What Is UX Writing? What Does a UX Writer Do?

UX writing, short for user experience writing, is the practice of crafting clear, concise, and useful language that guides users through digital interfaces, such as websites, apps, and software programs.

The main goal of UX writing is to create a seamless and enjoyable user experience by providing users with clear and helpful instructions, feedback, and information. This involves using language that is easily understandable, consistent, and user-centred.

Consider the last app you frequently used on your phone. Can you recall any of the words used in the app, such as button text, menu text, instructions, or notification messages? Although you may only remember a few words, the text is crucial to the app’s voice. It helps guide you through using the app to accomplish your task, whether you are a first-time user or an experienced one.

That’s why product copy is so vital that a dedicated role exists to write it: the UX writer. In this article, we’ll explain what UX writing is, what UX writers create, how they do it, and their day-to-day tasks.

UX writing involves creating customer-facing text and copy for user interfaces. UX writers plan and write the text that guides users through a digital product, application, or website. This text is also known as microcopy.

In other words, UX writers decide how a product “sounds.” It’s a significant responsibility and a rapidly expanding field, as software companies invest more in the user experience of their products.

The text that users read when navigating a product is critical. Poorly written text can make the product more challenging to use, confuse and frustrate users, and ultimately discourage further use. On the other hand, great interface copy blends seamlessly into the product. When a digital product feels easy to learn and use, it’s often due to the UX writers.

Despite their job title, UX writers are not solely writers. While they do write the text, UX writers also design the user experience of an entire product and make those experiences easier (and even delightful) to complete with the text they write.

What do UX writers create?
UX writers plan, create, and test the text that users see in digital products. This includes text displayed on a screen or reads aloud by a voice (such as from a smart speaker or text-to-speech software).

What UX writers write

A UX writer creates text for the following elements:

Buttons and other interactive items
Tooltips and instructions
Menus and navigation
Forms
Notifications
Error messages
Modals and dialogs
Onboarding screens

This type of text is called “microcopy.” Microcopy comprises small bits of text that instruct you on what to do, alleviate uncertainty, encourage progress, and provide reassurance that you’re moving toward a goal.

For example, Sale Hub, one of HubSpot’s products, has several examples of microcopy doing its job, including text on dropdown menus, buttons, tooltips, and cards, all carefully crafted for clarity.

Rather, users scan for keywords and visual cues to help them achieve their objectives – things like headings, buttons, lists, etc. According to a large-scale study conducted by the Nielsen Norman Group, concise, scannable content was rated as more than twice as usable as a regular paragraph of the same text. UX writers do not write essays. They create text content that is clear, concise, and scannable.

In addition, users often follow “scanning patterns,” such as the F-shaped pattern. In the F-shaped scanning pattern, a user begins by reading horizontally across the top of the text area, then moves vertically while scanning less horizontally, eventually scanning vertically.

UX writers are aware of these scanning patterns and design interface copy accordingly. They make the text more scannable by writing shorter sentences, including headings and lists with bullets, emphasizing important text with visual cues like bolding or colours, and placing key information at the start of a sentence or paragraph.

So why go to all this trouble to make the text scannable? The answer is simple: it reduces effort. Good UX copy is invisible. If the copy is doing its job correctly, the user shouldn’t notice or have to think about it and can concentrate fully on their tasks.

Reading text on a screen may appear to be a lot of effort, but sifting through several paragraphs of text takes more effort than most users are willing to put in. It leaves them feeling overwhelmed and likely to abandon the page. That’s why scannable text is the forte of UX writers.

Some other ways that UX writers minimize reader effort include avoiding long paragraphs and walls of text, avoiding complex language and jargon when possible, showing the user only what they need to know at any given point, and presenting it to them when they need it, avoiding excessive options, which can cause information overload, keeping a consistent voice throughout the product, and keeping interfaces familiar with techniques like visual hierarchy and design patterns.

However, this does not mean that microcopy has to be boring and lacking in personality. Writers can still inject moments of delight throughout, such as a friendly error message or a brief celebration moment after a user completes a task.

Responsibilities of a UX writer include writing product microcopy, producing style guides, contributing to copy on the product website, customer communications like emails, and support documentation. To best serve users with copy, the writing process requires a thorough understanding of the product and knowing how to present that information in a digestible manner.

