6 Top Insights I’ve Discovered as UX Writer Lead in My First Year at Flip (Part One)

This two-part article is also available in Indonesian.

At the end of 2021, I was just graduating from a tech company at which I worked for two years. I was beyond grateful for working there alone. Great people. Great work-life balance. Good money. Simply a dream. However, I also felt bad because I made a lot of mistakes before I left. Copy-related mistakes. Communication mistakes. Collaboration mistakes. You know, rookie mistakes.

But then those mistakes started to become a pattern I asked myself: Was it this demanding being a UX writer? Was it this hard to meet the company’s expectations? Or, even, was I good enough at this job?

This train of thoughts just kept going, crushing everything on my way, even my confidence. It sometimes came as a nightmare. And I didn’t know if I’d get a new job in the same field ever again. Simply put, I’d failed.

At the same time, I was hopeful. I was quite often invited to a webinar, speaking about UX writing — what it was, what UX writers did, and how to get a job in the UX field. A little ironic, looking at it now. Little funny, too.

The fact that I often shared about the subject made me very happy. It even made me happier to know what happened after the webinar. People attending said to me: They excelled at their job. Or that they got a promotion. Or that they got an internship program in UX writing. All because the lessons they’ve gained from the webinars.

So in my head: “Phew. Turns out I’m not a total failure after all, huh?”

As a result, this constant battle between Dunning Kruger and Impostor Syndrome had me asking my capability as a UX writer. Is this job really for me? “Maybe I should go back being a blogger,” my pessimistic brain overtalked, “or an English teacher, like I did in college. At least I knew that’s something I was good at.”

But instead of being down in the dumps, I fought back. I wanted to keep learning and help more people learn with me. So I practiced a lot. Gave writing exercises on my UX Writing Satnight Camp classes (@uxwsatnightcamp). Provided feedback for them, and they me. Slowly, I re-gained my confidence.

One day, a job vacancy notification popped up on my screen.

It said “UX writer” with mid- to senior-level requirements. Halfway through reading the list of tasks, I said: “OK.” These were things I’d done before. No big deal.

But as I scrolled more to see the full list, I started to feel insecure again. Petrified even. That vicious train of thoughts re-surfaced.

So there I was, sitting in my room, doing a job interview a week later. The recruiter team asked me: “So, Himawan. Take me through your achievements in the previous companies. What have you accomplished so far?”

This was my make-or-break point.

“I. Cannot. Say. Wrong.” I self-talked.

I took a deep breath, and as I looked at my own reflection on the screen, I remembered that scared, distant look I saw a week ago. In there, I saw a person who blamed the world, not himself. A person who was too afraid to say: “I don’t know.” A person who silently murmured: “Look the other way. It’s easier. Always has been.”

I knew this battle of thoughts would cost me my confidence again. So, at that point, I chose my heart.

I answered that question with a careful balance of vulnerability. Not too hard on myself, but not too soft on my accomplishments, too. I’d nursed my insecurities well until finally brave enough to say “Hey, I fu*ked up, too.”

Two weeks later, unfortunately, I was informed that I didn’t get the role.

I was offered a leadership position instead.

That experience taught me: Being vulnerable, even at moments to supposedly shine such as that job interview, was okay. Showing accomplishments didn’t always earn a spotlight. I believe that I shone because I’d been in the dark. So when the time was right, I could appreciate the light more because I’d endured its absence.

Now, I’m humbled to say that December 2022 marks my first year of being UX writer lead at my current company, Flip. Of course, my journey to this point was not always pretty. There were twists and turns. I made mistakes along the way, too. However, this time, I felt more liberated. I was even happy when I made one. Because I knew I’d grow so much more as the reward.

Within the first eight months, I was alone. Being an individual contributor on the previous company was a normal thing for me. But being a manager, and not having any team member? You kidding me or what?

My only mentor was Julie Zhuo’s The Making of Manager. In the book, she coined the term “Rookie Manager.” A manager who is thrust into a team that is also new. The plus point is this person can create a culture of their own, the room for possibilities is wide open. The minus point is during that process, this new manager might feel lonely.

Four months leading up to December, a new writer joined. I thought: “Yes! It’s time for me start to exercise my managerial skills.” I was so excited just by looking at the hiring poster for “UX Writer at Flip.” So excited about where I would go from here. And by that time, I also had read more chapters from Julie’s book, so I felt prepared in theory.

However, the reality slapped me in the face. The challenge became twice as big. And I was remotely prepared to face this another scary journey.

So within this one painful and educational year, I’d like to share with you 6 top insights I’ve disovered being a UX writer lead at Flip. I’m dividing this piece in two parts. The first part is before the writer team was formed. The second is after.

Here’s the first part.

“The more you sweat in peace, the less you bleed in war.” — Norman Schwarzkopf

On my first 90 days at Flip, there were 2 (two) homework that taught me deeply about what it meant to persevere. To complain less during moments of loneliness. And more importantly, to be patient.

