A presentation at UX Writing Meetup by Mike Atherton
When I talk to other folks in content strategy, I hear the same thing over and over. We need better sell the value of what we do.
It’s hard. People see content as the sugar sprinkles on top of design. And design as the frosting on top of engineering. Some see simple, human, and straightforward copy as an exercise in user empathy. Which is nice to have, if only your team could afford it.
So I want to look at what makes a product good. And explore some of the ways everyone working in product can use language to drive success. Words aren’t just sprinkled on the surface. They’re at the heart of everything we do.
Good products come from great ideas. A proposition that solves real problems. Brings real value to customers. But ideas are nothing without execution. That proposition comes to life in a well-designed experience. And often as not, we measure a product’s success by the growth of people using it.
But above all these things, what makes a product successful is the team that builds it. Relentless drive. Laser focus. A commitment to a common goal.
It’s corny but it’s true: Team work makes the dream work.
Launching a new product these days is hard. You’re not the first, and you’re not the only. You’re putting something into a crowded market sector and hoping for a piece of the action.
A proposition is a point of view. Taking a stand in the sector. Saying, “hey - we’re not the first to tackle this problem, but here’s how we do it and why our way is better.” That means taking a position and sticking to it. Sending a message that’s resonant to the needs of the audience, and focused enough to be remembered.
Safe cars. Instant photography. Premium vodka.
Great brands find success by fixing on that one thing that the other guys don’t do. Making an idea small enough that everyone associates it with the brand. Owning a word in the mind of the consumer.
We crown that great proposition with a great name. Names too must be focused and memorable. Easy to spell. Pleasing to say. Communicating not only a proposition, but a sense of emotion.
A good name makes us want this thing over that thing.
Of course brands don’t always get it right. Some say the poor sales of the Wii U were partly down to people thinking it was an add-on for the Wii they’d already put back in the closet.
And the controversy over Telsa’s Autopilot feature continues to haunt them. Naming is top-of-the-funnel. It’s where we first build that brand association and fix a mental model.
Where we decide whether we prefer the intelligent, quirky, or romantic choice.
Smart. Beetle. Mustang.
Think of your product as your brand. A brand is the idea you stand for, made real by what you do. So a simple, focused proposition has to be made real by a simple, focused product. A product that wraps personal empowerment in an experience that feels lighter than air.
They do one thing really well. But they’re flexible enough for that one function to be utilised in many ways. Rather than presenting a heavy toolbox full of single-purpose widgets, they’re a screwdriver. Perfect for tightening screws, but also pretty great as a back-scratcher or a beer bottle opener.
As a company, Twitter has seen better days. But that simple idea of microblogging remains at its core. A single, low-friction microinteraction. One that has seen Twitter used as everything from a loose social network to a backchannel for events. What Twitter still owns pretty well is the idea of tiny, public comments.
Products feel bloated when there’s a lot to take in. A lot of ideas to understand and remember. Our sense of how a product works is based on our understanding of its core concepts, and how they relate. Things start to feel heavy when we’re faced with too many ideas. Or when terms used are difficult to understand.
Facebook’s Workplace has many terms to describe concepts. The entities and connections within the subject domain build a map of the product environment.
One of my first jobs in any design project is to figure out what these are. After all, if I can’t name it I don’t understand it.
That makes it easier to provide structured UI copy - from buttons and menus through to notifications like this one - all built around those entities, which means you’re always planning that structure from a complete understanding of all the moving parts.
But big, rapidly-evolving products don’t always get it right. Confusion creeps in, one term at a time.
Things that are the same but described with different words.
Things which use similar words to describe quite different concepts.
Technical terms our team holds onto but don’t reflect customer language.
Words that have a general meaning outside of the domain, but a specific meaning within.
And terms with blurry edges. Presented as independent choices, when they actually describe concepts that overlap.
This one you probably experience when you stand in front of our recycling bins. Hovering with your dirty plate, figuring out whether to drop it in compostable, organic or food only. Every. Single. Time. And that’s just putting something in a bin!
Terminology is design. Language is the infrastructure that underpins our understanding of anything. As the information architect Richard Saul Wurman said, we only understand something relative to what we already understand.
The most important thing for a designer to communicate is all the things within a design domain and the ways in which those things are different, similar or related.