UX writers work together with other stakeholders to develop and maintain a style guide for their company. This guide is important for ensuring that all communication within and outside the product is consistent and of high quality. The style guide includes guidelines for grammar, capitalization, spelling, and terminology specific to the product. As the product and its customers evolve, the language in the style guide must be updated accordingly.

In addition to providing consistency, a style guide establishes the brand’s voice and tone. The brand’s voice is its overall personality, while the tone varies according to the context and emotional level required for a particular product experience. A brand’s voice should remain constant, while the tone may shift depending on the situation. For example, a confirmation message may use a playful tone consistent with the brand’s voice, while a warning message should use a more serious tone to help the user address the issue.

As an example, Walmart’s style guide characterizes its brand voice as follows:

Delivering Handoff Documents

As UX writers create microcopy for their product, they need to organize it into deliverables that they will eventually hand off to developers who will code the copy into the product. This stage is called the developer handoff.

Deliverables can take different forms, with product mockups often being used to show how the text should appear in the interface.

It is also common for UX writers to provide a spreadsheet containing common pieces of text (e.g. “Yes/No”, “Are you sure?”) with associated codes. These pieces of text are called strings and can be inserted into the product by conducting a “find-and-replace” for the code and swapping it with the associated string.

Conducting Content Audits

A UX team may also perform routine content audits. A content audit is an evaluation of all assets on a product and/or website to determine which to keep, change, and delete.

Companies may conduct a content audit when completing a brand refresh or restructuring a product or website. It is also a good idea to perform regular content audits to ensure that active and potential users are best served.

Working Cross-Functionally to Build Products

UX writers collaborate with many team members and stakeholders to produce copy that aligns with the product vision and users’ needs. UX writers work with:

UX designers who design the entire user experience of the product
interface designers who create the visual elements of the product where UX writers place their copy
UX researchers who work to understand users’ needs through methods like surveys, testing, focus groups, and usage data
content strategists who oversee the deployment of the brand’s content, including the UX copy, to meet business goals
product managers who oversee the planning, creating, and launching of the product
marketers and brand specialists who may provide feedback on microcopy to align marketing and product copy
developers who write the product code based on the handoff deliverables UX writers provide.

User Research and Testing

If you are interested in working to understand your audience through different forms of research, UX writing is a great opportunity. UX writers are advocates for the user and need to invest time in getting to know their users.

Depending on the company size, UX writers may collaborate with a UX research team and/or conduct user research themselves.

User research plays a role in many phases of the design process, from preliminary ideation to prototype testing and even after product launch. The goal is to determine which pieces of copy truly help users, which don’t, and the pain points that can be eased with UX copy.

UX writers employ several research methods to gain a full picture of their audience, including surveys, interviews, focus groups, usage data, A/B and multivariate testing, heatmaps, usability testing with mockups and prototypes, and feedback post-launch.

Ensuring Accessibility

Finally, the UX writing team plays an important role in ensuring accessible content. Users may experience disabilities or limitations related to vision, hearing, mobility, and/or cognition, and UX writers should work with this user segment in mind.

Accessible practices include adding alt text for images, keeping microcopy as simple as possible, creating page headings that fittingly label different sections of a page, and ensuring text color contrasts sufficiently with the background color.

What UX Writing Isn’t
When looking at UX writer responsibilities, there may be overlap with other writing and content-related professions. However, it is important to understand the difference between them. UX writing is not:

UX writing isn’t marketing writing. Marketing copy tries to grab someone’s attention in order to sell to them. Marketing copywriters create the copy for things outside of the product, like landing pages and advertisements. While UX writers also convey the value of a product, their copy is inside the product.

UX writing is different from technical writing, which targets more technically adept users, rather than the average product user. Technical writers create comprehensive documentation for complex programs, often as instruction manuals or on help desk websites.

UX writing is also different from blogging, as bloggers typically produce long-form content while UX writers create microcopy.

While content strategy is not strictly part of UX writing, it may be a component of a UX writer’s job as they assist in interface design and strategy to optimize effectiveness.

UX writing involves creating the voice of a product. As microscopy can significantly impact user experience, UX writing is more than just writing and should not be left to the design team at the last minute.

Dedicated UX writers and teams are increasingly common in tech. If you’re still unsure why, try to think of a product you use with a poorly written copy. I cannot think of one.

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