The Incomplete Roadmap for the Self-taught UX Writer in 2024
Yayy!
This is what you’ve been looking for. A guide to set yourself on a career path in UX Writing.
If you’ve been lost in the waters, especially as a beginner UX Writer in Nigeria, find yourself with this guide.
What is UX Writing
This is a result of questions I always get from friends and enemies who seek a structured learning path in UX Writing. The amount of UX Writing resources on the internet is relatively low. In fact, as of Nov 2021, when I was looking to learn, there were not up to 100 videos about UX Writing on YouTube. Unfortunately, I lost my screenshot to back this up.
Also, the plethora of resources you’ll find on the internet are articles that all say the same thing. Which is not quite helpful.
This is the first time, or second, I’d be publicly talking about my role as a UX Writer. Let’s see how that goes.
Unknowingly, my journey into UX Writing began when I took a dive into UI/UX Design. I loved playing with words on UI screens I designed for practice. However, I took careful thought into the copies for the UIs, even while learning. My goal back then was to create designs that emotionally connect with users, just like every other budding designer. I didn’t know, that I used words inadvertently to meet this goal.
Eventually, UX Writing found me, officially, in Nov 2021, without any experience. In the past months, I have treaded the murky waters of UX Writing, alone. I have been learning the art of using words to interact with people in a sensitive and tactful way.
I term this science ‘Diplomacy in UX Writing’, which means taking extra thought about the words used throughout a product’s experience.
There’s more to say, but make my experience reach one year fess, this is about your guide to becoming a UX Writer in 2022, not mine.
If you started out as a UX Designer, you might have come across the self-taught UI/UX designer roadmap written based on the Full-Stack Developer Roadmap. Both are quite popular, and if you haven’t seen any, toh 🤐
And I thought, a UX Writing guide for beginners, why not?
I didn’t copy.
I’m simply adding to the chain of Roadmap articles for beginners on medium.
It’s not much, but it’s honest work 😌
Like the title says, this guide is probably incomplete, I’m no expert. But it follows my learning path and mirrors the curriculum of the popular Yuval Sketcher’s UX Writing academy and a few other UX Writing courses I have come across.
Ride with me.
Wait first!
I took excerpts from Andy Chan’s Roadmap about some important things to note before you begin this slippery slope. Bear in mind while reading:
- You’ll learn better with practice, than mere study.
- You don’t have to learn all the tools, just know how to write (and copy).
- Never stop learning. This isn’t college, the journey starts and doesn’t stop.
- Learn in bits. Understand one bit, before the next, but don’t spit it out.
- Don’t doubt yourself, ever. You can do it!
You should read more about the caveats here in the UI/UX designer roadmap in 2021.
Alright, let’s dive in.
the beginner’s guide to UX writing in 2022
Just like Chan, I split the learning process into four, to give you direction.
- Stick to the basics (and never depart from them). You should be concerned with understanding what UX Writing is, and what it is not. Why UX Writing matters, as a career and as a tool for easing user frictions and frustrations in an experience. This includes having a foundational knowledge of product design and user experience, content-first design and what microcopies are.
Don’t be overwhelmed. Just knowing and understanding is enough at this point. This should take you 2–3 weeks, of understanding. - Know what to write. Learn the practical skills, and be on the path to becoming a UX Researcher, officially 😎. Just kidding. Here, you’d be arming yourself with basic UX research processes to help you learn about your users, learn from your users, and learn the language of your users. You would also come across a term that flies around in the UX field — Empathy. Master it.
That’s not all, you’d learn more about user flows and wireframes, UI text patterns, and Conversation mining — an amazing way to carry out User Research, user stories, journey maps etc. - Write in the language of your users. My favourite part. Learn how to use the results of your Research to speak in the language that users understand. Users interact with a product in different emotional states, what you say and how you say has a big influence on the experience they get. A lot of personal practice would get you started with this.
- Learn how to test words. Just like UX Design, you test how your words function in the experience. Usability testing is the most common way to know if your words are effective in guiding the user through the experience.
