Torrey Podmajersky

Torrey Podmajersky is a true UX writing pioneer. As a "content developer" for Microsoft's Xbox she cultivated the skills she now uses as a UX writer at Google. Her new book, "Strategic Writing for UX," shares the insights she has gleaned over 10 years of UX writing practice.

Torrey and I talked about:

how her new book, Strategic Writing for UX, arose from her attendance at Confab 2018, how meetups there of the small crew of UX writers led to insight about how to make it a "hire-able discipline"

her role as a "content developer" on the Xbox team at Microsoft and how it was really a UX writing job

how writing UI and help copy for a consumer audience was a new thing then

how her background as a high school teacher - her ability to explain difficult, abstract concepts to teenagers - helped her write Xbox help content

how the scope of her UX writing work shifted over her time at Xbox

the differences between designing text for xbox.com vs. a "lean-back" living room screen experience vs. a mobile experience vs. a "smart glass" experience

how a structured-content back-end wasn't really appropriate for Xbox content - for example, different grammars are used on different platforms

how they developed a persona for their copywriting in the Xbox UI - "We are the older brother or older brother of a friend who is sitting on the sofa next to you, telling you how to do the thing you want to do."

how the Xbox content stream strove to build in anticipation, enthusiasm, and confidence throughout the user experience

how UX content relates to the marketing funnel and marketing content - it has to match the voice of the marketing content that brought them to the product

tactics for managing cross-team relationships - from literally walking to someone's desk and saying, "Hi. I'm your UX writer. I'm new here, and I expect to work with you in these ways." to just being in the room

the myth of the lone content creator - whether it's a book or an app

old-school tech writing: "Here's this thing. It's almost done. Write some docs about it. Document these features. Document these use cases."

the definition of a "product content strategist" - she thinks it may be a description for a role conjured up by the same non-content-savvy people who think someone can just "do some grammar at it and it will be fine" - those folks, many of them hiring managers, mistakenly think that content roles (marketing copy and UX content, e.g.) are more interchangeable than they actually are

a common "support to UX" role that she sees, combining UX writing as well as help content and developer documentation

the wide range of content associated with a product: a social-media article vs. an error message or push notification vs. a piece of how-to content

part of her intent in writing her book, to educate hiring managers about the differences between marketing, UX, and support content

her experience writing her book for O'Reilly and its very rapid creation - and how she doesn't recommend writing a book on a super-tight deadline

the scope her book:

"the why" - why UX writing is unique and how it's beneficial

voice and tone and how they help meet the "why" goals

practical stuff like a "voice chart"

how to describe an experience in a conversational way

common patterns of UI copy

the importance of editing, in an iterative way (like UX)

team reviews

measuring outcomes - both directly and indirectly

user testing and user research

a heuristics scorecard

her O'Reilly book cover animal - the gray catbird - a small, not memorable, ubiquitous, and mimics the sounds of its environment - i.e., like UX :)