Best Practices for Awesome UI Text

Alternate title: Creating Awesome UI Text

Description:


Have you ever looked at a beautiful Website and said “huh”?

You can incorporate the latest JavaScript framework, the best CSS, and excel in accessibility. 
Your website might be as beautiful as a Rembrandt. 

But websites with poor grammar and too much text can drive users away. One wrong word could lead 
to multiple support calls.

To keep your users happy, you need awesome UI text, also known as Microcopy.


Abstract: 


Web applications frequently have two audiences: end users (consumers) and administrators. 

End users don’t want to bother with documentation, especially for “simple” tasks such as 
creating a new account.

While administrators may be more understanding, they don’t want to bother with documentation 
for everyday tasks. They don’t want to refer to documentation just to configure a new 
property. And they certainly don’t want to decipher a “self-documenting” developer Java class. 
Excellent Microcopy can save time. 

I’ll share my lessons learned from creating Microcopy for a new administrative and end user 
web interface, in the following areas:

Better UI Titles
Useful Help Text
Empathetic Error Messages

Many webapps segregate UI text into properties files, to make life easier for Microcopy 
specialists and translators. However, when separated from the UI, Microcopy is often misleading.

As many of us think we know the best text for a UI, improving your Microcopy frequently turns 
into a political struggle. I’ll describe some of those challenges as well.


Background: 

Mike Jang, Senior Technical Writer for ForgeRock, has lived in the world of Microcopy 
over the past year, as his developers have moved more functionality to the UI. He’ll share his 
experiences in crafting Microcopy, with the goal of minimizing the need for documentation.