Creative Writing in Design Processes

💡UX writing process within a product design UX writing plays a crucial role in shaping the overall user experience by ensuring that the language and copy in a product are clear, concise, and user-centered. General outline of the UX writing process 1️⃣ Understanding product & its users Before writing any copy, it's essential to understand business goals, user needs, and the product's context within the market. Activities: ✔ User research. Collaborating with UX researchers to understand user personas, pain points, and behaviors. Analyze user data, conducting interviews, or reviewing the results of usability tests to learn how users interact with a product. ✔ Market research. Understand business objectives and the current landscape.  Tools to use: ✔ Empathy map https://lnkd.in/dgbnRJQ9  ✔ Journey map https://lnkd.in/dNzt3NxX  ✔ Business model canvas https://lnkd.in/dHkuVfsj 2️⃣ Defining UX writing strategy Define the scope of work and resources required to achieve UX writing goals. During this step, you also need to define success criteria to measure your progress. Activities: ✔ Creating epics & user stories ✔ Estimate time/resources required to achieve the goals ✔ Defining success criteria (metrics & KPIs) 3️⃣ Ideating solutions Co-create UX writing solutions for a defined scope. During this step, UX writers typically interact with information architects and product owners to determine how to shape experience. Activities: ✔ User flow review & refinement (focus on UX writing) https://lnkd.in/diMXDNhZ  ✔ Content audit (to figure out what changes need to be introduced) 4️⃣ Prototyping Collaboratively design a solution together with a design team. Ensure that copy you write aligns with tone & voice of your product and helps achieve both user & business goals. Ensure your copy aligns with technical requirements related to text, such as UI space constraints or localization needs. Activities: ✔ Sketching & UI design ✔ Pair writing ✔ Design critique sessions (with designers, developers and stakeholders) https://lnkd.in/dwEyvEJF  ✔ Documenting content changes (if necessary) 5️⃣ Validation Test your solution through usability testing, using the success metrics defined in the second step. Create test plans that include tasks for validating copy and use the results of testing to frame the hypotheses for future copy refinement. Activities: ✔ Creating test plans ✔ Running usability testing https://lnkd.in/dZERHuMh 🖼 by Rachel McConnell #UX #UI #uxwriting

Thinking does not happen in the head. How can we easily experience this? An easy way to experience this – & perhaps even develop a more enactive creative practice -- is by using pen & paper to create concepts in the practice of writing, drawing & diagramming: Using paper & pen to think from the middle is a critical art that involves the creative development of thoughts/concepts via a deeply embodied & extended looping process. The paper & pen are not simply there to record pre-existing thoughts – to simply take “note” of what is happening “in the head”. Using paper & pen to write, draw & diagram – all of which are connected here – work as a fundamentally active & creative part of thinking's extension through the body & out onto paper & back through the body via perception. This is a looping – a looping of body-world-activity. Importantly this looping happens in the midst of other activities: reading, listening, washing the dishes, having a coffee, doing laundry, conversing, building, experimenting, walking, etc. Put simply, writing is never the recording of an activity that is actually happening elsewhere (in the head). Writing-drawing-diagramming on paper is a holistic generative activity where new concepts emerge from the middle of body-pen-paper-environment-action. What is key, & what makes it qualitatively different from "note taking" is this use of repeated looping – and how far outwards we can extend this looping. One writes to invent a new, different phrase, word, concept, diagrammatic relation via a repeated practice. The pen, hand, arm, body, eye movement is inventing the curve and shape of a new concept in repetition. As we draw we feel-see in the moment and adjust in repetition – going over a line, rewriting a word, crossing out and redrawing differently. Pages fill with similar phrases, words, paragraphs, shapes, diagrams, etc. And the feedback effects of looping shift into a feedforward effect as a concept emerges from the middle of the activity to take over and propel the whole in a new direction. Repetition is a form of invention/discovery via variation. Variation finds/produces patterns, thresholds, differences in degree and kind. Try using it deliberately in this manner. It is not about “getting it right” – repetition is an experimental tool for the development of differences that can make a difference. Follow variations – enactivly draw into the new in the sense of Machado’s “making a path in walking” We see this in the sketch book of artists and writers – pages and pages of similar shoes, bottles, lines, hands, objects mixed with repeated phrases, concepts and terms. This is not an effort to copy or reproduce – but gain a sympathy for – a shared agency with the world and creatively develop something new. Curious about how to incorporate this into your daily practices? This week in our newsletter Jason Frasca and I will be focusing on how to develop these practices. There is a link in the comments below to sign up:

As a freelance writer, I often work remotely with design teams to turn complex ideas into visuals that complement my writing. Getting everyone on the same page can be tricky when you're working with written descriptions alone. Graphics aren’t my realm of expertise, but I found a simple way to communicate with designers: Using Claude AI to create visual references. Instead of sending lengthy written descriptions to designers, I... 1. Write out my vision for the graphic with clear, detailed directions 2. Share what I wrote with Claude and ask it to create SVG visuals of my concept (these show exactly how the text should be laid out with potential design elements) 3. Screenshot and place the mock-ups into a Canva workspace, adding brief notes only when needed to clarify specific details 4. Send the Canva workspace link to the designer for them to create an on-brand graphic for the client This approach eliminates the confusion that typically comes from text-only directions. While everyone talks about using AI to scale content writing, I use it to enhance the work around the writing itself. This simple change has made a real difference: - Faster turnaround times - Better outcomes for clients - Seamless writing-design collaboration The best tool features are often the ones you least expect. What's an underrated one you swear by? PS: This is a mock-up I guided Claude to make for this post. It’s far from perfect… but it's a clear starting point for the designer to transform into an on-brand infographic :)