Torrey Podmajersky: Strategic Writing for UX – Episode 46

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Torrey Podmajersky is a true UX writing pioneer. As a “content developer” for Microsoft’s Xbox she cultivated the skills she now uses as a UX writer at Google. Her new book, “Strategic Writing for UX,” shares the insights she has gleaned over 10 years of UX writing practice.

Torrey and I talked about:

• how her new book, Strategic Writing for UX, arose from her attendance at Confab 2018, how meetups there of the small crew of UX writers led to insight about how to make it a “hire-able discipline”
• her role as a “content developer” on the Xbox team at Microsoft and how it was really a UX writing job
• how writing UI and help copy for a consumer audience was a new thing then
• how her background as a high school teacher – her ability to explain difficult, abstract concepts to teenagers – helped her write Xbox help content
• how the scope of her UX writing work shifted over her time at Xbox
• the differences between designing text for xbox.com vs. a “lean-back” living room screen experience vs. a mobile experience vs. a “smart glass” experience
• how a structured-content back-end wasn’t really appropriate for Xbox content – for example, different grammars are used on different platforms
• how they developed a persona for their copywriting in the Xbox UI – “We are the older brother or older brother of a friend who is sitting on the sofa next to you, telling you how to do the thing you want to do.”
• how the Xbox content stream strove to build in anticipation, enthusiasm, and confidence throughout the user experience
• how UX content relates to the marketing funnel and marketing content – it has to match the voice of the marketing content that brought them to the product
• tactics for managing cross-team relationships – from literally walking to someone’s desk and saying, “Hi. I’m your UX writer. I’m new here, and I expect to work with you in these ways.” to just being in the room
• the myth of the lone content creator – whether it’s a book or an app
• old-school tech writing: “Here’s this thing. It’s almost done. Write some docs about it. Document these features. Document these use cases.”
• the definition of a “product content strategist” – she thinks it may be a description for a role conjured up by the same non-content-savvy people who think someone can just “do some grammar at it and it will be fine” – those folks, many of them hiring managers, mistakenly think that content roles (marketing copy and UX content, e.g.) are more interchangeable than they actually are
• a common “support to UX” role that she sees, combining UX writing as well as help content and developer documentation
• the wide range of content associated with a product: a social-media article vs. an error message or push notification vs. a piece of how-to content
• part of her intent in writing her book, to educate hiring managers about the differences between marketing, UX, and support content
• her experience writing her book for O’Reilly and its very rapid creation – and how she doesn’t recommend writing a book on a super-tight deadline
• the scope her book:
  • “the why” – why UX writing is unique and how it’s beneficial
  • voice and tone and how they help meet the “why” goals
  • practical stuff like a “voice chart”
  • how to describe an experience in a conversational way
  • common patterns of UI copy
  • the importance of editing, in an iterative way (like UX)
  • team reviews
  • measuring outcomes – both directly and indirectly
  • user testing and user research
  • a heuristics scorecard
• her O’Reilly book cover animal – the gray catbird – a small, not memorable, ubiquitous, and mimics the sounds of its environment – i.e., like UX 🙂
• how she thinks aspiring UX practitioners who come from a writing background – who are passionate and capable and empathetic to their users – can take on the training that UX designers get about how to show how one solution is better than another – something that writers don’t traditionally get to do

Torrey’s Bio

Torrey Podmajersky helps teams solve business and customer problems using UX content. She has written inclusive and accessible experiences for OfferUp, Xbox, Microsoft account, Windows apps, privacy, and Microsoft education, and now Google. She is the author of Strategic Writing for UX, available from O’Reilly Media starting in June 2019.

Video

Here’s the video version of our conversation:

Podcast Intro Transcript

Have you ever wondered what a UX writer does? I certainly have. So I asked one of the very first people with that job title what she does all day. Torrey Podmajersky is currently a UX writer at Google. She has also worked at Microsoft and done a lot of other interesting work. And she just wrote a new book, “Strategic Writing for UX.” We talked about her early work as a “content developer” on the X box team at Microsoft, about the scope of UX writing, and, of course, about her book.

Interview Transcript

Larry:
Hi everyone. Welcome to episode number 46 of the Content Strategy Insights podcast. Really happy today to have with us Torrey Podmajersky. Torrey’s a UX Writer at Google, and she’s also the author of the forthcoming book Strategic Writing for UX. So, tell me a little bit about how the book came to be, Torrey.

