Refreshing content for a more friendly UI

As the first (and for a while, the only) content designer at Attentive, I was responsible for creating and implementing our product content standards. One of my largest initiatives was refreshing content and terminology across our UI to make our experience as a whole more friendly, approachable, and easy to use.

Team Product | Attentive

 
 
 
 

Project summary

Challenge

Make a technical-sounding UI more human and approachable.

Solution

Incorporate UX content standards and brand voice into the product.

What I did

  • Found human counterparts for technical terms and jargon

  • Rewrote common error messages to improve clarity and tone

  • Implemented a messaging strategy for our compliance features

  • Created content and accessibility standards, a UI style guide, and voice and tone guidelines

 
 
 

Process

Identifying opportunities

There hadn’t been anyone dedicated to our UI content before I joined the company, resulting in lots of jargon, inconsistencies, and technical language throughout. User feedback on various features pointed to a general lack of content clarity, which not only affected the usability of our tooling, but also users’ confidence in their own abilities.

These were known issues, and teams were usually really receptive to updating content and terminology. Still, if we were going to make changes, they were going to be drastic — and for that, I wanted to make sure I got lots of buy-in beforehand from as many teams as possible, including all of Design and Product, but also PMM, Marketing and Engineering.

I documented lengthy strategies, drafted mass emails, and even presented to our VP — but found that one of the best ways to get buy-in was just to show people what our content could look like.

 
 

When it came to getting buy-in, showing the technical terms in the UI with their human translations did most of my work for me.

 
 
 

Writing and revising content

After getting the full go-ahead to make major language updates, I chose 3 main areas to focus on for the biggest impact to the experience as a whole:

  • Overhauling the way we talked about compliance

  • Revising our most common error, warning, and info banners

  • Replacing technical terms with their human counterparts across the UI

 
 

Compliance messaging

Text message marketing is highly regulated, and helping customers stay compliant was one of our main product offerings — however, that didn’t mean we had to mention it everywhere. My strategy was to plainly state the information without bringing up “compliance,” and also help users better understand the impact on their business or subscribers.

 
 

Before: Compliance language was scary, made basic communications feel heavier than they needed to be, and put us in a position where we sounded like the authorities.

After: Users get the same information, without the scary. Now, it’s about doing something to benefit their business or subscribers — a win for empathy.

 
 

Error, warning, and info banners

I wanted to revise some of our most common banner messages to improve their clarity and tone. Users would also sometimes be served multiple banners on the same screen, so it would help to not use too many interjections or repeat phrases like “we recommend.”

Because I was just doing a content scrub, we weren’t able to update the UX to prevent these banners from showing up in the first place — though that was next on my list.

 
 

Before: Banners were overly instructional and not as accessible or inclusive as they could be. They also lacked important context and the tone didn’t always match the situation.

After: Content is shorter, more actionable, and speaks to the ‘why.’

 
 

Technical terminology

After auditing the entire product to understand how terms were being used and where they appeared, I proposed simply “finding and replacing” technical terms with more human ones — this would make common actions less scary and help the UI as a whole feel a bit friendlier.

 
 

Before: Technical terminology and jargon appeared throughout the UI in some of our most common components, though many of our users didn’t have a technical background.

After: Terminology is more approachable and inclusive of all users, and makes the UI feel more human, conversational, and on-brand.

 
 
 

Creating team resources

It wasn’t enough to just revise our existing content though — I also made sure teams were equipped for any current and future projects. Guidelines and language repositories (and many, many office hours) were the way to go.

 
 

A guide specifically for compliance.

 
 
 

Outcome

While it was a massive effort that required tons of cross-functional collaboration to not just update the code, but also our help articles, technical documentation, and communications to users, it was definitely worth it. User and internal feedback were both immensely positive, with people saying the changes made a lot of sense, helped the UI feel friendlier, or were some non-translatable string of emojis that broadly or specifically conveyed positivity I guess?