The Importance of UX Writing

Back in time, all writers in the company were responsible for reviewing the UI strings. At some point, the department policies changed and we were no longer responsible for doing this. 

However, at the end of 2020, when I started working on the Wavefront project, there was a need to do UI string reviews and suggestions for improving not only the UI text, but also the UX design. Some of the instructions we had were present in the UI and so, it was me who had to review, test and suggest improvements.

Truth is that easy to understand and follow UI, supplemented by meaningful UI strings and error messages can make all of our lives easier. Nobody likes to waste their time and read text which is incorrect with grammar or spelling mistakes or just doesn't make sense. Nobody likes to use apps and products which are not intuitive and require a lot of learning and research or reading hundreds of pages. 

As I like to say "Тechnical writers help users to do their job easily and go home to their families on time without the need to work overtime." 

And it's not only about the user manual or online help.

Good UX writing and microcopy guides users through the product and help them achieve their goals within the product. 

If you don't have a dedicated UX writer or a technical writer who knows the UX writing rules, please hire one! A great writer can help you improve the user experience with great time-to-value, low friction, useful features that actually work, and the best possible customer support.

A generic message such as "A fatal error occurred" can only panic your customers because they lack context. Tell your customers the true error, what stands behind it and offer constructive advice how to avoid it or correct it. 

An example of a bad error message is this NatGeo kids website message: 

Instead of just telling me that I am not eligible for shopping, tell me why can't I use the shop and how old should I be to use it. Probably a message such as:

You can't use the shop, because you're not  "XY" years old.

would sound much better?