Torrey:
The book actually came out of going to the Confab conference in 2018, and it was my first time going to that conference, which I highly recommend. And it was right after, I was right between going from my content strategy role at OfferUp to starting a new adventure here at Google. And I was, so this was my vacation was going to a conference. And I went there and we had a Slack channel, and talking about product writing. And there were so few, out of 700 content people, there was 40 on the Slack channel, talking about product writing.

Torrey:
And we met up at a couple lunches, and the concerns and the things that people were talking about kind of blew my mind, because I had been doing it for eight years at that point. And the things they were talking about, like the people who had been in it a long time were like two years. I was going, holy mackerel, why are we still solving these problems? And we don’t even have a common way to talk about them as a group.

Torrey:
You know, so I left that … The conference was great and I was all energized by the content, but also left with this idea of, for this discipline to be a hireable discipline, so that companies could just write job descriptions and do that sort of thing, we needed to start figuring out how to bridge these gaps. And most of us were just one or two at an entire company. So how could we start talking about as a discipline with things in common, even if we disagreed?

Torrey:
So, with some encouragement from my friends who I told, I was reflecting on the conference, and they said, so you’re going to write a book. And I was actually having Memorial Day weekend vacation at a friend’s house, who happens to be a UX director herself. And so, of course, there were Post-it notes around, so I framed out the book and I pitched it.

Larry:
Oh nice. Wow. I didn’t realize it was that quick, that it’s unfolded. Well that’s, a couple things you just said really interest me, that like, I think the term UX writer, it’s really only come into common usage the last year or two. At least, in my experience. But you were doing it nine years ago, 2010-

Torrey:
Yeah.

Larry:
… at Xbox at Microsoft. What did, did you call yourself a UX writer then? And what was that role called? Was it?

Torrey:
So, officially, our titles were Content Developer, because all of the writing roles at Microsoft … Okay, not all of them, I can’t say that. All of the ones in my local sphere at Microsoft were content developers. And there were technical content developers, like people writing developer docs for game developers who wanted to write games for the Xbox console-

Larry:
Got it.

Torrey:
So they needed documentation about how to use the APIs and that stuff. Then, in the same … So that was sort of our sister team, and we were the UX writers, partnering with UX to write the content in the interface. Because Xbox really understood early on, and much earlier than many companies, that getting the hardware and the firmware working was one thing. Getting the humans doing the right actions with the multiple buttons on the controller was an entirely different problem.

Larry:
Interesting. Now I’m wondering, so that level of specialization’s [existed 00:03:58], like the more, and those are sort of, I’m guessing that the dev writers are like the old, maybe come out of that old school tech writing and the help folks. Whereas, the UX, did the UX folks come out of, like, more design background? Because that’s a little bit of a unicorn in that world, the UX person who can write. How do, what was the background of your team, the other UX folks?

Torrey:
The background was everything from … Well, it was a lot of tech writing and editing background. It was definitely people who understood words and help writing background. I was hired at a time when they knew they needed another UX writer, but you couldn’t put out a job description for that. And putting out a job description for another content developer did not ensure that you had somebody ready to write in the UI for consumer audiences. Because even writing for consumer audiences was a specialty 10 years ago.

Larry:
Interesting.

Torrey:
Or writing help documents of that kind. Because most help documents were written by what you were calling old school tech folks, which assumed a level of familiarity with technology and a level of comfort with technology.

Larry:
So was that the scope at the start? Was it like manuals and kind of conventional, at that time, user help materials? And then did you kind of ease your way back up into like, oh and boy, this error message is kind of weird and this piece of … Or how did that-

Torrey:
I think, I’m not sure exactly how it happened at Xbox because that was before my time there.

Larry:
Okay.

Torrey:
I will leave it to my brethren in that realm to tell that story on another day. But what we … I was brought in and I was told … I was told that it would be, that I would be good at it, despite not having any experience even doing, really, the tech writing or the … This isn’t, I had a totally different background. I was a high school teacher. So, as a high school teacher, my hiring manager said, you can explain difficult, abstract concepts to teenagers. And I said, well, yes I can.

