Finds

In this LinkedIn post, Ashley Amber Sava captures one of the central problems of UX writing. UX writing isn't just about usability and accessibility, it's also about conveying the brand. To interact with a brand is to interact emotionally and mentally; mere usability isn't enough. Sometimes, we need to use the big words, the phrases that require interpretation or foreknowledge, or even the lack of words, to emphasize our brands appropriately.

That's also why I say that people don't come to the UX to read. I'm a big fan of big words, but reading isn't the point of most of the products we make. Most content designers, as far as I’ve been able to tell, aren’t employed for the quality of their prose but for the effect their writing has on the people who read it. Those effects are detected at scale, based on the behavior of the people using the products: the buttons they click, the inputs they provide, the time they spend inside the experience, and more.

When content designers write other works, we call them novelists, journalists, playwrights, songwriters, poets, and other names. Like a metalsmith could equally be somebody who works in platinum or in wrought iron, it’s important that we “wordsmiths” know the value we bring to our worlds through our work with words. Some of us focus on content strategy, and also write plays, but we don’t confuse the value of the different outputs.

I hope you experience some language that moves you today, whether that’s in a novel, a song, a news article, or even inside a digital product.

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Philosophy

As I write this, I have just returned from the wedding of my amazing daughter to her beau of many years. I could wax poetic about those two, but instead, I want to tell you about this quote from Virgil: “Non omnia possumus omnes” which means We can’t all do everything.

Everything is too big, too many things. Each of us is limited in our own bodies, our own minds, our own capabilities, our own time and space. We can only approach doing everything by working together. Sometimes this means crossing the boundaries we set up as our “owned” spaces.

I’ve seen this in countless product teams, as people not only with different roles (PM, UX, engineering, etc.) but different ideas and experiences make features that work for people. I’ve seen a UX pro ask for a different, temporary data structure from a back-end engineer, so that a website could display relevant, confidence-building data to the user on the page they need it, even though the data isn’t relevant to the underlying operation until much later. I’ve definitely worked with developers who have excellent ideas for the text, because they’re so in tune with the audience we’re creating for.

I saw this as the pieces of the wedding came together from all over, from the flower arrangements made by an auntie to the decorated fans made by a mom. The married couple “owned” the wedding, but that didn’t stop the wedding party from making the whole event work for the family and friends gathered to celebrate them.

But even then, “everything” was too big. Even with multiple people working on it, some things planned for the reception didn’t get done. It’s like when we have to cut some user stories from products in order to ship them on time. The team is responsible for meeting the central goals of the product, not for meeting every goal that could possibly be had for the product. The critical goal of the wedding is the marriage. A seating chart for a reception, while it can ease the user experience among the multiple fractious families gathered there, is a cuttable feature.

If you, living your glorious life, are struggling with a season of weddings or other celebrations, I’m inviting you, too, to refocus on the critical goals. I hope you have a wonderful celebration where all the necessary things happen, and the flexibility and grace to let go of anything that gets in the way of those things.

If you, working in your feature team, are struggling with features being deprioritized and cut, I’m inviting you to refocus on the critical goal of the overall experience. If your team is deprioritizing features that jeopardize the critical goal, they need you to tell them. On the other hand, if that feature you love will jeopardize shipping the product, they need your flexibility and grace, too.

The relationships that form when building products aren’t the same as those formed from building families. Even so, those relationships have been more important to my career than any one product or feature has ever been. But I haven’t always demonstrated the grace and flexibility I advocate for now! Luckily for me, other people were good at those things when I wasn’t, because non omnia possumus omnes.

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I write these newsletters myself, and I stand by what’s in them. If you have kudos, concerns, or questions, please tell me. —Torrey