I explored this idea more in a book I wrote with Carrie Hane. It’s called Designing Connected Content and it’s based on work done for the BBC, ASCE, British Parliament and others. It’s a practical guide to what we see as better content management and it’s all about finding the things and connecting them together.
In the book we use the example of a website for a conference. A real one - Carrie and I led the content strategy for the IA Summit, a 20-year old annual community conference about information architecture. Great content, but kind of a scrappy, low-budget event run by volunteers. And get this - year after year, a volunteer crew would build a one-off website for that year’s event, then throw it away and have a different crew come in and build the next site the following year. Madness.
We wanted a once-and-for-all digital presence for the brand, able to accommodate each annual event into the future as part of a larger structure. We spoke to the people close to the event - trying to figure out their most important things.
So we did a lot of interviews and we listened out for the most important things. Whenever they threw out a noun, we leapt on it and questioned what they meant, how things related to other things, and which things were consistently true for every event year on year.
We listed them out. People wanted stuff about each person, each session, each event. And then some other things, like the thematic track and the format of each session would help to make things make sense. These would be the building blocks of our content strategy, keeping the focus on useful, usable content.
Then we joined them together, using a technique called domain modeling. A domain model is a logical concept model of how a subject hangs together.
The connections may look a little wibbly-wobbly, but that’s okay. Because each connection has a description of its own, explaining for example that each Event is part of the master Brand, that each Person is assigned a Role of say, speaker or keynote or volunteer. There’s a connection making it clear that a Sponsor could be associated with an entire event or more specifically with an individual session, like the Happy Hour or Karaoke socials. Takes a bit of getting used to, but this a fairly simple model. And yet powerful and reusable enough to hold true for the conference, arguably any conference, now and in the future.
Whatever your subject area, you can express its structure as a domain model.
like restaurants…
live music…
…or one of my favourites, theme parks. Getting it right is a team effort, but once you have it is a super-useful shared picture, something your designers, developers and content folks can refer to. A common language and a common understanding of how your world joins up.
Which means when we were designing the content management system for people to input website content, we could use the things in the model to add structure.
And in that model we’ve created a relationship between the session over here, and the person presenting it over there. If the session details should change, we update them once and those changes are reflected everywhere the session details are displayed. If the presenter changes, we just swap them out for a different one. If the presenter changes their name or their job, we make that change for the presenter object without breaking their relationship to the session. If they present more sessions, at this event or any future ones, we just pick them again from the roster - which has the benefit of building up a useful list of their speaking career.
It doesn’t matter if we have one session or a thousand sessions. One event or fifty events. The structural integrity holds because its based on those real-world relationships.
So you can see overall, how our terms for concepts and relationships combine to form a model our product domain. Every time we add a new term, or blur our definition, we introduce friction. People have to think a little bit harder. Cognitive load builds up.
Complexity kills usability. Fewer terms mean smaller products. And smaller products are easier to understand. Language isn’t only for interfaces. It’s the design behind the design.
Flow in a product is when someone has forward momentum. Complete focus on the achieving their outcome. The tool itself becomes invisible. An extension of themselves.
The products we make are empty containers for communication, sharing and self-expression. If we could reduce the surrounding chrome to zero, we probably would. Let people create and share without us getting in their way. But the model that drives our product must be rendered through interface views, and those views need to be controlled.
In the interface boxes we draw, and in the words that give those boxes meaning, we want to keep people on task. We want to be quiet. And this is where the kind of content strategy we usually think of comes in. You might have heard people say that ‘no one reads the words anyway’, and so conclude that content doesn’t really have impact.
Speaking as a content strategist, let me be real: it’s true. No-one reads the words, and that’s by design. Not no-one obviously. Not ‘doesn’t read’ per se. But interface copy isn’t Tolkien. It’s not written to be experienced. It’s there to keep people in flow. We notice it when it goes wrong.
When something goes wrong and the explanation makes no sense.
When the microcopy sounds odd when put next to the main content.
When we’re stopped in our tracks and asked to do something, but that something isn’t at all clear.
PC Load Letter? What the fuck does that mean? Microcopy is a guardrail. When everything’s fine, we scoot right past it. The moment we’re in danger of falling out of flow, we turn to the words to nudge us back on track.
