Writing copy and text for user interfaces that is aimed at the end user is known as UX writing. Microcopy, or the text that leads users through a digital product, application, or website, is planned and written by UX writers.

Stated differently, UX writers decide “sound” of a product. The industry is expanding rapidly, with software businesses dedicating more resources to improving their products’ user experience, making it a significant career.

Naturally, the text that consumers view when utilizing a product has a significant impact. Poor writing will make the product more difficult to use, confuse and irritate the reader, and eventually discourage more use.

However, well-written interface content is integrated into the product naturally. The UX writers are primarily responsible for a digital product’s seamless, easy-to-use experience.

UX writers are more than just writers, despite their designation. UX writers are designers as well as writers of content; they are in charge of determining how users interact with a product overall and how to make its writing easier—even enjoyable—to use.

Writers of UX write what?

Planned, written, and tested content for digital products is the responsibility of UX writers. This includes text that is spoken aloud by a voice (such as from a text-to-speech program or smart speaker) or shown on a screen.

A UX writer creates the text for some or all of the following elements:

• =
• Buttons and additional interactive elements
• tooltips and guidelines
• navigation and menus
• forms
• alerts
• error notifications
• Dialogs and modals
• screens for onboarding

“Microcopy” is another term for this type of writing. Microcopy is the tiny writing you see on webpages and applications that gives you instructions, clears up doubts, promotes action, and gives you confidence that you are making progress.

UX writers modify interface copy in accordance with popular scanning patterns since they are aware of them. They make the content easier to scan by employing shorter phrases, bulleted lists and headers, bolding or color-coding to highlight crucial text, and beginning sentences or paragraphs with key information.

So why bother investing the time and energy to render text readable? In other words, it requires less work. Clear UX copy is beneficial. Not quite, of course; if the copy works, the user should not have to think about it or notice it in order to focus entirely on their duties.

Even while it takes more work than most people are willing to put in to scroll through several paragraphs of text, reading text on a screen can feel like a lot of work.

Other strategies used by UX authors to reduce reader effort include:

• Steer clear of lengthy paragraphs and dense material
• Staying away from jargon and complicated terminology (i.e., language peculiar to a given industry)
• Just providing the user with the information they require at any given time and only displaying it to them when necessary
• Steer clear of too many options as they may lead to information overload.
• Maintaining a unified tone throughout the finished product (more on that later)
• Maintain interfaces knowledgeable about concepts such as design patterns and visual hierarchy.

However, this does not imply that microcopy must be lifeless and boring. Authors can still include enjoyable passages throughout. A helpful error message or a quick moment of joy following a task completion by the user, according to this Mailchimp example, might be examples.

UX Writer Responsibilities

Are you thinking of becoming a UX writer? You may be needed to manage some or all of these daily duties, depending on the size of your organization:

Writing

First, let us address the obvious: UX writers are in charge of creating and crafting the product microcopy, which includes everything from button text and tooltips to error messages and notifications to the instructions a user sees during onboarding.

Writing copy involves a deep understanding of the product and the ability to deliver information in a readable way in order to provide users with the greatest experience possible. A task requires more effort to feel easy the more complex it is.

Although their primary concentration is on language viewed within the product itself, UX writers may also contribute to writing on the product website, client interactions such as emails, and support documents.

Making Deliverables

In addition to crafting the microcopy, a UX writer must create deliverables that inform other stakeholders about their designs and studies. These outputs consist of:

Style Manuals

A style guide is a collection of rules and definitions that control written communications for a brand.

Style guides guarantee that all copy, both within and outside the product, is consistent and of the highest caliber, making them an indispensable tool for UX writers. Grammar norms, capitalization, word spelling, and product feature nomenclature are all made clearer by a style guide. Better user experience results from these factors being constant, as was previously indicated.

The style guide for their organization is created and updated by UX writers in cooperation with other stakeholders. Since authors regularly consult their style guide, wording needs to be changed to reflect changes in the product and its consumer base.

A style guide also establishes brand voice and tone. A brand’s voice is its overall personality across communications, while tone is the different emotional levels that the voice can take throughout a product experience.

While the tone should adapt to the situation, the voice should remain constant. For example, a confirmation message might utilize a lighter tone to reflect the brand, but a warning screen should most likely have a heavier tone to assist the user in resolving the issue.

