Today in class, I was introduced on the importance of UX Writing or the importance of context within digital software. Originally, I wasn’t fully understanding to what UX writing actually meant, but it more seems to be a form of communication or punctuation of how text and context within a website or digital product is displayed.
UX writing in comparison to the use of design, takes in consideration the important needs of peoples contexts, needs and behaviours, in other words writing within the likes apps of webs is required to add context. Photos and videos can only do so much by themselves, without the presence of words to back it up.
During class a video was played to better explain what UX writing is and recommends what should be considered. Things that stuck out to me the most, that I found was helpful to understand was consideration the use of :
Smaller Paragraphs
Links
Bolding
Visuals (Diagrams on articles)
Callouts
Quotation Blocks
Following this, to me it seems to be how the back of a book sumerise the entire story of the actual book. Ux writing more or less can be used to explain or provide quick and simple context to a piece of information.
One of the biggest examples and most common of UX writing that was talked about during class were Forms. Forms come in many different, well forms such as creating accounts, member sign ups, continuing with, linking emails, etc.
Forms are the easiest and most recognised due to it’s structure, as they are usually just made up of a couple of boxes and very minimal yet useful information used as a sort of labelling or tutorial for the user.
An example of this would be MailChimp. To me it’s a really good example to use for this as they have more than just one use of UX writing in their forms. Aside from their sign up forms, it’s paired with visuals/ icon for the ‘Show’ button within the password section. It also provides a bullet list for the password section of what is required when creating a password.
6 Sign Up Form Examples For More Website Conversions
Error messages, are another important and frequently used form of UX writing within digital products. It was really interesting to learn about ways to go about error issues and what to avoid, once it was being explained in class I could relate to these examples right away.
A huge example of what I found about this is filling out a form that require mandatory information that can either be in correct or missed, gets highlighted and the user is brought to the problem, whilst being provided what information on as to why it was flagged.
Some websites deny the user clearance on a website that requires a 5 page form with hundreds of mandatory questions that a user may have missed or filled in correctly, and the website doesn’t highlight where the issue is, doesn’t bring the user to the issue, or doesn’t explain what the issue is either.