Tips for designers to write microcopy

Product designer writing microcopy

Are you one of those designers who has to write the product copy yourself because you don’t have a UX writer in your team? It’s frustrating, right? But don’t worry, I’m here today to make your lives a little easier.

Firstly, let me make this clear. Can a UX designer write UX copy? Absolutely NO and you are not expected to do that because you are not trained for that.

Unfortunately, still some organizations don’t want to invest in UX writing and so, ask their designers to write the copy. Sad but it’s a fact.

If you are working withsuch organization, let’s see what you can do in such case.

First thing, if you can convince your manager to hire a UX writer in your team, that would be great. But if that’s not happening sooner, here are a few tips to make your life easier.

If you prefer watching over reading, check out this video for the tips:

Tips to write the microcopy

1. Company’s content style guide: Study the content style guide to understand the company’s brand voice and tone, the writing style that will help you to design consistent content throughout the platform.
2. Social groups: Be part of UX writing and content design groups on LinkedIn, Facebook, etc. where you can share your copy and get feedback from experienced UX writers.
3. Content library: Create a content library that includes reusable content pieces like notifications, error messages, success/failure messages, confirmation messages, announcement copy, new feature launch copy, etc.
4. Content patterns: Establish content patterns for all the content pieces. This will help you to tweak the content as per the scenario and maintain consistency throughout the platform. e.g. A content pattern for success message can be like this — “XYZ added successfully!” You can reuse the same message for different scenarios like removing, deleting, etc.

Try these tips and thank me later. I am sure this will make your lives easier. However, I am completely against UX designers writing the microcopy because that’s not fair. You’re not expected to do that.

So, try to convince your UX manager or design director to hire a UX writer and see the results themselves. But in worse case scenarios, you can try these tips and write the microcopy for your product.

Hope you find this blog helpful and let me know your experiences in the comments after using these tips.

Happy UX Writing!