Content is User Experience

The rising popularity of UX, coupled with the fact that I have been a technical communicator for many years now, got me thinking: Isn’t technical writing identical to UX?

Both involve:

• Clear understanding of user needs and expectations
• Strong empathy for users
• Simple, well-written text/instructions that users can understand
• Usability (of content)

Now let’s look at what exactly makes up the identities of technical writing & User Experience?

Technical Writing:Technical writing is a type of writing where the author is writing about a particular subject that requires direction, instruction, or explanation. This style of writing has a very different purpose and different characteristics than other writing styles such as creative writing, academic writing or business writing. (Source: https://grammar.yourdictionary.com)

User Experience: User experience encompasses all aspects of the end-user's interaction with the company, its services, and its products. (Source: www.nngroup.com)  

When I started my career in tech writing, I started with an e-learning company.

In all the projects that I worked on, the writer’s tasks began from identifying the main objective and target audience. Then proceeded to researching, writing, reviewing content; followed by building and deploying the course.

The entire exercise had just one goal: Build a course to cater to the TARGET AUDIENCE and provide them with a rich visual and content-led interactive experience.

This is User Experience at its best.

Inadvertently I was doing UX all the time!

Having said that, there are some differences between the styles of technical writing and UX writing.

Technical Writing ALWAYS starts with defining the target audience. Most of the times the audience is technically proficient. For e.g Operation and Maintenance Manuals, Standard Operating Procedures and Policy documents cater to engineers or technical professionals. The emphasis is on clarity and precision; end product is technical in nature with a fair bit of jargon thrown in and the tone is formal.

On the other hand UX deals with communication with all kinds of users. There is a target audience here as well whose needs the product or application is trying to satisfy. This needs to be done seamlessly through the various user touchpoints. Hence the content is simple, almost colloquial as users tend to react with the app or website as humans; and the writing should reflect this. The tone, in most cases is friendly and informal.

With a shift in mind-set and a little bit of training, technical writers can easily mould themselves to become UX writers.