Torrey:
And what’s great about Xbox is there’s no test at the end. So if we could get kids on Christmas morning able to set up their tech, their new technical device without waking up the family and happily playing, great. Then we won. And at that time, we had this conceit, really. And it’s a pretty common conceit. That if we did our jobs super well in the UI, then we wouldn’t need any help content at all. And I think that’s a great star to shoot for and it’s okay to land on the moon of, you know, it is, the UI is capable of taking 80% of people there. But maybe when a person is incapacitated or, and here I am thinking of people drinking heavily and then wanting to play Xbox, or something goes wrong and they don’t feel confident about fixing it for whatever reason, then we should also be providing help content to build their confidence and build their store of information to get them to the right answer.

Larry:
Right.

Torrey:
So the things really work together.

Larry:
Interesting. And what you just said reminds me, I’ve heard a thousand UX people say like, look, if you have to explain it, it’s, you know, it’s, you haven’t done it right in the first place. So, but you were still, but there are still, like you were saying, these like accessibility edge cases of like, permanent, temporary disability of some kind or another, that where you’re like, hey, a little help here.

Torrey:
Yeah.

Larry:
Yeah. So what’s, tell me, so how did the scope of your work there, did that evolve over time? You were there for a while, right?

Torrey:
Yeah, I was there for, I started at Xbox in 2010 and then left after we shipped Xbox One. And left there, we were restructuring all of Microsoft and Windows at the time and groups were moving around. So I was there and the work definitely shifted because we were shipping a new console, for example. And we were also shifting the UI. Like, we wanted to stay current and stay new and stay fresh and increase usability and playability and all of that.

Larry:
Right. And what was … I’m, that year. There’s so much that’s happened the last 10 years.

Torrey:
It really has.

Larry:
And so you’re, and I’m starting to think of this interview like an archeological expedition into the history, you know, of UX writing because like, every … Because I remember, like the rise of mobile and more people using like small screen devices, but that’s probably … There’s probably, was that part of what drove the practice that you were doing and how you did things at Xbox?

Torrey:
Yeah. What, so Xbox is unusual because we were designing for a living room screen, or like the lean back experience of you know, you’ve got this whole screen. And some people came in and said, well, we’ve got all this room, we could just use it. And that is not how people read text. So actually having designed … So when I was first at Xbox I was designing some of, or I was designing content for, some of the experience on xbox.com, as well as the Xbox console experience on the TV. And then we also had experiences on mobile, both for xbox.com and then what became known as SmartGlass, with companion experiences between your games and movies and TV shows and on your phone.

Torrey:
So designing text that would work in all of those situations and that would translate well into German and Russian and Malaysian and … It’s really quite a toothy challenge. Like it really has plenty to sink your teeth into.

Larry:
No, just what you just said. That’s a wide swath. Everything from localization to, kind of, omnichannel. I’m assuming, did you do a lot of work with like, things like structured content? Like having backend systems that supported these various?

Torrey:
So having backend systems that support the various end points in the same way and deliver the same content to them, was not a good solution for Xbox for most cases. So for some of the help content, that was actually great. So if we knew that they were looking at online website help content that could be either in the companion device or on the website, that was terrific.

Torrey:
But you would actually use different grammars if you know they are in place, in context, on the console. Because it’s not, go to the console and go to this screen. It is, we know what screen you’re on, so we’re just going to tell you the button to push.

Larry:
Got it.

Torrey:
So there are nuances like that that go deep into the language that even though we’re communicating the same concepts and we need the humans who are looking at these words to do the same things, we need to give them the information according to their context.

Larry:
Right.

Torrey:
So we had some CMS systems, and I’m sure, I know that other things happened with CMS systems there in development in the years since I’ve left, so I wouldn’t want to talk about what they have now. But we did a lot of management of those individual strings and snippets of help content.

Larry:
Right. Well I guess there’s other ways to stitch that experience together, like voice and tone stuff and style guides-

Torrey:
Absolutely.

Larry:
… and just your visual materials. How did that pan, was that, so that was more the thing that held the experience together across all these different platforms.

Torrey:
Yeah.

Larry:
Okay.

Torrey:
Yeah. The Xbox voice experience was explained to me when I first started as, and I love this explanation, is we are in the UI, not in the game itself, but in the UI, in the shell of the experience. We are the older brother or older brother of a friend who is sitting on the sofa next to you telling you how to do the thing. Not the jerk who takes the controller and does it themselves. We are the one who tells you how to do the thing you want to do and makes it more possible for you.

