UX Writers, Ask All the Damn Questions

When I was starting out in UX writing, I was nervous to speak up in meetings with clients. I had questions—mountains of them, big and small—but I was scared. This is stupid, I’d think, everyone here knows the answer. 

One day, I had a question I knew was stupid, but I just couldn’t get started without the answer. So I gathered up my courage and asked. Guess what? It wasn’t stupid. It turned out to be something that didn’t make sense, but no one else had caught it yet.

That was my aha moment: It’s part of the job to ask all the questions. All 👏 the 👏 damn 👏  questions. The obvious ones, the brilliant ones, and the straightforward I-just-need-to-know-this ones (spoiler alert: most questions fall into this category). 

Whether you’re a freelancer working with a client or part of a product team, as a UX writer, you need to understand the product inside and out. The more you know, the better chance you have of getting it right.

Photo by Emily Morter on Unsplash

Not sure where to start? Here’s a list of questions we ask all the time:

Voice and tone process:

• What’s your mission and vision? How did you get there?

• Who are your competitors? What makes your product different? 

• Who’s your target audience? What’s special about your users?

• What are your users’ pain points and how do you solve them? 

• What do they love about your product? What’s a challenge for them? What frustrates them? 

• Are there online forums or Facebook groups where your users are likely to gather?

• Have you already done any branding processes? Or created any style guides or terminology lists we can see?

Reviewing product screens:

• Why are we working on this: Is it a new feature, and if so, why was it added? Or, was there a problem with the previous version, and if so, what was it?

• How did the user get to this screen? Is there more than one way? Where were they just before they got here?

• What’s the most important information that the user needs to understand from this screen?

• Does all this information need to be on this screen? Does the user need it right now?

• What exactly happens when they click? Where do they go?

• Where do they have to select, click, scroll, etc.? How do they know that?

• I just want to make sure I understand what happens on this screen… (explain it in your own words).

• The current copy means X, but I think what you want to say here is Y—is that correct?

• Do you have any research that can help us understand this decision or direction?

• Are there any restrictions here I need to know about (character length, others?)?

• What are all the different versions or states of this screen (on/off, different options selected, dropdown menu options, etc.)? 

• What are all the empty states, error messages, tooltips, etc. for this screen?

• Do you have rules, structures, conventions, terms, or a style guide already in place that we should know about?

• Do we need to consult with other teams (Marketing, Legal, etc.) about the copy here?

Naming a new feature:

• Do we really need a name for this feature? Is it going to be a branded name (capitalized) or not?

• How does this relate to other features that already have names?

• Where else in the product does this term appear? In what context?

• Are there other teams that need to be consulted on this?

UX writers of the world, take this as your reminder to ask questions—all of them. You simply can’t do your job without them. 

To work with a team that asks all the right questions, drop us a line. We can’t wait to meet you!