Source: How to Prevent UX Workers From Quitting
If you’ve ever worked in UX or CX or content strategy, this is an article for you that you can relate to. I know having worked and/or dabbled in content strategy, UX, and CX, many of the scenarios presented in this article were things I experienced and was frustrated about to no end.
See if you relate to this article as well, and include your comments below.
–TechCommGeekMom
Ooh…she’s going into controversial territory here… (Well, yeah, I am. What’s new?)
I’ve heard some people say that the COVID-19 pandemic and world events really has them looking at life very differently now on a number of levels. One of those levels for me has been dealing with how do a show the world my principles in a positive light? How do I practice my principles through my actions? These are tough ethical and moral questions for anyone, but this time period in my life and our world’s history is truly bringing this to the forefront, for sure.
As there’s a good segment of technical communicators out there who are looking for work due to the pandemic, it’s a good time to be thinking about those things. For me, it’s not only doing what’s right for me and looking for jobs that appreciate what I can offer and that I can enjoy my work, but also what they are doing. As I get older, sticking to some of my principles gets to be a bigger issue, and how I can apply my values within my work and still stay true to my beliefs and sleep at night knowing that I hopefully did the right thing through my work.
Now, looking at my work history, I didn’t always work for places that always had a good reputation. At the time, I kept a blind eye that as long as I wasn’t part of that segment of the business doing the “dirty work” thinking I was okay. As I’ve gotten older, I can’t do that so much anymore. I have to feel okay that what I do serves a better cause overall, and that I can agree with the company’s mission and ethics. We all have different levels of where we stand on issues, so in some instances this can be hard. For example, if you are a person who is strongly against fossil fuels, but the industry where you live is primarily gas and oil, then there are going to be difficulties. But if you also knew about the things that the company is doing to make cleaner fuels and other earth-positive products, you might not be quite as strict about where you work. It’s a slippery slope.
It also applies to the people you work with as well. I’ve been fortunate that most of the people that I’ve worked with hold the same values that I do, and that makes work easier as well when dealing with others. If you come from the same or a similar perspective on something, interpersonal relationships with others is easier. You don’t have to agree with everything, but you generally know that if someone’s holistic ethical approach is the same as yours, you’re going to be fine.
As I continue to find my next gig, this becomes important to me. I don’t want to apply to a company that supports causes that go against my standards. I don’t want to work for a company that cheats people or treats them poorly–whether they be their employees, consultants, or even their customers. I prefer to work for companies that do look out for those who work for them and their customers, and make it a point to make it part of their internal conversations.
Like I said, it’s a slippery slope navigating in this crazy world right now, but it’s something we should all be conscious of. Where do you want to be? What do you want to support? Is where you work a place that supports the betterment of others and helps elevate us all? Our principles and ethics can slide. What might be a deal breaker for you isn’t for me, and vice versa. And that’s okay. But we should all be conscious of this, especially in tech comm work. Why? It’s actually part of our job, if you think about it. We write manuals, how-to guides, policies and procedures, training, and a host of other forms of content that are meant to help others get things done on an equal level, or at least provide a means of balancing things so things can be equal. Localization and globalization is part of that. It’s built into what we do.
So, as you continue, just think about how influential technical communicators can be in this respect. And make choices that are right for you, and right for the world that you want to leave behind.
What are your thoughts? Include them below.
There’s a new job in town. Google’s looking. Amazon’s looking. Dropbox, Paypal…many of the big players in tech are now looking for User Experience Writers. This week, Kristina Bjoran explains how writing-focused user experience designers will be a critical part of the way we design for experiences from here on out.
Source: What is UX Writing? | UX Booth
I can’t remember where I found this or who originally posted this, but I thought this was an excellent article about UX writing. I’m starting to find that UX writing and UX content is starting to emerge as something that is greatly sought. I’m fortunate that I’ve had experience with doing this over the past few years. I agree with the author that often employers trying to find a UX writer by looking towards copywriters first, and then sometimes they look for technical writers. I think UX writers fall somewhere in between those two disciplines. They are still technical communicators, but it’s a slight niche of knowing how UX and content should work, and how user interface (UI) should work. Copywriters might understand how to use the punchy marketing language needed to incur action, but technical writers understand how to use plain language and the technicality of directing people on how to navigate digitally to allow the user to get to where they want to go. So, really, in many respects, a UX writer is both a copywriter and a technical writer, with a little something extra built in.
What do you think? Is UX writing becoming its own discipline? What’s your experience with UX writing? Share your comments below.
–TechCommGeekMom
Photo credit: D.M.Villegas
Simple A’s Maxwell Hoffman happens to be a good friend and mentor of mine. I’m lucky and honored to have him as one of my cheerleaders. Maxwell recently wrote and excellent article about structure and semantics for context in content for Simple A’s blog and for the ISTC.
His article starts,
Content becomes intelligent, flexible, and capable of scalable personalization through structure and semantics.
Content drives customer experience (CX). In order to achieve optimal CX, we need the ability to manage multiple variations of content components that are dynamically assembled as relevant experiences, based on the context of the customer’s touchpoints. We need the ability to create a content component once, then reuse and deploy it many times, in many ways. This requires structured content with an intelligence shaped by semantics.
Structuring content within a well-defined content model makes content scalable, reusable, adaptable, and measurable. We cannot create real-time, personalized conversations at scale without structured, intelligent, semantically rich and truly accessible content.
He continues the article breaking down how we can create content models based on reusable content (do I hear DITA?) and how we model content has direct impact on user and customer experience. This is the foundation of intelligent content, if you think about it.
It’s a well-written article, and I highly recommend that you take a look at it.
Structure and Semantics for Context
What do you think? Include your comments below.
I made my website conversational. Here is what I learned.
Source: Technical and social challenges of conversational design — uxdesign.cc – User Experience Design
Thanks to Madonnalisa Gonzales Chan for posting this on the Content Strategists’ group on Facebook. This is an excellent article that starts to delve into the idea of how one would create UX content to interact with people. As I’ve been working in UX creating some of this style of text (but definitely not anywhere close to this deep), I found this fascinating, and the journey that the author took in exploring this brought up points that I hadn’t thought of, as well as points I could relate to.
What do you think? Where do you see conversational design going as we start to write more content for help, IoT, and other content outputs? Put your comments below.
–TechCommGeekMom
TechCommGeekMom 
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