Larry:
Got it. So you had a well developed persona of-

Torrey:
Yeah.

Larry:
.. who that help person was.

Torrey:
That’s how we were. Yeah, that’s who we were, talking to them.

Larry:
Yeah.

Torrey:
So if that person wouldn’t say it that way, then we shouldn’t. Right? If that kind person who just, who is pretty cool, right? Probably cooler than you. Wants to … Not you, Larry, but-

Larry:
No, no, no. I get you. Yeah.

Torrey:
Yeah.

Larry:
Yeah.

Torrey:
Cooler than the person who’s playing.

Larry:
I was surrounded by kids cooler than me growing up, so.

Torrey:
Oh, me too.

Larry:
Yeah.

Torrey:
So we were able to distill that later on, especially for, in the Xbox One timeframe, of we should, the voice should be clean, casual and keep them playing. Every word on the screen should get people back to their game or their movie or their entertainment of whatever kind. And if it wasn’t moving them forward in that way, those words didn’t belong there.

Larry:
Interesting. How did you measure the effectiveness of that, at how well you were hitting that mark?

Torrey:
So we had both usability testing in progress, right? So as we iterated, as designs were iterated, just like every other design research team. Did these new designs make it more fun? Did it make it go faster? Did it improve satisfaction in the participants? And oftentimes when you get right down to it with an experience that isn’t quite as delightful as it should be yet, you are trying different variations of the words.

Torrey:
Especially in experiences like sign in and sign up. Because there isn’t much there, right? This is not expected to be a delight. This is not expected to be like, oh, I can’t wait to go sign up for something. Like, nobody says that. But we can make it lightweight and easy and understandable, and build enthusiasm and build anticipation and build confidence, so that people know that every step they’re getting closer to where they want to be.

Larry:
Right. So now you’ve got me thinking, I want to make sure that at some point, so let’s do this now, I want to make sure that we cover, kind of, the scope of UX writing. Because right there that’s like, I mean there’s stuff that’s happened before that, before you get to the sign up or log in screen.

Larry:
Can you kind of walk me through every … So you’re at everything from … Are you involved with the copy before they get to that page? Like go sign up here, and here’s how you do it. And then everything from there, we’ll just talk a little bit about the scope of your involvement in a product.

Torrey:
Yeah, yeah. The scope very much closely maps to the scope of UX design. So let me back up and sort of put that in the larger business context. In marketing, right, like if … Marketing drives awareness of a thing and the enticement of a thing and you know, gets people sort of into the funnel. And we hear a lot about the marketing funnel and did somebody like, buy the product? Did they convert? And marketing content, in general, is all about getting, you know, drawing people toward the funnel and getting them to the end of the funnel.

Torrey:
That end of the funnel is really where UX picks up and says like, oh, you’re here now, let me make it easy to engage. Let me make it easy to set up and onboard and use the things, do the things you want to do or be entertained in the way you want to be entertained. And if any problems come up, whether it’s your fault or our fault, let’s fix those problems and keep you going, keep you engaged. And that’s what the text is for. So as you can imagine, if the text is, or the voice of that text is very different than the marketing content that got somebody in, it’s a jarring experience and you feel like, oh, there’s a little bit of bait and switch here.

Larry:
Right. How did you manage that? Was there pretty close ties with the marketing department? In terms of like voice and tone manuals and just, and not even just that, but just like how you-

Torrey:
Yeah.

Larry:
Like, were they operating from the same, you know, guy on the couch telling them to buy the thing, as well as how to use it?

Torrey:
Yeah. In Xbox, we had really close partnerships with marketing and product and business and UX and engineering, all of it. Well, and legal and … I mean, there’s just a huge number of people involved and a huge number of specialties that you need in the room in order to make a great, sort of, deep experience that way. So partnering, like I’ve certainly worked on other products and other teams where the engagements were different from that. But where, that alignment is sort of, you know, we need that in order to not appear to have different personalities-

Larry:
Got it.

Torrey:
… throughout the experience.

Larry:
Something I’ve been thinking about, because the terminology is just emerging for all this.

Torrey:
Yeah.

