How to Explain UX Writing to Moms

I’ve been a UX writer for 3 years now, and more than half of this time my mom didn’t know what I did for ‌a living. “Something with words, writing. She’s some kind of copywriter who also translates” — that’s what she would tell her friends when they came over for dinner and asked about me.

If your mom, dad, or grandparents still don’t know who you are, feel free to steal my tips for explaining it :)

1. Use familiar apps and websites as examples

These can be bank apps, company websites, landing pages for familiar products, social media sites, and even pre-installed smartphone apps like Notes, Gallery, and File manager.

You can begin like this:

“You use your bank app, right? And you see all those menus, fields, buttons, and other small piecies of text on the screen. Somebody wrote this all, and that’s a part of a UX writer job. Our goal is to make each letter meaningful, clear, and useful so that every time you click something, you know what to expect. And once you get that frightening error message, you can read it, understand what happenned, and know what to do next.”

2. Apply progressive disclosure 😉

Once you’ve explained the easier part, it’s time to get to the details. Tell them about how you collaborate with designers to create mockups and userflows. Here’s what you can say:

“So, imagine that the Gallery app wants to allow users to mark some photos as favorite. Before developers start writing code, our designer and I draw mockups of what it would look like. We would discuss what kind of icon do we want, what will the button say: Add to favorites? Like? Bookmark?

We also think about the whole process of working with favorites and try to imagine everything a user might want to do with favorite photos. We project how they would move from one screen to another and draw this journey. I make sure that everything is consistent. For example, that Favorites on one tab doesn’t turn into Liked photos on another. Or that we don’t forget to warn users that they can’t have more that 50 favorites, if we have this restriction.”

3. Tell about something else that you do

This can be a short intro to research, localization, analytics, copy testing or anything else that you do apart from writing. Be careful, though: it might be easy to tell much more than needed and use too many jargon words your mom won’t get. Forget all those sprints, demos, retros, usability testings, revenue, conversion, A-B tests, retention, and auto layouts.

4. Share one of your recent tasks

Pick one task that is easy to get and yet can illustrate the essence of UX writing. Tell what kind of challenges you faced when doing it and how you coped with them. Explain your whole thought process. This is one of the best ways to give anyone an idea of what your job involves.

For example:

“I had to write a message that would tell users that they don’t have enough money on their balance to make a purchase.

To make this message more helpful, I wanted to add information about what to do next — top up the balance, and also a calculation of how much more money is needed. But you can’t just add this info — so I had to discuss it with our developers and find out if they can calculate and display this value.

Then, I had to think about the structure of the message and contacted the designer. Together, we came up with a notification that consisted of a heading, description, and a button that would lead users to the top-up page.

When writing, I also searched for similar messages from other companies to learn what kind of vocabulary is commonly used. However, I also had to keep in mind our app’s audeience and their word habits.”

5. Answer questions and be patient

Your story may ignite a discussion! Patiently answer questions, simplify where needed, and use analogies from the background that’s familiar to your mom.

And that’s it! Not that hard if you approach it as another UX writing task. Tell exactly what’s necessary, account for the background and knowledge of your “audience”, and give details and examples.

By the way, you can also follow these tips and prepare a description of your job in advance. This way, you will easily come up with examples when a new acquaintance asks you what you do :)