Presenters: Elly Searle, CrowdStrike Head of Content Strategy Torrey Podmajersky, OfferUp Senior Content Strategist When UX designs are handed off to developers, they always contain words: headings, instructions, CTAs (calls to action), and error messages. These words play a critical role in delivering a usable, useful, and desirable experience. Clear, thoughtful buttons, labels, and instructional wording has a lot to do with a site’s success and its customers’ satisfaction. In this session, Elly Searle, head of content strategy for CrowdStrike, and Torrey Podmajersky, senior content strategist at OfferUp (and SVC instructors), will take you through the fundamentals of user experience writing. You’ll walk away with an improved sense of how to talk to your user so you can better meet their needs.

1. Write for Doing, Not for Reading
The UX writer’s role
Elly Searle
Head of Content Strategy, Crowdstrike
Torrey Podmajersky
Content Strategy, OfferUp

2. Elly Searle Torrey Podmajersky

3. Make it better

4. What's to come
• UX, briefly
• Voice and tone
• Be purposeful
• Be concise
• Be conversational

5. Intro to user experience
• Identify your customer’s problems and solve them
• Would they hire this UX for this job?
“All the aspects of how people use an interactive product: the
way it feels in their hands, how well they understand how it
works, how they feel about it while they’re using it, how well it
serves their purposes, and how well it fits into the entire context
in which they are using it.”
– Alben (1996)

7. Who are you to your customer?
• What’s your relationship to them? What role do you play?
• How would they speak to you?
• How would you speak to them when things are going well?
• How would you speak to them when things are going wrong?

8. * Caveats imply we’re untrustworthy

9. Be purposeful
DO DON’T
Fix the problem instead of saying
what’s wrong
Enter your email An email address is required
Objective first, then action To remove a photo from this album,
drag it to the trash
Drag the photo to the trash to
remove it
Use verbs in buttons, links Cancel | Remove Cancel | OK
Motivate by showing value (no explanation why you need
personal info)
Focus on what matters to your customers and offer useful paths

11. Be concise
DO DON’T
Eliminate filler text Save changes? Would you like to save your changes?
Use contractions it’s, can’t, wouldn’t, you’re, you’ve,
haven’t, don’t
it is, cannot, would not, it’ll, should’ve
Essential punctuation only Share your photos with friends Learn
more
Share your photos with friends. Learn
more.
Make every word and punctuation mark audition

13. Be conversational
DO DON’T
Active, present tense verbs Message sent Message has been sent
Use plain language Use
Turn on
Utilize
Enable
Reveal detail only as needed Remove downloaded book? Are you sure you want to remove this
downloaded book? You won’t be able
to access it unless you’re online.
Be positive, helpful Use 24 characters or fewer for file
names.
Your file name must be less than 25
characters.
Help them grasp everything on the first pass, embrace your voice and tone

15. To sum up
• UX is solving problems in a way that works best for your
customer
• If you talk to your customer face to face, what’s your
relationship?
• Three pillars of UX writing fundamentals
• Be purposeful
• Be concise
• Be conversational

16. Make it even better!

17. Resources
• https://material.google.com/style/writing.html#
• http://styleguide.mailchimp.com/
• Nicely Said by Natalie Fenton, Katie Keifer Lee

18. More Seattle UX writing fun times
• SVC winter quarter: UX Writing Fundamentals
Thanks!
Elly Searle Torrey Podmajersky
elly.searle@gmail.com torrey.podmajersky@offerup.com