Larry:
And UX writer seems to a be pretty common, that’s kind of settling in, kind of.

Torrey:
Yeah.

Larry:
I mean, we were talking before we went on the air that at Facebook, that the person who does exactly what you do is called a content strategist. So there’s some differences there, but I’m just curious about like the, just like how that stitches together? Like again, back to the marketing and back into that, the people part of it I guess is what I’m getting at. Because that’s, you mentioned a lot of teams, right, they’re engineering and everybody from that. How like, and I assume this is huge teams at Xbox so-

Torrey:
Yeah.

Larry:
… how, was it, were you proactively reaching out to like … Or how did the human stuff stitch together?

Torrey:
Oh, the human stuff stitches together with everything from like, literally walking to people’s desks and saying, hi, I’m your UX writer, I’m new here and I expect to work with you in these ways. To, you know, just being in the rooms and being, you know, having my design partners or my product owner partners say, yeah, don’t worry about the words, Torrey’ll work on that later. Or, you know, Torrey’s here to work on the words, what do you think? That sort of thing.

Torrey:
So, like with any of these human systems, like pretty much anytime you’re creating something that isn’t just you, just you as the sole creator, which is this amazing mythos we have. But having just finished this book, I can tell you, no, there’s an army of people. My name is on the front cover, there is an army of people who made that possible. There is an army of people who makes any of these apps or experiences possible. With the exception of like, the brand new, very lightweight, tiny little app that does a thing.

Torrey:
And so that army of people all need to communicate with each other. It is very different than, what we were talking about that old school tech writer model of here’s this thing, it’s almost done, write some docs about it, document these features or document the use cases for the people who will need to use it. There is very little throwing it over the wall, in my world.

Larry:
Okay.

Torrey:
Because if there is, then I can’t do my job.

Larry:
No, I just had lunch with a friend the other day who’s in that exact situation. You know, old school place, like boring actuarial software. And they’re just throwing things over the wall at her and just, hey write this, you know, do your writing thing.

Torrey:
Yeah.

Larry:
And she’s, you know, we talk about content strategy and like, what people like you are doing all the time. And so I think it’s very cool that you’re out there doing that.

Larry:
Hey, I want to talk a little bit about the relationship between … And this is another thing in terms of terminology that’s come up, I’ve seen. Some people, I’ve seen the term product content strategist. And some of the stuff you just said makes me think that like, product can encompass that marketing stuff as well as the UX stuff. Is that a role that you’ve seen? Because I’ve just seen the job title and I’m not sure that that’s what they meant by it, that’s what I was inferring that it was about. But does that make sense? Is there a higher level, kind of, content person that’s looking at both the marketing and the UX?

Torrey:
I’ve seen, like I wouldn’t characterize it necessarily as higher level. And here’s where it gets really funny. People, there’s a lot of people who have not been involved with creating things with words or using words in order to meet business goals or people’s goals. And they are like, well, you know, it’s language, it’s words. You know, do some grammar at it and it will be fine. You know, you’re good at grammar, do words.

Torrey:
And those people who have that sort of basic concept of what we do, think that many of these things are very interchangeable. And some of those people are hiring managers. And they will say, hey, we need to hire a word person and we need both these marketing flyers and we need error messages. And so that person, and this exists at a lot of companies, that person will be doing both of those kinds of writing for both of those kinds of purposes. Now the good news is, they don’t have to consult with the other person very often, right? Because they’re all the same person.

Larry:
Got it. So the style [issue’s 00:22:05] your lesson [crosstalk 00:22:05].

Torrey:
So the style, right.

Larry:
Yeah.

Torrey:
They know the voice, they are doing the voice at both ends. I think a slightly, more common in my experience, but you know, it’s a broad field and broadening all the time, is having people do both UX writing, so the writing in the product and the help content or the technical content and sometimes even the developer documentation. So it’s the support to UX side.

Torrey:
Because, so after the marketing funnel, and then people are engaged in things, there’s also a place where the experience might break or they might need more help or they might need advanced features that they aren’t comfortable with, so they want the help content there. That also needs to be written. So while all of it is content surrounding the product or service, it all needs to be written, they’re just all very different styles of writing.

Torrey:
Writing, you know, a marketing, a social media article versus error messages or even push notifications versus a piece of how-to content. They all have tremendously different outcomes and uses.

