Presented by Jaimee Newberry.

Our products are the connective tissue between human beings.

  • Try to capture the user’s attention, affection, and devotion.

Personality

  • Ask, “Who is your product?” Not, “If your product were an animal…?”
  • Personality informs everything.
  • Color palette, animation timing and speed, etc. all convey personality.

Onboarding

If you want to build affection, do onboarding really well.

  • Square does onboarding exceptionally well: “Start selling today.”
  • As does Medium: “Your audience awaits. Tell a story on Medium today.”
  • Give people an opportunity to look around. Shopping sites that throw modals that require sign up or sign in before you can browse go against this. It’s user-hostile behavior.
  • Jelly Defense’s first-time play tutorials

Empathy means everything to your products.

Copy

  • Word choice: You have to know when word choice is going to work for you and when it’s not.
  • Mark Trammell’s and Jesse James Garrett’s Creating Engagement on Twitter presentation at UX Week 2011 details the tiny—but hugely impactful—change of Twitter’s question: “What are you doing?” became, “What’s happening?” (see LukeW’s notes)
  • Use a copy framework!
  • Be mindful: We have to be honest in the words that we choose.
  • Review things! Make sure placeholder copy does not make it to production:

  • Be fun, but not scary. Be helpful, not confusing!