- Test other waters. Draw upon your existing or transferrable skills to explore other fields like in-depth information architecture, content strategy, copywriting, UX Design, conversation design, SEO marketing etc.…
Sooooo, first things first,
Stick to the basics of UX and UX Writing, why it matters, and how words are important for any digital experience.
how do I get started?
Like my product manager would say, “stick to the basics”, and every other thing shall follow, — na me add dis one.
stick to the basics
As a beginner, which I assume you are, you need to have a solid understanding of UX Writing, which extends to some concepts in UX and Product Design.
What is UX Writing?
Knowing what is involved in this field and what it isn’t would give you a foundational understanding of the skills required of you, and what isn’t. Compare UX Writing to other types of writing such as Copywriting, Content Writing, Technical Writing, Books, Poems, etc. It is also helpful to know the clear difference between them.
In fact sef, the only difference you should know is that other kinds of writing do not care about the experience of the readers, at all.
What UX Writing is Not
You should explicitly know what UX Writing isn’t and what it is. Knowing that UX Writing isn’t marketing, blogging or writing poems will condition your mind to the kind of work required of you. UX Writers do not use words to inspire or motivate anyone. Instead, we use words to inform, engage and retain users by guiding them through a product’s experience.
Why UX Writing Matters
Ask yourself these questions. Why the sudden interest in words and writing and all of it in Product Development? Why are companies now investing in the stone that was once rejected by designers? You’ll figure out that ‘interacting’ with a product can be likened to ‘talking’ to someone. This means every product has a voice that should speak to users in a clear, conversational and useful manner.
You should take your time to understand these before you fully delve into the whole process of writing UX Content.
Microcopies and UI Texts
This is where you learn how words are actually used in a product, and where they are used. This usually includes the texts on button labels, error messages, menu options, notifications, confirmation messages, transactional emails even the Voice chat you hear from Siri or Google Assistant. A quick Google search or a few articles on medium.com would give you all the knowledge you need for this. Check this one out by Kinneret Yifrah.
Introduce yourself to Product design
Yea, you need to have a knowledge of the product development process. Just a basic understanding of concepts involved in building a product e.g. design thinking. This will help you learn to work with designers and teams. You’ll know how words also contribute to solving UX problems. As a content designer, this would help you know when to suggest images or illustrations in place of words or when the two should be used. You also learn how to work with design constraints and layouts to make an experience meaningful, ’cause you won’t be writing essays here.
Breaking this down into:
UX and UI
Still, about the fundamentals, you are looking to understand how the user flows, journey maps, information architecture work and basic UI concepts like layouts, illustrations, wireframe and UI elements that require words. This helps you to know how users interact, what they see and the path they take through an experience.
Don’t get scared, you won’t be doing UX Design at all. So, don’t spend too much time on this as you’re not looking to learn the practical aspects entirely, but rather, know enough to use the concepts for UX Writing process.
Content-first Design
Writing for an experience isn’t just to fill lorem ipsum with words. No, your role as a UX Writer is that of a good, thoughtful host anticipating the needs of your users — a line from Torrey Podmajersky’s Book on Strategic Writing for UX. You learn to understand both organizational goals and user needs, even before the start of the design or writing process. Having this foundational knowledge of a content-first approach to design will help you in future collaborations with designers.
how do you start writing?
You don’t just start.
You learn first. Not the kind of learning you know
This time, you learn about your users, their behaviours, what motivates them and their needs while using a product. Also, more importantly, you learn their language, how they speak, their lingos and slang, their job roles, expertise level, etc…
This is User Research.
This phase helps you to learn how to strike a balance between meeting business goals and user needs.
While this is a separate discipline within UX, it is helpful to partake in UX Research to really curate words that would be useful and desirable for your users. A few articles on UX Research should get you started with basic methods like surveys and interviews.
Here’s what you need to know;
You learn to answer these questions
- What do your users want to do?
- What goals do they want to accomplish
- Where are they in the product’s journey?
- Where are they coming from and where are they going?
- What is their emotional state likely to be (happy, sad, etc.)
- What is their relationship with your brand (Are they first-time users?)
- What goals does your business want users to accomplish?
- What words would motivate those actions?
- How do you want to sound when you speak to them?
