As a technical writer, I know about creating user-centred content. Â But I've never worked as an out-and-out UX writer (although I have written microcopy for software as part of my tech writing work). I'd like to explore the world of UX writing, so I decided to do the Daily UX challenge set by https://www.dailyuxwriting.com.
With this series of posts, I'll present the challenge and how I responded to it. Note, my first stab at this was a couple of years ago, but I never got around to adding all the posts. So I revisited the challenge and learned how to create mock-ups in Figma. I'll be adding all of the challenge pages this time, over the course of a few weeks.
Let's kick it off with the Day 1 challenge.
Scenario
A traveler is in an airport waiting for the last leg of a flight home when their flight gets abruptly canceled due to bad weather.
Challenge
Write a message from the airline app notifying them of the cancellation and what they need to do next.
Headline (45 characters max)
Body (175 characters max).
My answer
For this one, I thought about the various user scenarios. Some might want to be booked on the next flight automatically, but there could be others who don't want to be on the next flight at all. For example, if they were going to a time-sensitive event, and the cancelled flight means they won't make it now, so have no reason to fly to the destination.
I also thought about how people would be feeling - annoyed, frustrated, possibly confused - and decided it was important to explain the reason for the cancellation. This will help people to understand the situation and realise the airline took the action for sensible reasons. I also decided to include the flight number so that passengers could confirm that this really did apply to them and wasn't a generic message. Ideally, I'd have included the destination too, but there's limited character space.
There was no mention in the challenge about what the airline would do to help, so it seemed best to advise the customer to contact an agent.
Looking for a UX writer?
Do you need a UX writer for your project? I'd love to hear from you. I've worked in software teams for most of my career as a technical writer and have trained as a content designer and copywriter too. I know about user journeys, work flows, and user-centred content. Microcopy, long form content, I can do it all.
Craig Wright is an experienced technical writer based in Chesterfield, UK. Â He hates writing about himself in the third person, so I shall stop now.
Always interested in new content writing opportunities. Remote working preferred.
