Less is not always more

Busting the myth that concise is always better in UX writing

I’m still seeing articles about how “less is more” when it comes to UX writing and I can’t stay silent anymore. Because it’s just not true.

Best practices are evolving in the field of UX writing just like in every discipline and once upon a time it was thought that concise microcopy was always better, in all cases, no matter what. Any character that could be cut, should be cut. I understand the research and the assumptions that served as the foundation for this, I hear where you’re coming from. But I think that this particular best practice needs to evolve, needs to be more nuanced.

Concise is good, but it is not the be all end all of writing for UI. It is one of a million factors that must be weighed against each other in pursuit of the perfect string for a given context.

We have a job to do

Let’s not forget why we write microcopy in the first place. It’s not to decorate the screen. We are designing the user experience with the words that tell the user what they’re about to get, how to get it, and why they should get it from us. We’re getting them from point A to point B as painlessly, and even delightfully, as possible. We are giving them an experience that takes care of their practical and emotional needs in a way that will make them want to tell their friends about it. We and they cannot achieve any of it without words, meaningful, useful words. Microcopy, first and foremost, should meet users’ needs, and minimizing the words on a page is not in and of itself an actual need. No one wakes up in the morning thinking, “I know what my goal will be today! I will read as few words as possible!” No. That is not a thing. People want to do stuff and they don’t want to waste more time reading more words than necessary to get those things done. But they also do not want to waste time guessing all of the things the words didn’t cover.

A great example from Erika Hall’s Conversational Design: Think about giving someone directions on the street — you give just enough information, not too little and not too much. Imagine saying, “make a left soon” because it’s shorter than “make a left at the next corner”. In this case, concise clearly isn’t better. No one is saying you have got to ramble on and on, but holding up “concise” as a goal within itself can be dangerous.

Really what we should mean when we talk about concise microcopy is, “as concise as possible as long as the users’ needs are all met”. Needs include but are not limited to, getting exactly the information that they need and being met emotionally where they are in their journey, e.g., reassured that their data is secure with you, or that you will not spam them if they enter their email address. If you can tell them what to do and why, while empathizing with their headspace, and expressing your brand voice and tone in 10 words instead of 20, go for it! But if you can only tick some of those boxes with 10 words, but all of them with 15, it’s time to go back to the designer and rework the size of the modal, or the typeface, or whatever, to make it fit.

So where did this idea come from and where did we get a bit too vigilant for our britches?

People do read

There’s this myth that’s been around forever about people having the attention span of a goldfish and how people don’t read and that’s why we front load all of our copy, write concisely, and ensure that titles and button copy always make sense together when the user inevitably skips over the text in the middle. Now, I’m not saying that we shouldn’t front load, or anything like that, I’m just saying that people do read. I work in complex products, so my users read more than most. But in general, users have come to get something done and they’ll read as much as they need to as long as they’re clearly on track to reach their goal.

Distracting them from their goal with your masterfully crafted poetry — bad. Cutting out articles and conjunctions to save space and in turn, sounding like a robot — also bad. Don’t be self conscious about every extra word, just ask each word whether it deserves to be there. Do you enhance the user experience, Word? Do you earn your keep in this string? If the answer is yes, it stays. Even if it breaks the line.

Words earn trust

Writing too briefly may make it look like you don’t know what you’re talking about. If you did, wouldn’t you talk about it?

Too little content may make it look like you were rushed, not thorough, like your business priorities may trump your users’ priorities.

We know that people expect computers to interact like people. Could you trust a person who answers your questions monosyllabically? Would you voluntarily engage with them more than you have to? If getting information is like pulling teeth, you’ll go somewhere else, even if the quiet one is actually better at what they do. Because we are emotional, social creatures, and if we don’t feel that our relationship is being invested in and nurtured from both sides, we won’t stick around.

For long-term, fruitful relationships with our users, we need to communicate with them, connect with them. And when we hold brevity up on a pedestal, it is almost impossible that it will not come at the expense of trust and delight.

It’s not “all or nothing”

Back when the internet was born and it was essentially a motley assortment of static webpages, the quantity of words was one of the only UI variables we had to work with. But we have come so far since then. We don’t always have to choose between saying it all and keeping it short. We now have layers.

We can position copy behind a click, for example. In a tooltip, or behind a link to an FAQ. We can offer a “Learn more” popup, etc. Adding copy behind a click has a few benefits. First of all, most obviously, it gives you more real estate to work with. It’s a compromise between staying concise and still saying more.

This also increases the chance that the extra info will get read — include it on the main screen and it’s easy to scan or skip completely; “hide” it behind a click and now the user is invested once they get there. They have higher intent and are now much more likely to take in the message. At the same time you save the user who isn’t interested from having to wade through. It’s really a win for everyone.

Bottom line: “Concise” isn’t all it’s cracked up to be

The original thinking behind concise was that we do not want to waste our users’ time or lose their attention. But when you leave too much to guesswork because you haven’t fully explained yourself, you waste even more time and cause frustration. And if you write high-quality, engaging copy, your users will stick around. You can bore a person in a minute and you can keep them riveted with a 400-page tome. It’s all about the value and experience you offer.