UX Copywriting Reflections
Coming into UX as a published writer in the journalism and non-fiction space, I near-immediately recognized the value of word-crafting in the English user experience. Designers and writers both know how incredible it is that phrases of the same meaning can have unique impacts on one's mood, actions, and impressions of a product.
Throughout my UX Fellowship at General Assembly, I found myself face-to-face with opportunities to recognize and work with these challenges. The following are specific moments in each project I recall as important in my UX writing and design growth.
1. "Tardy Check"
This speculative feature for Google Calendar lets you receive a notification before an event to see if you'll be joining on time; if not, you're given an option to send an email to attendees letting them know such.
The phrase "Tardy Check" uses the quickest phrasing possible to add an almost positive "tone" to the function, avoiding some of the stress of such a situation—even before the feature kicks in.
2. "Shop My Key Foods"
A speculative, unsolicited redesign of Key Foods' online shopping experience found plenty of opportunities for UX writing growth. Much of it existed in the information architecture, which required some rephrasing of major grocery shopping categories.
Navigating the shopping system was also a major frustration, as shopping page titles were vague and non-specific; plus, if the user hasn't chosen a local stores, it show too many items.
To simplify the system, I condensed two categories, "Shop By Aisle" and "Shop By Departments," into a "Shop My Key Foods" tab, then encouraged the user to choose a store before browsing further.
3. Venue Details
The user experience of Honeycomb, the speculative venue-finding app with an angle towards diversity, mostly relies on user reviews, which allow users to input information based on pre-determined categories.
I took charge of creating these categories, which required thoughtful, careful consideration of how users might perceive and convey offerings, themes, and other traits of these physical spaces based on our prior research.
4. "Plan Your Journey"
The goal of chART, a self-guided tour generator for museums, was to make art approachable and accessible regardless of background. Therefore, using simple yet inspiring words became a priority in building the copy of the app.
"Plan Your Journey" as a call to action leading to that core feature was one of the more contentious points of discussion among the group. We wanted something fun that also pointed users to the primary, and arguably most delightful part of the app.
In user testing, the wording went over well generally via our "call to action" button. However, in hindsight, more active wording such as "Build Your Journey," "Build Your Tour" or "Create Your Tour" could have been an extra boon. For instance, "Create" still implies a handcrafted element, while "Build" implies a possible degree of collaboration with the app.
"Create" could also be used as a more approachable "call to action" to have the tour made by the app (as shown in the second screen, to the right).
5. "Tap"
A feature like an "upload" button is taken for granted by common Internet users, but we lacked such affordances with our client, LogAware, which serves truckers, forwarders, and their clients from all backgrounds and abilities with technology.
In user testing after upgrading to high fidelity on our mobile app, we saw that usability for this function went down. However, a simple fix from the mobile team seemed to do the trick: we changed "Upload a Document" to "Tap to Upload a Document," and saw immediate results in usability testing results. The team had taken the understanding for granted and quickly learned to work towards new approachability.