Larry:
And skill sets-

Torrey:
And skill sets.

Larry:
… to execute them and all that. So it sounds like you’ve had pretty good support and understanding of what you’re doing. A lot of people in my experience don’t and-

Torrey:
Yeah.

Larry:
… have you done any like, proactive kind of outreach? Because so much of this is just about educating those hire, everybody from hiring-

Torrey:
Yeah.

Larry:
… managers to people who are hiring a copywriter, you know, for example. There’s a need to, for … I think we would, all of us, all 750 of us who were at Confab a couple of weeks ago, would agree that there’s a need to get more information into those people’s hands.

Torrey:
Yes.

Larry:
Actually, this is a great way to get a segue, maybe, to your book. Was that part of the intent in writing the book or?

Torrey:
Absolutely, part of the intent in writing the book. So people I had known in my first few years at Microsoft who had moved on to other companies, were reaching out to me sometimes and saying, how do I find somebody who does, for my new product, what you did for this other product we worked on years ago? Like, what do I call that? How do I tell my HR department to hire for that? How do I do those things? And I would say like, okay, let’s talk about this. And I would lay out, well, here’s what marketing does and here’s what UX does and here’s what support does and here are the different kinds of writing. So like we just talked about.

Torrey:
And then speaking, hearing people ask questions at the Confab a year ago, about, well, what is product content strategy? What do you do? Like how, oh, well I work more on the engagement and sales document side, but you’re working on this, are those both product content? Like having that common language around it was hampering both the practitioners of it, and the people trying to hire for it and lead-

Larry:
Right.

Torrey:
… and support the people making the software. So I, part of what I was doing … Well, and I was also teaching at the School of Visual Concepts, here in Seattle,-

Larry:
Oh, [right 00:25:07].

Torrey:
… a Fundamentals of UX Writing. And that was something that I was constantly being asked. And Larry Asher, who had us start that class, he was always asking like, well, what’s the difference between this kind of content in this other kind of content? Like, don’t the same copywriting rules apply, don’t the same things apply? And I would say, no, Larry, they’re different because reasons, let me show you.

Larry:
Nice.

Torrey:
And-

Larry:
And then you accumulate enough of these reasons and all of a sudden you have a book.

Torrey:
Yeah. Suddenly, out of nowhere.

Larry:
I know. I know it’s not quite like that. How long did it take you to write the, were you like-

Torrey:
Oh.

Larry:
… unfolded pretty quickly, it sounds like?

Torrey:
It unfolded very quickly. So I first pitched the book and got a rejection. and then pitched to O’Reilly and that was then at the beginning of September. And then a couple weeks later I had an email from an editor saying, here, let’s work on this proposal. And so we worked on the proposal and then by the end of October we had a contract.

Larry:
Wow.

Torrey:
Right. So then here we are. So my deadlines were first week of December, first week of January and the first week of February.

Larry:
Holy mackerel.

Torrey:
And I got the book done. And I do not recommend writing a book on that timeline. And I’m an experienced writer. I’ve been writing fiction, I’ve been writing other things. I have a disciplined writing practice. This is too fast and too much, don’t do this. And my husband just sort of giggles at me now, and says, you know, yes, you won’t try this again, will you? Like, you will set more reasonable deadlines.

Larry:
The family’s intact and-

Torrey:
The family is intact.

Larry:
Okay, good.

Torrey:
It would not have been done without the support of my husband. Also, my house is a mess.

Larry:
Well, priorities, yeah.

Torrey:
Yeah. Absolutely.

Larry:
What did . . . tell me just a quick, kind of, overview of the book?

Torrey:
Yeah.

Larry:
Because I don’t want to go through the whole thing, but kind of getting back to your intent in writing, just a little bit about the scope and what people can expect out of it.

Torrey:
Yeah, so I start out with, why? Sort of, this idea of why is this a kind of writing that matters and what can it do for the business and for the people using the experience? And that’s the whole first chapter.

Torrey:
And then I get into the voice and tone and how that feeds into meeting these goals. And the whole middle of the book is about practical stuff. Like, build out a voice chart about things you can actually change about the text. This is not so much a style guide of like, when to use semi-colons, although it could be. This is sort of the edges. This is how you make a decision about, is this the right voice, is this [string 00:27:51] in the right voice?

