Writing Is Designing

• What are the steps a user took to get to this point?

Making an effort to connect like this will help you and others see that you’re not in this alone—you’ve got plenty of people around you who are trying to solve similar problems—and you can help each other solve those problems.

If your users have multiple options that will lead to different experiences, a great way to show those diverging paths is through a flow.

However, consistency comes with a warning label: Without a strategy, any effort you make to be more efficient and consistent will just help you do the wrong things faster and more often.

Words are at the center of how an interface is understood by its users.

• What’s the goal of this workflow?

• What is the user trying to accomplish here? How does this design help them?

• What did the user see right before this message?

• What behaviors are we trying to encourage?

• How are we measuring success?

A big part of your job is to figure out what your job is.