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Voice & Tone Design

3 min read

Voice refers to the character of a product. Tone refers to the mood ring of a product.

The trust that users have in your product depends on the voice and tone of the product. Distrust is created when the voice / personality of a product is inconsistent, especially when there is a gap between voice and tone 1 .

Examples:

  • new, innovative product, but old language
  • dynamic product, but sluggish language
  • easy, clear-cut product, but complex language

7-35-55 Rule

Dr. Albert Mehrabian’s “7-38-55 rule” quantifies what creates human’s perceptions of each other. Around 7% of our impression is based on word choice, 38% is based on the tone and voice, and 55% is comprised of body language 2.

7-38-55 rule

Voice & Tone Design

Voice & Tone Design is a short process that results in guidelines that enables you to write Microcopy. Follow the steps below to gather all relevant information:

  1. Get to know your brand (what is the company mission, the values, how does the company represent itself in marketing resources and company presentations, what are the UX concept and personas like, do research about customer satisfaction)
  2. Listen to what customers have to say (what is common feedback, find good quotes that repeat themselves, what is the motivation of users and what do they see as setbacks)
  3. Do field research (group interviews with key colleagues about the personality of the brand and the target group, e.g., age, sex, country, educational level, etc.)
  4. Compile all information in a document.

Note

Only use humor in microcopy if:

  • it fits the personality of the brand
  • it fits the culture and age range of the users
  • it is not the only characteristic of your texts
  • it is well dosed and not over-used, e.g., use humor at the beginning or end, but not inbetween
  • it does not obstruse clarity and / or usability
  • the situation allows it, e.g., definitely not in error messages
  • users do not see the same joke over and over again

Templates

Conversational Writing

Conversational writing is an informal writing style, where the word choice, sentence structure, and other elements give the impression that a human being is chatting with the reader (and not a business or robot reciting text to an audience).

Examples:

conversaltional tone

Some guidelines:

  • Sound natural (do not write something that you wouldn’t say out loud)
  • Talk to users directly
  • Be short and conscise
  • Use common words
  • Use active instead of passive
  • Make sure the style is fluent
  • Do not leave out connecting words (“your order details”, “number of articles in your basket”, “save these settings”, etc.)

Some tips:

  • Read your text out loud (does it sound natural?)
  • Avoid boring formats (avoid the usual phrases, e.g., “please wait”, “Error”, “the transaction finished successfully”, etc.)
  • Ask questions (e.g. instead of “Enter the e-mail address for the new password” ask “where should we send the link?“)

Footnotes

  1. Clifford Nass & Corina Yen: The Man Who Lied To His Laptop. What We Can Learn About Ourselves From Our Machines, Current 012 ↩

  2. Megan Legawiec: The Art of Voice and Tone in UX Writing and Content Design. https://uxwritinghub.com/ux-writing-voice-and-tone/ ↩

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