A day in the life of a (solo) UX writer
Wonder what it’s like to be a UX writer? No day is the same but if it was it would happen to look something like this…
8:30-9am ☕️
I grab myself a tea and check messages on my Slack/Teams groups in case there is anything urgent to pick up.
10am (2 days a week) 📆
Stand up! No, not literally. My team has a quick sync twice a week on the projects we’re working on and any concerns or blockers to shout out. We have an amazing programme manager who looks after everyone’s work capacity, delegates projects and escalates any of our concerns.
11am 👩🏽💻
For the next couple of hours, I’ll attend weekly WIPs on projects I’m working on. These calls involve what we call the ‘EM’ owning the project (Experience manager/Product manager), the UX designer and often the UX researcher if we are going to test the feature later on. We will all share our individual updates and get feedback from the EM on next steps and any changes. This helps us stay aligned, focused and present.
At the moment, I work with 9 designers so across roughly 9 projects for the mobile app! Although, the workload can differ from brief to brief — one might simply require a title or call to action whereas another is more content-heavy and I could be writing or reviewing around 30 screens. How do I manage it all? Set aside some focus time in my diary, snooze my slack notifications and get in the zone. It can be challenging jumping from project to project, understanding the brief and then actually getting creative but I recommend setting yourself and your team some boundaries, reminding them that you are the only one across many projects and letting them know when you can fit in the work and don’t be afraid to push back!
Afternoon 👣
I’ll get some down time to do exploration work, research competitors, and mock up some copy examples. We use Sketch to design so I always create a branch from the master file and use it as my playground to explore copy variations in the designs to make sure it fits and flows seamlessly. Sometimes I’ll meet with the designer to present my work back before merging the branch but most of the time they are happy for me to merge it anyway.
3pm 🫂
One of my favourite meetings of the week is our design huddles — a safe space to share work, give and receive feedback and brainstorm on new concepts. Given that the team is so creative, it’s refreshing and inspiring to see the way others present their work. We often use Slido for live polls and quizzes to get instant peer feedback.
What about having some fun and switching off? We have ‘Breakfast and Bants’ on a Friday morning where work chat is banned! We might play a drawing game or chat about our weekend plans. It helps to get to know your colleagues on a personal basis and breaks the week up.
Sign off and shut off 💤
Luckily, my working hours are my working hours. Unless there’s an external evening conference I’m dialling into (usually somewhere in the US). A couple of great ones recently were ConFig 2022 (Figma’s global design conference) and Perspectives (a content design career festival).
If I’m not learning from others around the world, I’ll head to the gym, make some dinner or try and find a Netflix crime documentary I haven’t seen yet!
