Strategic Writing for UX by Torrey Podmajersky

Author:Torrey Podmajersky [Torrey Podmajersky]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Publisher: O'Reilly Media, Inc.
Published: 2019-06-20T16:00:00+00:00

Concise

There are two great reasons to reduce the amount of text in an experience. The first is that nobody came to the experience to read the UX text (except us UX writers, but we’re not the main audience). The other is the limit of usable space for text in the experience.

People find it easiest to scan text when it is 40 or fewer characters wide, and three or fewer lines long. But when writing for an experience that will be localized in several languages, we should use only half to two-thirds of the space for English text because several languages tend to take up more space.

When we don’t plan enough space, design elements can run over one another or off of the screens. Conversely, when we don’t use space wisely, character-based languages can leave distracting, unplanned blank spaces. Especially for description text, it’s important to work with design and development partners to create forgiving designs that flow to longer and shorter text as appropriate for the language.

Editing for concision is a process of winnowing down phrases to their core meanings. Then, we try out different sequences to find the ones that are briefest and easiest to understand.

For example, the title of the notification we’ll move forward with is “To keep paying by pass, update your payment method.” We can play with several different ways to start:

Start with the imperative verb: Update your payment info to buy monthly pass

Start with the purpose the person might recognize: To buy your monthly pass, update your payment info

Start with the context: Monthly pass: Payment info update needed

Start with an emotional motivator: Alert: Monthly pass payment problem

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