Torrey:
Then getting into one model for working out when you have nothing on the page. When you know that you need to get a person from the beginning of an experience to having some result at the end, how … Like, here is a conversational method to get them there. Because conversation is the root of human interaction. This is how we communicate with each other. Even if it’s just with you know, meaningful eyebrows across the room, we can represent that as a conversation.

Torrey:
Then we get into patterns of text and sort of … This is sort of the meat of the book and possibly the most useful day to day section. I have no idea. I’m in this weird period of, nobody’s seen the book yet.

Larry:
You’ll find out soon enough.

Torrey:
Yeah, I’ll find out. But in this section I take 11, sort of, basic components that make up user interfaces, like titles and buttons and descriptions and error messages and notifications, things like that, and I use three example, totally invented experiences. One is a bus app, one is a social club app and one is a social game app. And you’ll see those in the book. And so with the three different voices that we established for those in the previous chapter, I show how the same patterns work to get you started. You know, you can just apply this pattern in that voice and write your darn text.

Torrey:
And then I say, oh God, please edit it after that. And present a model of editing where it’s extremely iterative, in the mode of UX design. You know, just rewrite it to be more conversational, rewrite it to be more purposeful, rewrite it to be more clear and then get the best nuggets you have out of that and share those with your team.

Torrey:
And I talk about how do you work with your entire team? How do you set up reviews for your team? So that you are bringing them along with you and they see the various trade-offs of what’s going on?

Larry:
Nice.

Torrey:
Then I talk about measuring the outcomes of this. And I talk about measuring, both in a direct way, like what can you measure about engagement? How can you do AB testing, how would that set up at different phases through the experience?

Torrey:
Then I talk about user testing and user research. And I say in the book, like, oh God, get a user researcher. Don’t make this up. But if you’re making it up, you know, here’s some very basics.

Torrey:
And then also a heuristic scorecard that breaks down, here are characteristics of usability and voice, including accessibility and a number of other things, that you can just use as a scorecard. Here’s a scorecard for your text and then with whatever that score is, you can say, is that good enough or should I improve things? Did we uncover things in the process of scoring it that I can just fix right now? Great, fix it right now and move on.

Larry:
Nice. Well, I can’t wait to read it. Hey, I have to ask one quick question about it. Which animal did you get?

Torrey:
Oh!

Larry:
Because O’Reilly is famous for their cover animals.

Torrey:
Oh, it is … I’m so excited about this. It is the Gray Catbird. And the Gray Catbird is a small, not memorable looking little gray bird. It’s ubiquitous in open woodlands across the US. It is … So get this, it’s little, not memorable, ubiquitous, it also mimics the sounds of its environment. So it’s practically the UX text of the US, the continental US.

Larry:
Is there somebody at O’Reilly that like-

Torrey:
So-

Larry:
… understands the book and the fauna out there?

Torrey:
So here’s the deal. O’Reilly authors do not pick their animals, but O’Reilly authors can suggest to their editing people, and fantastic editing people, hey, if it were to be something sort of like this, it would go along with the theme in these lovely ways.

Larry:
Nice. Yeah. Wait, we’re coming up on time, and I’m always like to give my guests one last chance, is there anything that we haven’t discussed or that hasn’t come up that you want to make sure you share today?

Torrey:
Hmm. I think that one of the things that I see a lot, in people who want to be in UX writing, and they’re coming, especially people who are coming from a writing background, and these people who are passionate and capable and deeply empathetic with their users and they say, you know, I want to make this better, why aren’t they listening to me? And I think that one of the things I’m really looking forward to seeing, and I’m seeing more and more, is writers starting to take on this training that UX designers have had like, in their school. Like UX designers argue for, advocate for, demonstrate, outline, they show, they spend an awful lot of time and energy showing why one solution is better than another. And that is not something that writers have gotten practice with in their backgrounds, for the most part. So I am really looking forward to people getting more of that practice and getting listened to more often, because we do some important work.

Larry:
Nice. I love that. That’s right, because that’s a common theme in all these. It’s like, we got to get the word out better. And thank you for helping with that.

Torrey:
Thank you.

Larry:
Well, it’s been great having you on. Thanks so much, Torrey.

Torrey:
Thank you, Larry.