Writing on paper about writing in apps
The next step on my content strategy journey
I’ve enjoyed a lot of privilege and luck in my career. But maybe one the luckiest things I’ve ever done was to, in 2014, attend a workshop at Midwest UX in Indianapolis led by Scott Kubie and Michael J. Metts, two guys I now count among my friends.
A year or two later, I ran into Michael at Confab. We started talking about how, as much as we loved this conference, we really noticed a lack of programming around product content strategy and content design. After some drinks, and then after the conference, some follow-up emails and texts, we began to put together a workshop proposal to remedy that.
Here we are, three years after that. We’ve held our workshop, The conversation of UI: Unpacking voice and tone for interfaces four times — twice at the now-defunct Confab Intensive workshop-only conference, and twice at Confab Central, the big content-strateganza held in Minneapolis each spring. And we’re about to go do it a fifth time this April.
We’ve met a lot of people because of that opportunity, and had the chance to spread the gospel of UX writing to many writers over those years. And now, we’re embarking on a journey to, as the sage Emeril LaGasse once said, kick it up a notch.
Michael and I signed a contract and are in the process of writing a book
We’ve been talking with Rosenfeld Media, a venerable publisher and events company in the UX community, for months, and finally, we have can talk about it. Designing with Words: How to Write for Interfaces, comes out later this year (I hope).
Michael and I certainly aren’t the first to talk about writing as a design practice, but we’re both strong believers in it. We’ve both been on teams, and led teams, of writers who work hard to integrate a strong writing mindset into their company’s design practice. The more baked-in words and language is to designs and interactions, the better a product is at user education, engagement, retentions and brand-awareness.
In short: our goal is to empower the “words-person” at your product company — be that a copywriter, a content strategist, a support tech, a PM, a designer — to think of writing as a design practice, and get the tools they need to write interface language clearly, consistently and conversationally.
You haven’t seen the last of us
We’ll be documenting our writing process and writing in public. So much of the corpus of knowledge about this craft exists in the community, so we want to honor that and bring lots of voices into the light.
I’m grateful that Michael is on this journey with me, and his yang complements my yin (or is it the other way around?) perfectly. In fact, his deft project management mind has already set up a sprint schedule that should keep checks and balances on my extremely well-developed procrastination skills.
And on a personal note
These next few months are going to be challenging for me. While I have a lot of ideas packed in my head, I am not a particularly disciplined writer. I’ve tried — and failed every time — to form a daily writing habit, and I’ve never even tried to write a manuscript of this length. This is by far the biggest creative media project I’ve taken on, including four (almost five!) literary zines with dozens of contributors.
I’m waking up earlier, setting aside quite “writing time” at the office, and breaking my day down into writing goals I need to meet or exceed. (One day in: it’s going great.)
I’m lucky to be immersed in an online community of amazing, disciplined writers, like Harry Marks and Less Harper to name just a couple. I take a lot of inspiration and hope they they hold me accountable as well.
Thank you for your support, and following my journey. And thank you, Michael, for your partnership!
