How my UX writing work is evolving

The last few years have flown by.

Like many others, I came to UX during the pandemic as a way to bring together all the skills I had acquired up to that point. My time in this field has been quite a ride so far, and I can't wait to see what's next.

In this post, I'll revisit my past work experiences and share what I'd like to do more of in 2024.

The Before

I started out in technical translation, terminology management and editorial writing.

Before joining the fine folks of UX, I spent a few years in multilingual customer service—including a short stint in sales toward the end.

The After

That last role ultimately became my way in.

To make the connection between customer and user experience, I started studying marketing writing, which led me to my first UX writing client.

From there, I began working on digital product writing projects and learned a great deal about microcopy, content guidelines and even content testing methods.

Then I started adding voice, tone and content design systems to my toolbox.

Recently, I also had the chance to collaborate more closely with machine learning engineers to evaluate and refine Large Language Model (LLM) outputs, which was super interesting.

Looking ahead to 2024, it seems like it'll be a year of more complex B2B flows, product onboarding and lifecycle emails.

Plans for the new year

In 2024:

I want to study conversation design and learn more about voice-led interactions.

I want to work more with prompt design, particularly few-shot prompting—that is, providing an AI model with instructions and examples to control and direct its performance.

This way, I can get a feel for how to scale UX content while keeping it consistent and aligned with strategic goals.

I want to start exploring content engineering. I've been following some leading voices in the field (Chelsea Larsson for the win!) and looking for gaps I can start filling.

At work, I've already seen some really cool things in action: taxonomies, model design, knowledge graphs and Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG).

I want to look into intent-based interfaces and understand how they'll shape UI in the coming years, which is a paradigm shift my team lead hinted at.

For example, I'm thinking about behaviors like curating content and recommending products based on a user's context, habits and past preferences—essentially interpreting intent and autonomously defining the steps needed to accomplish a task.

Beyond writing

Working both in-house and as an external contractor has taught me that I need to go far beyond UX writing to stand out.

Or, at least, I’ve realized that I can't just stop at UX writing—because I get bored, and it simply falls short of what's required today.

In-demand product and content designers will increasingly need to work across functions, understand end-to-end processes and oversee the experience that actually goes live on the product.

I'm learning to manage projects and lead small squads that involve frontend and backend developers as well as quality assurance engineers.

I get to see how they think, what they need and when they need it. I also want to keep collaborating with customer-facing teams, like delivery and product marketing.

AI booming and looming

I'm worried about what the future holds for writers.

Generative AI makes writing seem easy, and if the people who have power over your career don't see the value you bring to the table, you may be in trouble.

As always, though, my team lead managed to reassure me:

As long as people exist and they experience things, we will have a job to do.

Yes, UI design and writing are what everyone sees on the surface. But experiences happen beyond screens and interfaces, and they require learning how people actually think.

UXers who understand psychology principles and can apply them as they design products will always be ahead.

Parting thought

If anything, I know I'll keep using generative AI to test, iterate, create and ultimately write more.

At the same time, I'll also continue applying all my skills, soft and hard, past and present, to be the UX writer in the loop.

Read more from me:

Elisa Trippetti

I’m Elisa, a content designer from Italy with experience in customer service and localization. This is where I navigate and document my work life in UX and writing.

Elisa Trippetti