Strategic Writing for UX, 2nd Edition

Chapter 8 Tools and Processes

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Tools and Processes

It’s best to have your tools with you. If you don’t, you’re apt to find something you didn’t expect and get discouraged.

—Stephen King, writer

There isn’t any one magic tool or rigid process to be a good content designer. Most content designers use widely available tools, even tools that are available for free. We can define our own processes, and we need to adapt and align to our teammates’ and organization’s processes. In this chapter, I share the tools and processes I use to be successful while I accomplish the main tasks of content design:

• Write for the context
• Manage content review
• Publish the text
• Track the content work to be done
• Systematize content design

Write for the Context

This book has sentences grouped in paragraphs, organized in sections and subsections, to do its word-based work. I used two common word-processing programs to write it in approximately the same format you’re reading it now.

In contrast, content inside a user interface is not a sequence of words, sentences, and paragraphs that stand on their own. Instead, it exists to be the conversation between the experience and the person using it, living in the labels, headings, descriptions, and more. The experience talks to the person with words, information hierarchy, and visuals, and the person responds by interacting with elements on the screen.

To choose the appropriate words while writing for interfaces, we need to consider not only titles, ...