- and more…
How to answer these questions
Learn how the basic tools and research techniques help you answer these questions.
- You can empathize with users through interviews, surveys and empathy maps.
- You then make sense of the research data using Journey Maps and User Stories.
- Take these a step further with Use Cases, User Scenarios and Information Architecture.
- Another important tool is Conversation mining carried out by analyzing reviews, questions or comments from users.
Research helps you to
- learn about your users
- learn from your users
- and learn the language of your users
so that you can design words that users understand, and that will address their fears and speak to their needs.
Now, you know what to write, and you understand why you should write to meet user goals, where do you put all your words?
Where do I start writing?
UX Writing tools could be any tool that lets you draft ideas, write content and help you visualize how your content might appear on a real interface.
A lot of tools are available to you. None of them requires you to be an expert. Any tool that enables you to draft, review and share content is perfect.
Some important tools you’ll need to start with;
Google Docs. Of course. We all know why this is the most preferred. It is easily accessible, allows for collaboration and also offers both offline and online editing. The formatting features also help you organize your content easily for both stakeholders and designers to understand.
Notion takes all of Google docs editing features to a whole new level. You can easily organize all your web content down to each individual page for developers and designers to understand. I started using it this way just last week though.
Miro or Figjam. They are both digital whiteboards that give you a lot of space and tools to collaborate, generate and test ideas, among other things. Miro also has a wireframe library that lets you visualize content ideas on wireframes for quick testing and iterations. This is an important tool for you as a UX Writer. You can also use this for your UX Writing case studies for use in a portfolio.
Microsoft Word. Yea. It made the list ’cause I like it and use it personally for most of my writing projects. The interface is fluid and swift. But remember to always save your documents as you type.
Grammarly, especially for long copies, helps you check for punctuation, tone, grammar, usage, wordiness, style and spelling issues. It’s free to start using.
write in the language of your users
Now, you’ve started writing, but you sound like a robot. You are no different from the software engineer that quickly ‘cooked’ up some copy for the error message. Users can’t relate to what you wrote. Even though you are writing in a computer interface, you are not writing for a computer.
This is because your words lack a personality.
A Brand’s voice and tone help you to write words that reflect the voice of the brand. This consistency in the use of words builds trust with users while giving the brand, or product you are writing for, a personality.
In the most basic terms;
The Brand’s Voice is what you say.
The Tone is how you say it.
A voice and tone design keep your language and the words you use consistently across the experience. This is particularly necessary when working in a team of writers.
As you go up in your career, you’ll likely work with an existing content style guide that contains a laid-out Voice and Tone or create one for the company if it’s non-existent.
It is important to know that Voice and Tone Design is a construct of User Research.
This is why you’ll need to learn how to create one. I have had to design a Voice and Tone myself. I followed the practical steps laid out by Kinneret Yifrah in her book Microcopy: The Complete Guide and a few concepts from Strategic Writing for UX.
Yea, I find myself reading a lot.
The Brand
- Define the vision and mission of the brand. Read design and branding documents to extract essential information about the brand and products you’d be writing for.
- Define its values. Principles that influence the brand’s actions. These can also be gotten from brand documents and structured group interviews with key stakeholders.
- Give the brand a personality. And prepare a plan for how you want to reflect the personality in the voice and tone.
The Target Audience
- Define the demographics. This would let you know who the brand would be speaking to
- Define their needs, motivations, and pain points — in their own words.
- Describe their hopes and dreams, and why they want to use the product.
- Define their concerns and barriers to using the product.
- Make a list of their preferences
- Define the long-term relationship the brand wants to create with the users.
Notice how research is necessary to get rich insights into each stage?
Your Voice and Tone document would bring together and organize all the information you got from each stage above.
Das all.
All credits to Kinneret Yifrah, don’t come for my head o.
You should read her book for an in-depth guide to designing a voice and tone for your brand.
Here are a few resources that can get you started;
- Mailchimp Content Style Guide
- Indeed Voice and Tone
- Intuit Content Design
- Material’s Communication
- and more…
It’s not enough to have a Voice and Tone, Kinneret Yifrah says you should walk the talk. This means you should adhere to the Voice and Tone, and write accordingly — as if you are the brand.
now, how do you know your words work?
