#UX writing
15 pieces filed under “UX writing”.
Teaching what the AI can do: feature discovery as curriculum
AI features fail when users don't know what to ask. Designing discovery surfaces — prompt starters, worked examples, capability demos — that teach, not decorate.
The highest-traffic UI nobody designs: forms
Forms are the most-used, least-designed UI on the web. A practitioner's guide to labels, validation timing, error copy, autofill and mobile keyboards.
Careers pages that filter people in, not out
A careers page is a self-selection device, not a résumé bucket. Real work, honest salary bands, humane application flows — and no ping-pong clichés.
404 pages with personality (that still get people home)
A 404 has three jobs: orient, recover, charm — in that order. The anatomy of an error page that rescues sessions, and how to measure whether yours works.
Brand voice in the bad moments: errors, churn and apologies
Brands break character exactly when character matters. Voice principles for error states, downtime, price rises, cancellations and apologies that aren't theatre.
Your error pages are a system: design them like one
404s, 500s, offline and maintenance states are one family with one voice. Design them together, give each a real recovery path, and log what users hit.
Help at the point of need
The user manual nobody opens, the tooltip that shouldn't exist, and how to design help that arrives where the question does — and gets out of the way.
Voice charts: making tone teachable
Adjective lists don't teach tone; charts do. How we build voice guidelines that survive handover: axis sliders, rewrite tables, error-state voice and real-copy audits.
Notifications designed like you're not the main character
Notification systems people don't mute: severity ladders, digest economics, channel choice and the anti-patterns that train users to ignore everything you send.
Inclusive design beyond the checklist
Inclusive design past WCAG audits: inclusive language in UI copy, cognitive load budgets, SPA focus management, touch targets, and a critique criterion that sticks.
Error messages that de-escalate
An error message is a conversation at someone's worst moment with your product. The structure, tone rules and support hooks that make errors actually help.
Designing forms people actually finish
Forms are where products lose users and revenue quietly. The field-economics, label copy, error writing and autofill respect we use to keep completion high.
Empty, loading, error: the states that carry your trust
A field guide to the 20% of screens that carry 80% of trust: zero-data dashboards, skeletons vs spinners, and error copy that admits fault without over-apologising.
Empty states are product marketing
First-run, cleared, error and no-results states teach or lose people. Copy frameworks, illustration restraint, and measuring empty states as funnel steps.
Prairie Mutual: claims that take six minutes, not six phone calls
A regional insurer replaced a fourteen-page claims PDF with a six-minute guided flow — and 'where is my claim?' calls fell by more than a third.