UX Writing vs. Content Design. How they are different, what responsibilities and deliverables they entail — and the expectations that companies have ↓
In a design / UX team:
✍️ UX WRITERS work in a design team, writing and refining UI copy.
– Their primary focus is on the way the copy looks and sounds.
– Responsible for translating an organisation’s tone of voice into copy.
– Work on all customer-facing copy: from large blocks of text to microcopy.
🗺️ CONTENT DESIGNERS work in a design team on content structure/design.
– Work with designers to identify/meet user needs and ensure consistency.
– Focus on how content is structured on pages.
– Works on making content accessible from a design perspective.
🗺️ INFORMATION ARCHITECTS work in a UX team to organize information.
– Build out complex structures to help users navigate them.
– Develop taxonomies, hierarchies and categorization schemes.
– Design navigation systems, run card sorting and tree testing.
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In a marketing team:
📣 COPYWRITERS sit in a marketing team to prompt users to take action.
– Product content to engage and attract new customers.
– Edit, refresh and update existing content to ensure it remains relevant.
– Short game: prompt people to take an immediate business-critical action.
🌱 CONTENT MARKETERS sit in a marketing team to grow brand awareness.
– Produce content to establish trust with an audience.
– Measure the success of their content through metrics and analytics.
– Long game: the focus isn’t on selling, but on overall brand awareness.
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in strategy and operations:
🗄️ CONTENT MANAGER → organizes, maintains and repurposes content.
– Work with individual content writers to keep content up-to-date.
– Skilled in IA, metadata, taxonomies, CMS, analytics and SEO.
– Mostly plan and oversee content, rather than producing new content.
🧭 CONTENT STRATEGIST → sets content priorities against business goals.
– Set the vision and parameters for their organisation’s tone of voice.
– Lead content audits and quality analyses to identify gaps.
– Usually they aren’t writing copy as a part of their work.
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Many companies are very confused about the difference between all these roles. It’s not surprising to have just one person taking care of pretty much most responsibilities above, which is almost an impossible task to do. Larger organizations break down roles more granularly — sometimes with a “Search Content Designer” or a “Dashboard IA Architect”.
Content should be a part of the design process early on. We might not have the “final” content delivered, but we can get started by understanding the *type* of content we’ll be dealing with, the amount of data, the languages to support, the data types to visualize — to develop a strategy for publishing and presenting it clearly.
𝐔𝐗 𝐰𝐫𝐢𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐨𝐫 𝐜𝐨𝐩𝐲𝐰𝐫𝐢𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠? 𝐖𝐡𝐚𝐭’𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐝𝐢𝐟𝐟𝐞𝐫𝐞𝐧𝐜𝐞?
Over the past 20 years, I’ve worked as a journalist, copywriter, editor, and UX writer. Recently, I was explaining the difference between copywriting and UX writing to a friend. The distinction often gets blurred, but it matters because they have very different roles.
Copywriting is all about grabbing a potential customer’s attention, creating desire for a product, and ultimately driving action, such as a purchase.
By contrast, UX writing comes into play once someone becomes a user. It’s about guidance, clarity, empathy, and helping them complete tasks as easily as possible.
Take, for example, an electric vehicle app. You might use it to schedule charging or manage climate control. Or consider a car configurator on the manufacturer’s website, where you can choose everything from interior materials to wheel design before placing an order.
In these cases, UX writing is the text that helps you navigate these processes smoothly and confidently. This could be a button that confirms your choice, an error message, or a summary of vehicle specifications.
Of course, the boundary isn’t always rigid. Sometimes, even within a product, a more persuasive, copy-driven approach is needed, such as a call to action in a customer loyalty programme.
Essentially, copywriting is about the initial conversion. Once the product has been purchased, UX writing guides the user through it.