Writing Is Designing: Words and the User Experience

by Michael J. Metts

Writing the words in an interface first, before any kind of visual design, helps a team understand what they’re working on and gives them something to respond to.

To create good software, you need words in it.

Is it actionable? Does the team know what to do? Do they know how it applies to them? • Is it relevant? Does it fit into the larger goals of your product or organization? Does it make sense in light of what other teams are doing? • Is it user-focused? Will your users benefit? Is it based on research? • Is it verifiable? Will reasonable people agree when it’s done?

Whether your company has three employees or 30,000, strategy should be bringing them together.

While your first impulse may be to write what you’re asked to write, learning is usually the right place to start. Imagine for a moment that instead of writing for software interfaces, you’re a travel writer. You show up to work on your first day excited to explore new places and go on adventures. You get your assignment: A feature story on Indonesia. However, you’re told that when you’re doing the research for your article, you can’t go there and aren’t even allowed to talk to anyone who lives there. Your boss tells you that Brad from Sales went there once, so you should just ask him about what it’s like. As silly as this sounds, this scenario is surprisingly common on product teams. People are hired to create a good experience for their users and then told that there’s no time to talk to, learn about, or spend time with them.

Where you find sustained success driven by recommendations, you find badass users. Smarter, more skillful, more powerful users. Users who know more and can do more in a way that’s personally meaningful.

If something goes wrong, do everything you can to make sure that your users aren’t taking the blame. Focus on helping them achieve their goal.

By focusing on the universal ways that humans experience the world, designers and writers can magnify their impact of inclusion exponentially.

The average reading time for sighted readers is two to five words per second. Screen-reader users can comprehend text being read at an average of 35 syllables per second, which is significantly faster. Don’t be afraid to sacrifice brevity for clarity, especially when extra context is needed or useful.

‘Clear’ makes work simpler. ‘Concise’ makes work productive. And ‘human’ makes work pleasant.”

Writing to design experiences isn’t about memorizing a list of the right and wrong ways to craft a sentence. Your users are unique, and your organization is unique. Your writing should embrace that.

Don’t confuse making a deliverable with making a difference.

Words are at the center of how an interface is understood by its users.