What are the essential elements of UX writing?

Conversation mining is a great way to gain insights about the people you're writing for. By exploring review sites and comments on social media for identified competitors you can quickly gauge how your target audience speaks. What words they use, which they don't, what their pain points are and which features they love or want. It's a simple and very effective way to find out critical information.

If your audience is rather broad, try and identify 2-5 user groups to focus on first for the sake of your writing. Typically, I'll think through the most populous user group first, then I will also define 2-4 more extremes to ensure that my writing accounts for edge users.

In addition to clearly defining the purpose of the interaction you're designing, ensure it aligns with your overall branding tone. I keep my brand's tone guidelines on hand and check every piece of writing against it.

Be pedantic. Explain even things that seem blindingly obvious to you--or especially the things that seem that way to you. "Click here for X" is 100x better than "X".

I worked as a teacher before getting into UX. I learned that IF something can be misunderstood, it WILL be. Assume no prior knowledge.

While utilizing a conversational, human voice is generally a great practice, your particular brand may have a sarcastic tone--you can still write with empathy even if there is a mismatch. In practice, this can mean using more indirect language. Instead of, "you made an error," you could switch it to, "well, that didn't work."

Creating a user journey map can be a great way to force yourself to consider what a user will be thinking, needing, and wanting at each step of their journey through the product. A well-done user journey will help you anticipate what users will be wondering at various points in their journey and meet them with answers.

Test early and often! If you wait until the end of your process to test, you will be too late. Testing doesn't have to be an extensive or expensive process to gain valuable feedback. Highlighter testing, even with one person or posting a Maze in a related Facebook group, can yield actionable information. Make sure you're testing with people as closely aligned with your target audience as possible, then trust their feedback and adjust accordingly. Depending on how specialized your product is, they may have practical insights regarding usability etc. that you haven't considered.

In my view, brand consistency in UX writing is also important in order to maintain a unified and recognizable identity throughout. The chosen tone of voice essentially becomes the voice of the brand in the user's head, so if we change it too much, it would feel off-key. Even if we use different styles, like sarcasm, we should still make sure our writing matches our brand's overall personality and values, so people can easily recognize and trust us.

Todos os tópicos são relevantes e importantes para a escrita. Contudo, também é importante considerar o conhecimento sobre o assunto, mesmo que não tenhamos domínio, é necessário realizar uma pesquisa, estudar, e oferecer o conteúdo conforme a linguagem do público-alvo.