Choosing the Language for a User Interface

Several prominent UX professionals tackle the topic Choosing the Language for a User Interface in the first UXMatters Q&A column.

Exclaiming “I bet everyone is unhappy!” Whitney [Quesenbery] describes three of the intermingled issues this reader faces. “First, the language in the interface is not separable from the user interface. People using your software don’t experience the visual style, interactions, and information in the interface separately. That’s why user experience is so difficult to get right—it’s inherently multidisciplinary, and takes expertise in many skills. You should be designing the language along with the rest of the interface.

“In an ideal world, where everyone on your team has great writing skills:

• the UX lead on a project should own all decisions regarding user interface text
• the product manager or marketing lead should own branding and marketing text
• the technical communicator should own Help text" 

- Pabini Gabriel-Petit

Another advocate for writer involvement in the ownership of text decisions, Colleen [Jones] says, “The writer and the user interface designer—closely consulting user feedback—need to make the final decisions. While the writer and user interface designer should listen to feedback from the other experts on the project team, their expertise needs to be respected. While we all may be familiar, we are not all experts. We do not all understand the nuances of tone, the impact of connotations, the subtleties of viewpoint, and so on. Trust the experts!”