So you want to be a UX Writer
Twelve years ago I called myself a copywriter.
Eight years ago I called myself a content strategist.
Five years ago I called myself a copywriter / content strategist.
Two years ago I called myself a content strategist with UX skills.
And today, I call myself a UX Writer.
So how did I go from writing book jacket copy and ad campaigns to using design thinking to strategize, write, test, and think through content on user interfaces?
I’ll tell you this. My path wasn’t clear. It wasn’t go here, do this, point A to point B. I graduated in 2008 and the terms “content strategy” or “user experience” were budding niche specialties. There was no clear path from English major to UX Writer because that path literally didn’t exist. (And still doesn’t though hey, first UX course at a university taught by Google UX leader!)
Like many, my path was a wandering path rife with pleasure and pain, great teams and tricky ones, confidence and imposter syndrome. My career intermingles with seasons of child-raising, home-making, side hustles, and before-dawn freelance with my laptop.
My career has been built on a lot of scary (for me) small steps and awesome people taking chances on me. Another thing that I think has really helped me has been consistent side projects. Even when I'm not in a full-time role, I’m blogging, making a podcast, writing a newsletter, participating in communities I care about, writing fiction, working with my writing group, gathering like-minded, women, attending conferences. Just making stuff. Usually for fun but sometimes for money. It’s been a key way I’ve kept myself learning, growing, and maybe most importantly, accountable. Because I know that I’m an obliger (thanks Gretchin Rubin!) so it’s easier for me to achieve my goals with outer accountability. What’s better outer accountability than a community depending on you for a weekly newsletter or podcast episode?
The Beginning: Sweat and Serendipity
Very early on in my writing profession, I worked as freelancer in Brooklyn, New York. I had just left book publishing and had decided I was going to be a freelance copywriter. I knew very little, I learned very quickly, and every new project was a firehose.
One early project was a dating app. I’d landed the job through a designer friend, Ed Nacional (now Creative Director of Commerce at the New York Times!). It was just Ed and I designing this new dating app. The horror was real. I woke up drenched in sweat. I poured over my brand voice pitches like it was the end of time. I obsessed over every word, took space, went back, and surveyed my ideas with a broader lens. What I didn’t realize at the time was that I was learning that there was incredible strategy behind the words I chose and what I believed/assumed would be perceived by a) the team I was pitching to as a freelancer and b) the person who would ultimately use the app. I had never separated the writing and the thought behind it until that experience in 2010. I just thought everyone chose words based on how they would “work”: get someone to select a button, clarify what was happening on this screen, make someone feel something, or guide someone to the next step. I hadn’t heard of “user experience” but I was still thrust into the act of making it.
It wasn’t until five years later that I discovered that that type of thought process and strategy has a name: design thinking. And that design thinking can apply to non-designers (me!) in contexts where non-designers (writers! from all different professional backgrounds!) are “designing” or creating experiences (moments people use their phone, computer, or another device to do almost anything, like sign up for a newsletter or look for help FAQs on a website or order groceries). What a mind-blowing idea! I wasn’t a designer per-say, but I could kind of design experiences for people that could be really great with my thinking and writing.
A whole world opened up. It wasn’t technical writing like I’d been taught about in my editing minor in 2008, but it was more technical. And it wasn’t copywriting per se, because that’s strictly wordsmithing in the realm of marketing and advertising, but it did value decisive and strategic word choice for its power to guide a user and clarify a purpose. UX writing wasn’t content marketing, because it’s just not, but there were key elements of content marketing and strategy that resonated when I dove deeper into my UX writing fundamentals studies: understanding your user, empathy, intuition, testing content.
In 2011 I read Content Strategy for the Web by Kristina Halverson and the floodgates opened. I continued landing lucky pants freelance work: a pet project for Joe Gebbia at Airbnb, an app acquired by Match.com, a byline on one of the most popular parenting blogs on the internet in the peak blogging era of early Pinterest. I started a website called Inadvertent Haiku where I took the top news stories of the day and turned them into haikus that were then illustrated by popular designers and illustrators. It was featured on TrendHunter and across the internet, and later The New York Times created their own version of it.
