Ever wondered what the hell UX writing is? You’re not the only one. Mario Ferrer breaks it down for us
Mario Ferrer thought he wanted to be an advertising copywriter for the rest of his life. But when he started working with product teams to create user-friendly content, he realised he’d been wrong about the ad man calling all along. These days Mario is a fully-signed up UX writing pro, heading up the UX Writing team at games giant King.
When he’s not doing that, he’s activating the nascent Barcelona UX writing community, snapping film photography or taking care of his two young children, “his other fulltime job”. So I was super lucky to be able to find a window in his crazy schedule to interview Mario about UX writing, where it fits in with content marketing and what the scene is like in Spain right now.
Can you explain what UX writing is in just one sentence? Or maybe two!
I think UX writing is writing clear, concise and useful copy. It’s big in terms of everything that has to do with the world of digital products and services.
So how is it different from content writing?
On one side you’ve got marketing writing and content. You guys try to attract people to your app, website, product or service. You’re the people that make it beautiful.
Then it’s the job of UX writers to guide them through using the product. We act as a guide rather than a persuasion tool. The more invisible we are to the user, the better we’re doing our job. UX writing normally sits in a UX team or content strategy team; the strategy lead the way and we’re more hands-down nitty gritty.
Most of the text in UX writing is about being precise. Yes, you can be cheeky and fun sometimes, but people come here to do a task and we have to guide them through that.
How did you get into UX writing?
I started in advertising. I was an advertising copywriter, a creative copywriter. As a team we’d do content creation and ideation, and then I would do the copy, whether that was a radio or TV spot, or a webpage. I started out as a copywriter for an ad agency, then copywriting in tech companies, before moving over to UX writing.
Is that a common path for people to take?
I want to say yes, I think so. Thing is, when you start working in-house with product teams, you learn this whole new philosophy of having the user at the centre of everything you do. You learn how to tailor a message to make a sure the user can do what they actually came to your product to do… I’ve seen people switching over from copywriting to UX writing in that moment.
That said, UX writing as a thing is pretty new, even though people have been doing it their whole life without calling it UX writing. The problem is that right now most interfaces are written by the designer, the developer or the product manager. People say everybody can write, but no – everybody has Word. That doesn’t mean that you know how to write.
Sarah Richards says this thing that I love about content design. She says, “it’s not about dumbing down, it’s about opening up”. You don’t know where the user is reading – they might be cooking or on a busy commute. They need information as quickly as possible, we have know how to deliver that.
Read my hacks for listening to users and customers without doing surveys or focus groups
UX writing is big in the US and the UK, but how about here in Spain?
Yes, it’s big in the US and is starting to become really big in the UK. It’s starting to get big in Nordic countries like Sweden. And interesting the community in Israel is huge. There’s Kinneret Yifrah, she has a studio dedicated solely to microcopy. And Yuval Keshtcher, he created the UX Writing Hub, and he’s from Israel too.
It’s still pretty small in Spain. Like, I started a Slack channel for people dedicated to UX writing and there are only about 20 of us. We’re always looking for new members so feel free to join the group, everyone!
What are the average salaries like for UX writing here in Spain?
I have no idea! I think you shared a list in your Facebook group about marketing salaries, right? That’s the closest information I’ve seen and there’s no UX writing on that list. Unfortunately, it’s still an afterthought of UX Design. And UX Design is still an afterthought of product design. So, we’re the afterthought of the afterthought! There’s not much information on salaries right now.
Tell us what you do on a typical day in the office at King
No two days are the same – I know everyone says that but it’s true! For me it’s basic, I need coffee or no one can talk to me.
We work in an Agile environment because we work closely with product team and the marketing team. We’re the bridge between those two worlds. For me that’s interesting: I know how marketers work because I come from that world, and now I know how devs speak because I’m a part of this world now.
We start off the day with a stand-up to see what we’re working on, and then for me there’s a lot of writing involved in my day since I’m the only one on the team right now. But ideally I’d like to spend more time talking to different stakeholders to find out what they need, and then get that out faster and do user testing. We’re putting together a team to be able to do that.
King’s content team is hiring!
We’re a games company, we have a whole bunch of games and each has a different tone of voice. So I find myself writing in different tones of voice all day – at the end of the day I’m hearing voices in my head! We’ve got witches and quirky voices and Candy Crush and whoa, it’s crazy.
What kind of person do you need to be to be a good UX writer?
You have to be super curious, because you have to be able to ask why a lot. All the time, “why are we doing this?”
And second, you have to be curious to find more information about the discipline because it’s really new, and best practices aren’t really set yet. I spend a lot of time reading through blogs to see how people are doing things, especially on a practical level. You need to be super curious about that. You need to be really good at language – you need to know the rules to be able to break them – and you need to be able to simplify a complex idea into 8 words or less. That takes time to learn.
When you’re doing copywriting you can make stuff short and small and pretty. When you’re doing UX writing you stop thinking about individual screens and start thinking about full flows. What is the first point of interaction the user has, where does that take you where does that take you? You need to think about the full experience rather than a pretty ad on the paper. That for me was the biggest change.
You have to read about UX, you have to do courses about UX, anything that you can get your hands on. It doesn’t mean that you’re going to become a UX designer, but you need to know how it works and what the rules are.
Can you recommend any courses or books that would help someone kick off a career in UX writing?
Sure! I wanted to be an ad man for the rest of my life so when I started doing UX writing I read all the time. I can recommend some great books:
- “Microcopy: The Complete Guide”, Kinneret Yifrah
- “Nicely Said: Writing for the Web with Style and Purpose”, Nicole Fenton and Kate Kiefer Lee
- “Conversational Design”, Erika Hall
- “Writing for Interaction”, Linda Newman Lior
- “How to Design Words”, John Saito (blogpost)
- “Write Like a Human”, Amy Thibodeau
- Dropbox’s blog
This is such a small community, people are very willing to share how they’re cracking their problems. We’re not big enough to be like “no! this is they way I do stuff and I’m not gonna tell you how I do it!” People say “hey I tried this, I failed, try it and see what’s up.”
I see that with your Content Facebook group as well – you ask a question and people are chipping in and chiming in and it’s like, this is beautiful!
