Weeknotes 23 August, 2024

I’ve been enjoying a slower pace this week. I’m responsible for planning my sprints yet I still don’t always get it right. Last sprint, I had lots of small tasks but there were many of those tasks so it felt quite full on. Because of that, I put less on my plate this time round. And I’ve got time to spend on my goals too, which doesn’t always happen.

Reading Designing Connected Content. The lovely Lauren Pope mentioned this to me a while ago. It’s quite a technical book, with lots of strategy on how to create strong foundations for content. I haven’t finished the book yet but I know I’ll return to it in future when building my own site.

Exploring brand voice. I’ve just wrapped up the UX writing on a mobile project. When chatting with the PM they asked if we could make some of the language more “human”. I wanted to unpick what it was that they felt was missing. What wasn’t human? The mobile project uses clear, concise language. Our brand voice is the same – simple, clear and nothing abstract or complicated. Turns out the PM was looking for more conversational language, more informal.

Putting my reservations to one side, I’ve been scamping up alternatives of a single screen. What’s happening as I iterate is lots of examples illustrating why we shouldn’t tweak the copy. What we have is clear, concise, and as you would speak.

I’m still playing around to see what we can do. As I do, I’m discovering that some of the decisions we’ve made aren’t great for accessibility and usability. This has also been a good exercise for spotting things we’ve missed and fixing them.

Adding examples to content guidance. To me, it’s the example’s of what to do and what to avoid that add true value to brand voice or content guidance. I’ve spent a bit of time this sprint adding to these for our guidance.