
UX Copywriting in Product Design - annaaria
https://uxplanet.org/why-is-ux-copywriting-so-important-in-product-design-85826b42d1b4
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afandian
I'm not sure "We couldn't open your camera" is any better than "Camera error".
How does a normal person "open" a camera? It's just as stuck in technical
abstractions.

And "Oops something went wrong! Try again later!" is more cutesy but gives
nothing substantial above "Request failed. Retry.". I would hope that a UX
designer doing their job properly would think about the user, how they
interact with the message, and come to the conclusion that "later" is
uselessly vague. "Try again now" or "try again tomorrow" are useful and
actionable.

There seems to be a lot more appreciation that UX is important and a
proportional increase in UX fluff. Not much of it seems to be very thoughtful.

I think there's a parallel in UI design. There's decades of HCI research, but
redesigns seem to be more concentrating on making things look pretty, not
easier to use.

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nerdponx
To hell with actionability, affability, etc. I would much rather know that
"Request failed. Error code 0xa34cc9." than "Oops, that's embarrassing!
Tacocat is all out of tacos. Please try again later."

~~~
kitotik
Which is completely valid feedback, assmuming the target user is also a tech
savvy Person such as yourself.

The average consumer on a non-tech related site tends to give up pretty
quickly when they see arcane error messages. “Oh I’m not technical enough to
use that product”.

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gnud
I vehemently disagree that the goal of UX writing should be to make users
click on a "call to action" button. That is marketing, not UX.

The goal of good UX writing should be that the users understand what happens
if they click the button.

~~~
iamben
And I somewhat disagree with your vehemency ;-)

IMO the goal of good UX is to help users to fulfil the purpose of the product
in as pain free way as possible. Clear to understand labels are definitely _a_
goal, but leading the user down a path towards completing _their_ goal should
be _your_ ultimate goal. If that's highlighting a CTA button, so be it.

~~~
gnud
I was so vehement because the article reads like the goal is to get users to
click the button. Not to help users reach their goal.

Maybe I misunderstood the article. That would be ironic, right? =)

~~~
goldenkey
I didn't get that impression from the article at all. It seemed like the main
point was having human friendly texts to smooth the interaction and translate
the experience well.

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mosselman
I always find these kinds of articles, as this one, to have too little
examples of the message they are trying to convey. It makes it feel as if the
writer came up with the subject first and when they tried to find examples to
back up their idea they couldn't find any. Maybe writers should then forget
about their article or bench it for later, so that they can gather examples
over a longer period of time. It just makes your message so much more
compelling when you can show the reader what you mean than asking them to take
your word on it.

~~~
kenning
Probably because "software ux design" is a new field and there are no
standards for academic discourse, anyone can just start typing and write an
article which gets accolades.

~~~
degenerate
Yeah, it kind of reminds me of vintage food ads from the 60s/70s:

[https://i.imgur.com/618nCzl.png](https://i.imgur.com/618nCzl.png)

[https://i.imgur.com/5FeMd8t.png](https://i.imgur.com/5FeMd8t.png)

Just because someone tells you what is good for you / your users, doesn't mean
it's true.

~~~
mosselman
Haha oh no, these are gold.

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yoz-y
> Oops! Something went wrong! Could you please try again later?

I like the gist of the article but this particular message has everything
wrong.

\- Oops! - please don’t, it makes you look like you do not know what you are
doing

\- Something went wrong! - what exactly? Is this because of me or you? I’d
like to at least see if there is something I can do or not. For example
whether I do not have internet access or your server is down

\- try again later... when? In a minute, tomorrow?

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megaman22
If you provide an error message, without providing some way of getting the
actual details of the error that occurred easily, then that is almost a
hanging offense.

Saying "Oops, an error occurred, try again later" is essentially useless.
Especially after you've seen it more than a few times. Moreover, this kind of
thing I have seen first-hand leads to some bizarre magical thinking on the
part of users, on the order of "If I slaughter a rooster, and sprinkle the
blood around, and a white goose flies overhead, the problem gets resolved."
It's staggering seeing some of the "workarounds" that customers will invent if
there isn't real error information present.

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vadimberman
> How writers say it

> "Let's talk", "Oops! Something went wrong..."

> ...Because writers are good at grammar and punctuation...

Struggling for relevance and failing. If that's all they can offer, they offer
no value. No, it's not because I have a blind spot as a developer, but because
I know my users.

That is not to say that the technical / UI writers are redundant. It's just
the level of most is ridiculously low. It's like with web design: lots of
providers, but only a handful of those that know what they are doing.

Heck, I'd be happy to outsource many of my content writing chores but I am yet
to find a combination of functional brain, ability to analyse the tech, and
sensible rates!

I know a multinational where the technical documentation department was busy
copying the documentation from an internal portal (Confluence) to an external
customer-facing portal. They would ask the developers to write the
documentation and what parts should be copied. Amazingly, they often couldn't
do even that properly. They had nice-sounding titles like "manager",
"director", "analyst", etc. To the company's merit, the idiocy was eventually
discontinued, but it took years.

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whoisjuan
Hmmm. I don't think this article get what UX copywriting means... It's not
about sounding personal or cool, but rather revealing the clear purpose of a
function... There's no real UX advantage by replacing "Contact Us" with "Let's
Talk"... Perhaps it increases your conversions or clicks, but it's not giving
the user any added extra benefit or increased clarity.

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goldenkey
I think the point made is solid but I absolutely despise cutesy lingo in
utilitarian applications. "Oops! Leggo my Eggo?!" Please don't turn your app
into oops and boops unless it is a game or nonserious work.

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88
Struggling to take seriously a copywriting article with the title “Why is UX
Copywriting so Important in Product Design”

~~~
JUSTed
Well, what did you expect from a self-publishing, self-advertising Medium
article? If anything, they've chosen their brand name quite appropriately I
would say ( _inapptics_ ). And you also have to understand that people
employed in this position have to go through all kinds of acrobatic stunts in
order to justify their salaries worth.

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ProxCoques
The HN comments are entirely negative about this article, while the ones on
the article itself are entirely positive (or supportive).

I think that means our good friend Mr Censorship has come to town!

Really, if you write about UX and don't want to engage in a decent counter-
argument, you should be doing something else.