You test!
Yea, the same way UX Designers carry out Usability Testing. This could be done in a lot of different ways but mostly involve observing users while they interact with a product. As a UX Writer, your core aim is to see how words influence the user in making decisions throughout the journey.
The words might just be the user’s obstructions.
One of the best ways to test and optimize UX content is through A/B Testing. Which involves testing two different variations of content with a sample audience to know which one works.
There are 6 ways you could test UX content as described by Torrey Podmajersky in Strategic Writing for UX.
- Onboarding. Which is basically testing the time it takes for a user to complete the desired action.
- Engagement. You test the number of users active within a timeframe.
- Completion. This is measuring UX to know if users complete the desired actions.
- Retention. You test to know how long a specific user spends in the experience, over time.
- Referrals. Self-explanatory.
- Reducing costs. You learn how to optimize UX Content to minimize the real costs of doing businesses while increasing the metrics listed above.
See.
Your journey to a career in UX Writing doesn’t end at writing, you become a UX Researcher de facto.
Your next steps should be putting together all of your UX Writing work into a portfolio. This should contain case studies that detail your thought process on various projects you’ve done.
Here’s a list of resources to get you started;
- Become a better writer in 15 days for free—Daily UX Writing
- Learn UX Writing and Content Design for Free
- 5 Tips To Create A Stand-Out UX Writing Portfolio
- Mohana Das | UX Writer
- Sarah Ann
- Laura Luck UX Writer
- Cartoon Food — Content Strategy and User Experience by Ryan Farrell
- Amos Adejimi Portfolio (notion.site)
Phew
I’ll be summarizing all these to describe the typical UX Writing process in a separate article.
Hopefully, you now understand what it takes to become a UX Writer and the first steps you can take.
…but then
is that all there is?
That’s it — or is it?
You are now in tech. In tech, there’s no end to the things that you can learn, just like Mohana Das that has been a Software Dev to a UX Designer and is now a Senior UX Writer. But of course, if you want to explore, you should do that within related fields, so you don’t stray too far. Also, you should have a solid grasp of one thing before jumping to the next.
You can learn any or all of the following skills to make yourself attractive to companies or to start a new career path.
Content Strategy
Most UX Writers double up as Content Strategists. Because they are closely related. But Content Strategy is beyond UX Texts. It's the whole thought that goes into planning, creating and managing content across an entire product experience in order to meet business and user goals. It helps you organize content, know what comes first, and get the message right.
It's an interesting part of the job you might dabble into when you begin a career in UX Writing.
Information Architecture (IA)
While content strategy involves the tactics and planning of content to give direction, IA deals with the structuring of these contents to make sense in any interface. It is the science of organizing and structuring the content of digital interfaces. It is simply deciding how to arrange content to make it meaningful and easy to navigate for a user. You can get started with this Guide to Information Architecture or read Information Architecture: for the Web and Beyond for in-depth knowledge and practice.
Conversation Design
When a user is interacting with an experience, they are in a conversation with the product. Besides organizing or structuring content, UX Writers need to also have a solid grasp of writing clear, concise, conversational, purposeful and useful content. Conversational design helps your users interact with an experience in a human-friendly way. Users should interact with your fintech app in the same way a bank teller personnel would talk to customers in a queue, or even better. It shouldn’t just be about your beautiful and fancy UIs. See this line from Conversational Design by Erika Hall.
We have all heard it said that one picture is worth a thousand words. Yet, if this statement is true, why does it have to be a saying?
— Walter Ong, Orality and Literacy
Words will forever remain powerful.
To be candid, you don’t need to be any of these to be a UX Writer. But having basic knowledge would help you ease into any product team effectively. Remember, your user is your priority.
I’ll try to update this article over time, as I gather more knowledge, resources and practical skills in the field.
Oh yes, feel free to reach out to me, anytime.
To share a meme
or have a conversation
Or to ask questions.
I might not have all the answers you need. But I will tell you what I know.
Remember, keep your words;
- Clear
- Concise
- Conversational
- and Useful.
Go into the world and write!
Thanks to Fayemi David and Zainab Balogun O.
