Strategic Writing for UX

Chapter 4. Apply UX Text Patterns

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Apply UX Text Patterns

Pay attention to the intricate patterns of your existence that you take for granted.

—Doug Dillon, writer

A design pattern is a reusable, common solution to a design problem. The goal of this set of UX text patterns is to establish an easy, recognizable starting place to write consistently high-quality text. They are a tool to quickly and scalably write new UX text based on text patterns that have been successful in the past.

Like other good design patterns, these patterns don’t prescribe the words to use. They also shouldn’t create the impression that the pattern is necessary to solve any particular problem; sometimes, UX text isn’t the appropriate solution at all.

The UX text patterns included here are a basic set that almost every experience must use:

• Titles
• Buttons and other interactive text
• Descriptions
• Empty states
• Labels
• Controls
• Text input fields
• Transitional text
• Confirmation messages
• Notifications
• Errors

For each of the UX text patterns in this chapter, I provide three pieces of critical information: the pattern’s purpose, definition, and use. I also provide examples of each pattern using the book’s example experiences: The Sturgeon Club, ’appee, and TAPP. This way, you can see a variety of text patterns in different voices.

To help keep the examples clear, The Sturgeon Club screens are on the left side, ’appee screens in the middle, and TAPP screens are on the right side of their respective figures. ...