UXmatters has published 19 articles on the topic Writing User-Interface Text.
This time, we’ll discuss two topics in Ask UXmatters:
Ask UXmatters answers our readers’ questions about user experience matters. If you want to read our experts’ responses to your question in an upcoming edition of Ask UXmatters, please send your question to: ask.uxmatters@uxmatters.com. Read More
UX writing involves designing copy for user-interface (UI) elements that users employ in interacting with applications. This copy includes labels for menu items, commands, buttons, and form controls; error-message text, alert text, and other instructional text.
To ensure a good user experience, it is essential to design user-interface text to be accessible to users with different abilities, regardless of how users navigate the software—whether using speech, keyboard, or mouse device—or if users have color-deficient vision. UX writing must serve all types of users and help them interact with a user interface successfully. In this article, we’ll provide some guidelines for effective UX writing. Read More
Put a person and a computer together, and you have the possibility of an error. Put two computers together: more possibilities for error. People make mistakes and computers do unexpected things. We try to design out the errors as much as possible, but inevitably, we end up dealing with error messages. It’s easy to find plenty of recommendations about creating error messages. For example, Rhonda Bracey gave this succinct advice in her UXmatters article “Reviewing User Interfaces”:
“Good error messages tell users what went wrong—and possibly why—provide one or more solutions for fixing the error, and offer a set of buttons that relate directly to the next action a user should take.”—Rhonda Bracey