Name: Writing for Designers
ISBN: 9781937557799

Scott Kubie

Writing for Designers

Claudine

In design contexts, a useful way to think about writing is workflow. Workflow is a big-picture idea that accommodates all kinds of different processes, techniques, and tools. If following a recipe is a process, making dinner is a workflow. A dinner-making workflow has obvious phases—plan the meal, prep the ingredients, mix and cook things, finish and serve the meal. The specific steps and outcomes vary depending on the meal, but the basic workflow remains the same. This is also a useful way to think about design writing. No matter what you’re cooking up—no matter how custom the request and how many dietary restrictions your stakeholders might have—you’ll follow the same basic workflow each time you do the writing: Prepare (to write) Compose (the words) Edit (what you wrote) Finish (the damn writing)

The important thing is to think about how you’re going to get the writing done before you start writing.

Many of the methodologies one might use in UX work can be part of a writing workflow: stakeholder interviews, user research, content auditing, ideation workshops, critiques, and more.

Err on the side of capturing this information publicly, even if it seems like no one else cares, just to cover your butt.

At my company, we call this the “document dump.” And sometimes it’s a real dump, all right. But every junk yard has its treasures.

Let’s be real: a brainstorming meeting is a meeting where everyone is responsible for generating ideas, which also means that no one is responsible for generating ideas—so avoid them if you can.

Avoid decisions of all kinds. Decision-making is a form of convergent thinking. It’s an act of limiting, reducing, filtering, choosing—editing. Making decisions, even small ones, brings the scent of criticism and closed-mindedness into the room that can spoil an otherwise productive brainstorming session.

Good clear writing comes from good clear thinking. The less time your thoughts have to rattle around in your head, the more time they can spend in the clear light of day—and the better they’ll sound in your design.

Note to self: Never skip the rough-in, ok!

A good rough-in lets you skip right past blank-page paralysis to re-writing, which goes a lot faster.

The best way to write also generates the best kind of writing: say just one thing at a time. Say one thing in your headings. Say one thing on your buttons. Say one thing in the tooltip text, one thing in the error message, one thing in each paragraph.

If you’re feeling overwhelmed, or the words are coming slowly, narrow your scope. Focus in and say just one thing.

Numbered list mine, quote not verbatim. I love this part!

Having a lens changes your mindset from merely reading the text to evaluating the text against particular criteria. Let’s look at a few of the more common editing lenses:

Structure: How it’s organized. Things that feel complex often feel simpler once they’re in the right order. It’s the same information, mostly the same words, but organized in a way that adds context and clarifies the meaning. Language: The words you use. Many organizations strive to apply principles of plain language to their writing—using the simplest words possible in any given situation. Plain language doesn’t mean dumbed-down or boring; directness and clarity make room for your big ideas to pop. Concept: The big idea behind the writing. Clear concepts keep things simple. If you’re explaining something new or complex, consider a metaphor that’s relatable for your primary audience.

Readability isn’t about legibility in the design sense, but about what’s happening in a reader’s head as they process the words.

If we want our writing to be readable and user-friendly, we need to do more work now so that our readers have less work to do later.

Editing for consistency means making sure your writing agrees with itself, and that it agrees with all of the other stuff it’s connected to.

Controlled vocabularies are like custom dictionaries. They can exist as a simple list of terms and definitions; you could even incorporate them as a layer in a design pattern library.

In active voice, there’s action, not just existence. Putting your ideas in the right order also adds impact and strength. In a first draft, you’re figuring out what to write as you’re writing it, which means that the most interesting idea—the one with the most impact—often ends up at the end of your sentence, paragraph, or flow. Move it to the top, and boom! Writing so strong, it’s flexing for selfies. 

On having a different set of eyes view the work

That abstraction layer can be a hack, a tool, or another person (like an editor)—whatever you need to approach the work with more distance and objectivity.

Writing for Designers

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