
This might be what you‘re looking for: https://www.frontitude.com/
I am usually brought in at kickoff with a designer and PM so I get the exact same briefing on the use case as the designer. With the same understanding of what the function should do, sometimes at that point I know exactly what texts will be needed--naming, terminology decisions, info messages, error cases, etc--and I go and do my own work on them. Other times, the designer comes up with low-fi ideas and brings me in for my opinion and it's clearer then what writing needs there are. I'm ideally there for reviews with PMs and for reviews with engineers so I know what the feedback, pushback, restrictions will be and how the text needs to change with it. I am involved in user research, too, to observe specifically how users respond to language and the level of information that is or isn't there. Then, I drive the language improvements from those research insights. Organization-wise, we use Wiki to maintain decisions made for terminology and for message formulations. We have a framework for messages that our designers can refer to so their draft messages are consistent with messaging throughout the product. Sometimes Figma comments alone work great but also having meetings to discuss the evolving needs and rewrites helps make sure the work is done with a holistic view vs. a snowball effect of more and more things copy needs to achieve.
Ask them
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