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Alternate title: Creating Awesome UI Text | |
Description: | |
Have you ever looked at a beautiful Website and said “huh”? | |
You can incorporate the latest JavaScript framework, the best CSS, and excel in accessibility. | |
Your website might be as beautiful as a Rembrandt. | |
But websites with poor grammar and too much text can drive users away. One wrong word could lead | |
to multiple support calls. | |
To keep your users happy, you need awesome UI text, also known as Microcopy. | |
Abstract: | |
Web applications frequently have two audiences: end users (consumers) and administrators. | |
End users don’t want to bother with documentation, especially for “simple” tasks such as | |
creating a new account. | |
While administrators may be more understanding, they don’t want to bother with documentation | |
for everyday tasks. They don’t want to refer to documentation just to configure a new | |
property. And they certainly don’t want to decipher a “self-documenting” developer Java class. | |
Excellent Microcopy can save time. | |
I’ll share my lessons learned from creating Microcopy for a new administrative and end user | |
web interface, in the following areas: | |
Better UI Titles | |
Useful Help Text | |
Empathetic Error Messages | |
Many webapps segregate UI text into properties files, to make life easier for Microcopy | |
specialists and translators. However, when separated from the UI, Microcopy is often misleading. | |
As many of us think we know the best text for a UI, improving your Microcopy frequently turns | |
into a political struggle. I’ll describe some of those challenges as well. | |
Background: | |
Mike Jang, Senior Technical Writer for ForgeRock, has lived in the world of Microcopy | |
over the past year, as his developers have moved more functionality to the UI. He’ll share his | |
experiences in crafting Microcopy, with the goal of minimizing the need for documentation. |
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