With the CMS set up, adding the content becomes easy. We know exactly what each piece of content should be about, down to the last chunk. Through the model, we’ve agreed which content is most useful to our audience. If it’s an object in the model, it should have some content to support it. If it isn’t, it shouldn’t. The content is truly connected in the CMS, and not just on the page. All these chunks of content can be remixed and reused endlessly.
Like this schedule, where we only need to use a few of the chunks for each listing. In fact, because the computer knows the when each session starts and ends, it can compile this schedule automatically - updating the display if any timings should change.
Or this speaker page, where people who are assigned the role of keynote float to the top and get a bigger headshot than people assigned as regular speakers. This page isn’t laid out by hand, but powered by the magic in the model.
It’s much better to do interface design after that structural work. Starting a content strategy from a UI wireframe is like writing a novel by starting at the bookbinding, or taking a scatter cushion-first approach to architecture.
Wireframes crush together concerns of content, navigation and decoration before we’ve properly had chance to consider them. Wireframes often deal with ‘ideal world’ content, with that big hero image which looks great when it’s a celebrity close-up but pretty bad on slow days when you get a business stock photo instead. But having invested in structural design upfront, our architectural decisions are already made and agreed.
Each interface now is a series of templates; recipes made from the ingredients of our content chunks. These carry connections to related chunks, which weaves the content tightly together. And if the content is already in place in your CMS, an good interface designer can use live, actual content to power their prototype templates.
Keeping people in flow helps them get stuff done with efficiency, effectiveness and satisfaction. But interfaces are the sharp end of design. The tip of the iceberg.
Design decisions come from understanding the surrounding context that drives someone to action. Who are they? What do they want to do, and why? When and where are they doing it? And how do they want to get it done? Here too, words come before pictures.
Design is the rendering of intent. We first express that intent through the stories we tell.
From a native smartphone or smartwatch app, to digital signage, even a screenless voice interface like the Amazon Echo. For each interface, you can make different choices about which content chunks to include and how to display them.
It’s connected content that helps Alexa understand you. Here’s content structured for a music domain, where recordings, musicians and playlists are objects. From the way you phrase your question, Alexa knows “Thriller” isn’t just a dumb text string, but the actual name of a musical recording. Those semantics come directly from the content itself.
Our products must grow to be successful. So growth teams go to work. Email. Badging. Push. Jewels and Suggestions. Bot messages. Growth marketing is content about content, leading to more content.
Peter Drucker said purpose of any business is to create a customer. A customer is someone who wants your product. And keeps coming back for more. So you have to establish and respect and design for that growing relationship. But growth isn’t only about the tricks and the tactics. The way product brands grow is by building equity. Familiarity and connection between the brand and its customer. What you might call a relationship.
When we like something, we want to use it more. We want our friends to use it too. Endorsing it shows we have good taste. Relationships foster loyalty. They build preference, even when that flies in the face of price or convenience. If you’ve ever waited in line for a new iPhone, you’ll know what I mean.
Successful products build an audience of raving fans. They become product evangelists, and an accidental salesforce. It’s multi-level marketing. Or y’know, growth.
Here’s a masterclass in journey mapping from Dyson, the cyclone vacuum people. They’ve mapped the lifecycle of their vacuum cleaner customers. From the day you buy one, to the time when you’re learning to use it. To the day you’ll need routine maintenance. And eventually an upgrade.
Dyson know when you’ll hit each point in the customer journey. And they have campaign emails ready to go.
Here’s a note of reassurance after 7 days. You’re under warranty. You’re covered.
By 90 days, you’ll need to wash the filter. Here’s a reminder of how to do it.
And when your warranty runs out after 600 days, a message to say they’ll still look after you.
It doesn’t end there. The calendar runs for a thousand and twenty days, by which time Dyson figure you’ll be on your next machine. Yes, these campaign emails serve as a reminder to push you back to using the product. And I suppose they wouldn’t be half as welcome if the product wasn’t already excellent.
We hate it when we’re hammered with notifications from a lousy product. The value of a message must always outweigh the pain of receiving it.
