alistapart.com — You know all that copy that goes around your forms and in your confirmation e-mails? Who’s writing it? Derek Powazek explains why it’s important for user-interface designers to sharpen up their writing skills.
May 9, 2006 View in Crawl 4
Closed AccountMay 9, 2006
GREAT article! Applause! Applause!
goffy59May 9, 2006
At first i thought they were encouraging designers to write like robots. I do agree with this article now.
professorriffsMay 9, 2006
iProperty.Seriously?
v3xt0rMay 9, 2006
[developer] Hey, I'm not a writer, it's QA's fault.[QA] Hey, I don't get paid to actually read this crap.[boss] *thinking* I wish I wasn't such a cheap bastid and actually hired a copywriter
partyonaisle7May 10, 2006
Mirror: I've been trying to read this for some time now: <a class="user" href="http://www.duggmirror.com/design/Calling_All_Designers:_Learn_to_Write_/">http://www.duggmirror.com/design/Calling_All_Designers:_Learn_to_Write_/</a>
hackwrenchMay 10, 2006
Nah, seems to be a shill for Flickr. If I were to ask a bunch of people what they think of their experience of Flickr, I'd get "Huh, Flickr, what's that?" or "Heard of it, but never used it" more often than not. Perhaps he should learn how to write before goading others to, but then maybe he's hoping they'll teach him.
mikedothMay 10, 2006
I'm a designer, yet I always try to run a clients content through a spell checker. If it still manages to come out misspelled then I can't be blamed. Basically designers are paid to design, not to be writers. It would help if people didn't shift all the blame to the designers, and actually read what came across their inbox.
Closed AccountMay 11, 2006
Heres a suggestion: If you have a site about ie. Key West, go to a site all about Key West site and copy and paste the content instead lipsum. Yes, it is plagiarism, but if its offline or away from the public eye, use it!
rusty0101May 12, 2006
May not need to be a story on digg, but as an observation, if you are designing a site, and all you do is drag the various buttons around to give them a pleasing layout, then perhaps you need to go back to that mythical school you refer to, and try to pick up that knowledge again..
doodlehausMay 20, 2006
I'd go further and say that it's all about communication. The best design isn't all about beauty, but is also incredibly intuitive to use. So if a designer can write well, they can understand language well enough to work with the writer to reduce the communication to its simplest and most digestible form. Simple != Easy. That said, I'm sure there's a typo in this post.