The Dash: The one about content strategy

This is the published edition of our weekly UX writing newsletter, The Dash. Sign up to The Dash to have these updates sent straight to your inbox! 

It’s always been part of the UX writer’s toolkit, but writing with empathy is non-negotiable when it comes to good product design during a global health crisis.

Today we’ll look at a presentation about writing with empathy for accessibility, placing a focus on CLV with ConversionXL, a roundup up of absolutely awful marketing during a pandemic, an ethics message from Facebook (we can see you rolling your eyes!) and how to get started in content modeling.

• Yeah, the words are kind of important. Adobe knows that UX writing is a critical element in making websites and apps better to use…and this article validates that even further with quotes from some of our favorite writers. One of the best pieces of advice comes from Sophie Tahran, who says that we can test the validity of our words by removing them from the design altogether. Yep, we think you’ll love this article because it perfectly articulates the important work we do.
• Plain language and taboo topics. Sarah Ebbs, product content strategist at Shopify, finds the balance of plain language and technical jargon for financial products in this great post on Medium. She gives us a list of requirements that can act as our north star when writing for products: tapping into empathy, researching language and common terms, and understanding our customers’ deep-rooted behaviors.
• Everyone needs to write. We’ve been saying it forever…but it’s nice to have Rikke Friis Dam from the Interaction Design Foundation say it too! Here are 8 super practical tips to supercharge your product writing, designed for the non-writer.
• Could’ve been better. In this edition of ReallyGoodUX, the team picked apart Airtable. While they pulled out reasons why the experience was good (we believe the words “snappy copy” were used), the fascinating part is a reminder to create experiences targeted separately to first-time versus long-time users.
• Perfect conditions. Communication is one of the most important elements of product design. As part of that, us writers need to know how designers work best…so we can chime in at the right time with the words (strategically, of course). This writer from Invision shares a straightforward design process we could all adopt.
• Websites are about the content and functionality, not the design. ← That is a quote taken directly from this article about user interface design principles. These are like a list of commandments we can all follow (designers and writers alike) to ensure the stuff we’re making is inherently good.

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