Sometime around what felt like the 1000th month in quarantine, I heard about a UX Writing Challenge on the Writers of Silicon Valley Podcast. Being the humungous nerd that I am, I decided it was something I needed to do right then, even though I was also in the middle of Ironhack’s UX/UI Bootcamp.
Nevertheless, I decided to put all those endless lockdown days to good use, and accept the challenges. Here’s what I’ve learned through it:
Copy and Design Need to Get Married ASAP
Anyone that’s worked as a web writer in the last 10 years knows how frustrating it is to hear “the copy needs to be shorter” after you’ve already spent hours stripping things down to the essential.
In this challenge, you get a max amount of characters from the get-go. Think: Write an error message in 35 characters or less. Yes, it’s hard and whatever tab you opened with a synonyms dictionary will need to be permanently pinned to your browser’s navbar. It’s also a great way to get you in the mindset of thinking of copy as another visual element that needs to be part of the composition.
When designing an interface, chances are we already have rules as to how many pixels a button is going to be, how much space is a modal going to cover, or the percentage of the screen a menu is going to cover. But we don’t often think of defining the same for the words that will populate them. They become more of an afterthought.
Is Content Really King?
Now, a large part of the industry has seemingly come up with a solution that we’ve all heard in the form of the most annoying cliché of the last decade, Content is King. Which in the past years has had an equally annoying offspring: Content first.
Here’s the thing, it’s not feasible.
Things run incomparably smoother when copy and design are done hand in hand like two very important elements of an interface. This is something I was able to put into practice during the challenge.
While designing the screens for the challenge, I was able to keep in mind an approximate space that I’d need for the copy. Likewise, I could quickly correct the length of the copy based on what was required visually. Words were treated as components, that helped me design (verbally and visually) better screens.
I’m really not looking forward to going back to an agency where I get to work as a lonely copywriter and only hear feedback from the designer weeks after I’ve been done.
Interactions are Part of the Message
I bet this is insanely obvious for those naturally gifted designers. For me, it’s taken quite a few years, but as cliché, as it seems (sorry, McLuhan) the medium is the message.
Interaction is a language in and of itself and it can help or hurt the copy. This was instantly obvious during the first challenge: Letting a user know their flight was canceled and letting them know what they should do next.
Using a modal window for the first message immediately alerts the users that something’s up. Way before they’ve even read the copy.
Finally I, not only understand, but know, how visual elements and movement play a huge role in what a user understands.
So What Now?
For me the next step is evangelizing words as components from now on.
I don’t see how we can keep words in vacuum in relation to their more graphic counterparts in a UI. And of course, I’m looking forward to new ways I can apply this newknowledge in real world projects.
If you want to check out what I did with the entire challenge, you may do so here.
