Chatty design

There’s certainly a je ne sais pas element to fine design. But the more I encounter cruddy design, the more I see a common denominator.

Products tend to want to tell their story and chat with the users via text.

This is understandable, because a good deal of us find stories to be charismatic and nothing is more human than a good story told around the ol’ campfire.

Nobody cares

However, there’s a good deal of product narcissism that goes with this design laziness.

Product people seem to be unable to take the view of the user and ask themselves: ‘Does anybody care about this? Does anyone truly want to read all this copy?’

Most of us don’t. If you take a gander at the side of a coke-can, there’s hundreds of words with tens of type-faces. Who says anyone is interested in any of it?

It’s one thing to convey key information. It’s a whole other to prattle on about its product inside baseball and go on and on with the delusion that people care about everything you’re giving them.

My feeling is that eighty per cent of UX copy could be ditched and one wouldn’t even bat and eyelash if it were.