This is an illustration of Walmart’s brand language as described in their style guide:

Transfer of Documents

UX writers must arrange their microcopy as they draft it into deliverables, which they will eventually give to developers so they can integrate it into the product through coding. The term “developer handoff” refers to this phase.

These deliverables could be in different formats. Because they depict how the text should appear on the interface, product mockups are frequently employed.

Additionally, it is not uncommon for UX writers to pass off a spreadsheet that has standard text fields with codes (like “Yes/No” and “Are you sure?”). These text segments are referred to as strings, and they can be added to the product by essentially “finding and replacing” the code with the string that corresponds to it.

Content Audits

Regular assessments of content can also be carried out by a UX team. An assessment of every asset on a product or website is called a content audit, and the goal is to decide which should be retained, altered, or removed.

upon reorganizing a product or website, or upon finishing a brand makeover, businesses could perform a content audit. To make sure you are serving both active and future consumers as best you can, it is also a good idea to do regular content audits.

Collaborating Across Domains to Develop Products

UX writers collaborate with many other team members and stakeholders to produce a copy that aligns with the product vision and with users’ needs. As a UX writer, the roles you can expect to work with include:

• UX designers are responsible for creating the full product user experience.
• UX writers place their copy in the product’s visual elements, which are created by interface designers.
• UX researchers employ tools including testing, focus groups, surveys, and usage data to better understand the needs of their users.
• content strategists that manage the brand’s content deployment, including the copy for the user experience, to achieve commercial objectives.
• Product managers are in charge of organizing, developing, and releasing the product.
• marketers and brand experts who could help you with public-facing copywriting and who could offer microcopy comments so that marketing and product copy match.
• developers that use the handoff deliverables you supply as a basis for writing the product code.

User Investigation and Evaluation

UX writing is a fantastic chance if you are interested in trying to better understand your audience through various types of research. Since UX writers represent the user, they should take the time to get to know their audience.

A UX writer may work with a UX research team or alone do user research, depending on the size of the organization.

User research is important throughout the whole design process, from initial concept generation to testing prototypes and beyond. The objective is to identify the pain spots that UX content can alleviate, as well as which copy actually helps users and which doesn’t.

UX To obtain a comprehensive understanding of their target audience, X writers utilize a variety of research techniques, such as focus groups, surveys, interviews, usage data, A/B and multivariate testing, heatmaps, usability testing using mockups and prototypes, and post-launch feedback.

Making Certain Accessibility

Last but not least, the UX writing staff is crucial to making sure that the material is accessible. It is possible for users to have visual, hearing, mobility, or cognitive impairments. UX writers should consider this user segment while creating their designs.

Adding alt text to photos, simplifying microcopy, designing page headers that appropriately identify various page sections, and making sure text color contrasts with backdrop color are examples of accessible practices.

What Is Not UX Writing

You may have observed some similarities between the duties of UX writers and those of other writers and content creators. Although the skill set of a UX writer is quite similar to that of other professions, it is crucial to recognize their distinctions. Let us make this clear:

Marketing writing is not the same as UX writing. The goal of marketing text is to draw in customers by capturing their interest. Copywriters specializing in marketing write content for non-product-related websites and commercials. Though their material is contained within the product, UX writers also communicate the value of a product.

Technical writing differs from UX writing. Technical writers write for readers who are more knowledgeable about technology than the typical consumer. Technical writers thoroughly document intricate software. Usually found in places other than the product, such as help desk websites or instruction manuals, is this documentation.

Blogging is not UX authoring.Long-form material is created by bloggers, whereas microcopy is created by UX writers.

In any case, UX writing is not simply a content strategy. Nonetheless, as UX writers assist in interface design and devise strategies for optimizing their effectiveness, content strategy can fall under their purview.

UX Writing: Giving a Product a Voice

UX writing is much more than just writing, as previously noted; a product’s microcopy has the power to positively or negatively impact the user experience, therefore it is not something you should hurl at your design team at the last minute.

In the software industry, dedicated UX writers and UX writing teams are becoming more prevalent. Try to recall a product you use that has really poor copy if you are still not sure why. I am unable to.

Download our free UX research kit if UX authoring, UX research, or UX in general interests you.