Look at this one. It isn’t even about the product! It’s handy tips about keeping your house clean. Now, maybe that’s useful. Maybe it’s not. But it shows us that when it comes to the world of cleaning, Dyson recognise that your interest doesn’t begin and end with their product.
This shift in brand communication blurs the line between content marketing and content strategy. Building relationships by demonstrating a common interest.
AirBNB do it too. They know their customers love to travel, so their city guides focus on destinations. Mailchimp know you want to be a better email marketer, and their free guides help you do just that. Intercom understand you’re integrating to help grow your startup, so here’s an ebook on customer engagement.
These books don’t mention the product. But they show us that the team who makes the product share our passion.
Call it content strategy. Call it marketing. The funnel that begins by seeing a poster on the subway sets people on a path that leads them straight into the product.
It’s all one journey. One mission to get the right content to the right person at the right time. Content that builds trust, engagement, loyalty, and permission. Content that keeps customers coming back.
Facebook walks a more careful line than some other digital brands. Their products span the breadth of human emotion, and the length of human life. Without due care, their words could juxtapose with people’s messages, photos and life events in unexpected and unfortuate ways. Their products serve billions of people across many languages. The stronger the personality, the harder it is to scale, and to translate.
So the voice is small. Simple, human and straightforward. Enough personality to avoid sounding flat or robotic. But not so much as to editorialise or otherwise call attention to itself.
Not every circumstance is the same, so that voice has a little wiggle room. That’s where the ‘tone’ comes into ‘voice and tone’.
like when we want to celebrate…
to reassure…
…or show sympathy.
In Workplace, and all other Facebook products, there’s constant experimentation with voice and language variants. It’s proven to have statistically-significant impact on growth and engagement. So if you still think that content strategy is only about shipping love, let me show you the money.
This photo sharing promotion. Replacing the default CTA with “We Created This Collage for You” boosted clickthrough 28% and increased photo posts.
Rewriting this bot message to be shorter and results-oriented more than doubled clickthrough.
How about a tiny CTA change from ‘Check Out’ to ‘Next’? 87% boost in clickthrough.
Better words and design for this invitation email boosted conversion 10%.
A reassuring explanation of Messenger Payments saw an 18% increase in money sent.
Like they say in growth marketing there are no silver bullets. But of all the tiny lead bullets to try, experimenting with content has to be one of the cheapest and fastest ways to get results. You know, responsibility for growth shouldn’t be limited to growth marketers. Any more than content should be left only to content strategists.
From the tiniest tactics to the broadest, relationship-building strategy, growth is everyone’s job. The purpose of any business is to create and keep a customer. By building valuable, personable relationships we can do exactly that.
Culture eats strategy for breakfast. With a strong, clear and purposeful mission a team, even an entire company, can pull in the same direction.
Within the company, teams should craft missions of their own that ladder-up to the big one. Meaningful missions are hard. They should be audacious. Specific enough to suggest strategy, but never too specific to dictate tactics. Meaningful enough to test product decisions, but not so prescriptive to shut down a change of approach.
The mission should feel familiar to the team, as though its elements were plucked from the air that surrounds them. Weaving those words takes careful thought and even carefuller buy-in. For the Workplace mission, we tried many permutations of phrases like ‘connection’, ‘working together’ and ‘having a voice’.
Placement affected nuance. We had to choose our words carefully, because the mission is a contract. It tells everyone what the team is here to do. But also, it’s empowering. It gives each person enough freedom to try different things.
Beyond the everyday tasks. Beyond the short-term objectives. The mission points toward a bigger future. Success will come from the tactics we haven’t thought of yet.
And so ends our story. Far from being something that only sits on the surface, words determine a product’s shape and size. Where it sits in a crowded landscape. How it finds and grows an audience. And the shared ambitions that push it forward. Writing is design. It’s a growth engine. It’s a brand-builder. It shapes the very essence of your product.
In the end, everyone on a team has to respect language. Clear communication builds better products. Language builds relationships, and relationships connect the world.
Think ‘content’, in the broadest sense, right at the start of the project not right at the end. Think of it as the design behind the design. You’ll set up your product, and your team, for success.
UX Writing and Content Strategy is critical to product success. In this talk I show how great products are built from a strong proposition, crisp terminology, and authentic voice and tone.
The following resources were mentioned during the presentation or are useful additional information.
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