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.

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