The Middle: Wandering, Absorbing, Doubting, Working
At the same time in 2011, my husband veered from graphic design to product design, and I was introduced to the early world of product design, product teams, and start-ups calling their apps “products” even though it wasn’t a physical product. It seems silly to mention in 2022 but at the time in NYC, it was a super exciting shift. I attended Hack-A-Thons in Union Square with our infant son and buzzing pitch contests in dim auditoriums. I saw Payal Kadakia pitch Classpass to a room of guys (except for me and a couple of others—I cheered so loud). I was behind the scenes but I absorbed the energy and excitement of the start-up NYC tech world. I was support team number one but behind that, I was observing, learning, freelancing, and studying on my own.
Flash forward to 2016. I’m working full-time for a fast-growing eCommerce lifestyle brand. Social media and online communities are the golden tickets for women-owned small businesses hawking high-end natural products. I write newsletters that bring in $200,000. I create marketing campaigns and product launches that are almost impossible to track analytics for (because we didn’t know how. Do now.) but what we can see is viral growth. It’s thrilling. It’s empowering. I see, maybe for the first time, how much impact my writing can have on the bottom line and I can never go back to working how I did before after knowing that I can write sales pages, blog posts, headlines, and subject lines that convert.
Diving into UX Writing
In 2018, I talk with Lyft and Airbnb about full-time contract UX writer and content marketing positions. They want me, but it’s contract work and the commute is an hour. I pass. I keep freelancing on my own and building my portfolio.
In 2019, it’s time. My youngest is 9 months old and I send one brave email to hundreds of women I look up to in a hundred different industries. Within a week, I’m committed full-time to a small tech company based out of the Bay Area. I work remotely. I’m hired as Lead Content Strategist. It’s five jobs in one. I take on all email marketing, a content audit, the company blog (32 posts in 9 months, folks), Pinterest, and the UX content side of the relaunch of our app. The latter leads me back down the rabbit hole I had popped in here and there the last eight years, but this time there’s so much more. There are a lot of books on content strategy. Some e-courses and digital versions of books. So many Medium articles and threads. People to follow on Twitter and the new-to-me UX and Content Slack group. I’m a fly on the wall listening and reading everything people leading the industry have written and chatted about for the last ten years.
I spend a few months on the app. We test and relaunch over and over. Things I thought would be obvious or easy are not and I feel dumb. I rewrite a lot. We make our friends and family try the app endlessly and screen record issues. Our product designer is awesome and working together she makes the app—that I wrote—come to life.
Prior to 2019, I had held physical products in my hands that had my writing on them. Beauty products, books, posters. But going through that app and seeing my work live and working, was something truly awesome.
Sharpening my UX skills (but it’s only the beginning)
In April 2020, I jumped into the intense UX Writing Fundamentals Course to really decide for myself if this was the direction I wanted to go. Certified in early May, I was ready to find a UX Writer position. Later that summer I’m hired as a Senior Copywriter focused on B2B. I learned a ton but realized I missed the strategy and technical side of writing and needed to work on a product or around a mission I was passionate about.
Fast forward to November 2020: we move to Seoul, South Korea, for a job opportunity for my husband. I write a weekly newsletter about the experience and my list slowly grows. I podcast here and there. I write 80k words in one month, nearly completing my first piece of YA romance. I eat a lot of mandu. We’re on a reality show. I update my portfolio (Google Slides, yeah!) and pull together UX writing samples. I talk to everyone. I refine my portfolio to showcase the strategy and process behind my work. I refine my UX writing samples, of which I realize I have several. I read a ton and listen to podcasts. And that’s where I am now.
So, what’s next?
I am looking for my next role as a UX Writer. We’re moving back to the States this summer and I hope to start working my dream job late summer/early fall 2022.
I’m confident I’ll land in a great spot. I’m eager to start my next chapter and work with great people working on an awesome product. I share all of this as a Hey, it can be weird and Hey, it can be hard if you are also veering from <insert marketing, journalism, design, academia, etc.> into UX writing. But there are a lot of great resources out there for us and plenty of opportunities. I wish you all the best on your search for the right next move for your career as a UX Writer!
Most Helpful Resources for Aspiring UX Writers
UX + Content Slack
UX Writers Collective UX Fundamentals Course (worth every penny)
UX Writing portfolio examples from the Content Lead at Hubspot
What resources have been helpful in your UX Writer job search? What has your path to UX writing looked like?
