Back in April, I put out a piece that described my initial feelings about The Importance of Being a Better Writer. Coincidentally, around the same time, Liz Danzico was being interviewed on the popular podcast, The Pipeline, where she also talked more about writing (it really was a coincidence! I had no idea that this podcast came out until a couple of weeks later when I finally found the time to listen). Be sure to check out the podcast here. As you may or may not know, Liz is a woman with an array of different talents. One of which is her ability to write not only interesting and enjoyable pieces, but also pieces that are very clear and concise. At one point during the podcast, I couldn’t help but notice that what Liz was saying about writing not only helped to support my previous post, but has also allowed me to expand my thinking around the topic.
So what is it that she touched on that I wanted to share with you? Dan Benjamin (the podcast host) asked Liz how important being a good writer was in the space of blogging. She went on to talk about several points. One of which was the idea of being very clear and having a clear narrative throughout your blog. Essentially she was promoting and explaining clarity in writing. She touched on this in relation to being able to make points (by using very clear language).
Now I realize that this question was in the context of blogging. But it was apparent to me that this also had a huge tie to being a user experience designer. Being able to clearly make a point, to clearly get your point of view across is essential to our work. Of course, this is essential to our user interfaces. We need to design experiences and frameworks and content that clearly explains to our user what is happening. A great experience will bring users through a narrative, almost like a story, that has a setup, middle and ending, which in turn helps to provide an intuitive and enjoyable experience.
However, the ability to clearly express your point of view is also helpful with our business partners, technology partners and other design colleagues. It goes without saying that clearly being able to state your point of view is one of the most important things when talking process, design, scope, etc. Working to become a better writer is one way to help you find clarity in writing, speaking and designing, which then helps you to become better at influencing decisions and process from a UX perspective.
The last thing that stood out to me, was when Liz talked about the ability to have one clear message that your blog or blog post wants to get across to the audience. She mentioned that being able to do so, would help you to make your point in a clear and concise way, and practicing creating these points in short twitter like stints will help to improve your writings skills. So, I created a message (in 140 characters) that I wanted to get across in the post. It is simply: Being a clear communicator is vital to being a better UXD. Writing is 1 form of communication. Thus, being a clear writer leads to great UXD.
Would love to hear your thoughts/comments on this one guys!