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.
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.
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.
“It’s just a dream to go to Information Development World, so I can learn more about content strategy! C’mon gang, let’s go!” says Barbie.
Last year, I was really disappointed that I couldn’t go to the inaugural Information Development World (IDW) conference in San Jose, CA. I knew, since it’s produced by The Content Wrangler and Content Rules, that it would be a top-notch event. After reading all the reviews and commentary from my friends and content strategy colleagues about how great the event was, I was even more disappointed that I wasn’t able to go.
But it’s different this year! This year, I’M GOING! I’m pretty excited about this, because I know this is a conference that is definitely geared towards content strategists who are like me–someone who not only does content strategy, but also does content management, web design, user strategy, works with customer experience, and has a love of localization and globalization issues as well. Of course, the event is also covering other topics like content marketing, data and analytics, digital publishing, and content engineering. The point of this conference is to help those who touch content in any way, shape, or form and want to enhance the customer experience through content experiences. Sounds like my kind of conference, as if it was custom-made for someone like me who is still building her content-based career!
I like that there are several workshops and presentations–80 in all–to choose from. I’m sure there will the dilemma of which ones to choose at a given time slot! While looking at the IDW schedule as it’s posted at this writing, there are several sessions I will have a hard time deciding between that I’d really like to see. For example, how does one decide between Work Smarter Not Harder – Remove the Guesswork from Content Creation and By the Numbers: Making the Case for Reuse Based on Facts during the same time slot? Or how can this former Barbie aficianado miss the Mattel Case Study: Maintaining Barbie’s Brand Fidelity Region to Region presentation? I know I’ll have to make some tough decisions between a lot of excellent topics that I’d really like to learn more about. The fortunate thing for all those who attend is that this group of presenters is the “cream of the crop”. I’ve seen several of the presenters and workshop instructors in action before, so I know that this will be time well-spent, and I will come home with my head buzzing with many great ideas and new concepts to digest!
The main focus of IDW is customer-centric–which is something that will help a lot of information developers. Having originally come from a customer service/client services background before I entered the IT/techcomm world, I tend to have a better understanding than most people, so it comes a little more naturally to me. Today, content strategy really is all about personalization and making content speak to customers in a way that it feels like the content is talking to each customer specifically. That’s not an easy task. The goal of IDW is to help everyone get a much better understanding of how this is done, and how to make it work most efficiently so that content works for you, not against you. How could you not want to learn about that?
I’m not going to miss out this year. I’m going, and it would take a lot to stop me from going. There’s too much to learn and great content strategists to meet–why would I pass this up again? I’m not making the same mistake twice! It’s a fantastic investment in ME and what I can bring to my clients.
Have you registered for IDW yet? If so, great! If not, what are you waiting for? Register today!
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.
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