They were:

• Improving the existing design-process workflow, and
• Creating a comprehensive writing guideline.

It looked scary the first time I read it, but I trusted my “tabula rasa.” I emptied my glass. Put on my ready-to-fail hat. Be a new student again.

I had a big idea of what each was going to look like in the end. But I didn’t know the steps to get there. It’s like going on a quest or an adventure. Where I have to get the holy grail somewhere in the mountains, but I don’t know how. Who will I meet? Are there monsters? Do I need a horse? How do I get it?

Insight 1: When reaching a goal, think backwards.

OK. Here we go. First homework. Improving the design workflow. What does that mean? I asked myself. In the beginning, there was this notion to grow the writer team in the future. The problem was no one knew how to slip the writer into the existing flow. In other words, there was no spot for copywriting process. More than often copies were seen as a breadcrumb of the design. As a result, copy tasks were given at the cusp of the design process.

This means the crafting process was properly executed. It’s often rushed and ill-researched. My assumption was the other teams didn’t realize that writer also needed to have their time to gain context.

This snowball of assumptions happened because of one thing. Lack of understanding of what each other was doing. Every team seemed so absorbed in their own work, forgetting that other teams were being put in the gutter. Each so immersed in their own “timeline,” not wanting to know that others were being kept waiting.

Gotcha! That’s my holy grail: Creating transparency.

Then, my goal changed. It was not to improve the workflow per se, but fill in the knowledge gaps among the teams first.

Thinking backward, to create transparency, I needed to build a system. This system would guide me and other teams on requesting copies and deciding how many revision rounds and due dates.

To do that, I needed to had to know a shared problem faced by the counterparts. What issue did they find when working on copies? From those issues, what kind of approach that we should look at to improve the overall collaboration?

To understand the common ground, I needed to gain insights. I picked 3 people who worked most closely with writers. Set a 45-minute Calendar interview and took notes.

This way of thinking eventually helped me a lot to break down my steps in a chronological manner. It prevented me from including steps that were probably not needed or irrelevant.

What could I have done differently?

Evaluate each task on a timely basis. I thought that setting my end goal and steps to get there was enough. I was wrong. Another task was to track whether each task was on track or off track. Next time, I should do ink thinking by writing down what would happen and what really happened. Pretty much like journalling. So I could assess my own hypothesis and see how truthful it was with the reality.

Insight 2: Creating guideline was draining, but boy did it pay off!

My another homework was creating a basis of how writers at the company should operate. All product names, formatting, punctuations, capitalizations — you know the drill. We needed to regulate them, otherwise future writers would endlessly debate with each other, fighting between “enggak” and “tidak.” Or “kamu” and “Anda.”

As most other apps without a guideline, there were countless copy inconsistencies. Both in the app, or mobile, and desktop. One UI screen used “Sign up,” but another used “Register.” One used “Cancel,” another “Decline.” One “Yes,” another “Confirm.”

It was painful.

Ideally, this needed a thorough copy auditing. Yet, it would take at least 6 months to get all the revisions implemented with the current copy scope. At the same time, we could not just abandon priority scale for the current projects back then. Let alone design sprints.

As a workaround, I spoke to the marketing team to find out whether they had a communication guideline for our users. And they did. However, it was curated for marketing-oriented purposes such as emails, push notifications, and promotional messages.

I then opened Google Sheet. I stared into the sea of empty cells for about 1 minute. Not entirely sure of what I was doing. But I realized I had to start somewhere. Come on, mind. Get workin’! I got impatient.

“The secret of getting ahead is getting started,” reminded Mark Twain.

I then created a tab called “Glossary.” Inside were 2 columns: “Indonesian” and “English.” Then, I started dumping all the words I’d used in the previous projects. One word after one word. One phrase after one phrase. Looks roughly like this:

Please note that the samples on the table above are simply an illustration.

I added more words and phrases and rules.

The next few days… it was a mass confusion. *silent laughter*

More inconsistencies were found. More people approached me, asking whether to use the new word on the guide or keep the existing one. Because there were designs already released using the words listed on the “not to use” or cross (X) column. Well, change takes time, right? So I just helped the team to understand that let’s do one baby step at a time. The process might be hard or confusing. But at least we’ve saved a lot of thinking time in the future.

And it’s true. More confusions happened, more errors were found. But on the bright side, it means more rules! Our guideline became more robust.

As a result, design team were more confident to write the correct placeholder copies. So during review, my job was already half-cooked.

What could I have done differently?

• Know that this is a living document. I used to think that creating a copy guideline was a one-time effort. Well, it was at one point, especially when it came to something rigid like formatting. When to bold words, italicize, or underline, et cetera. But when it came to glossary, it’s always flexible. What’s been regulated before can always change depending on the context and situation at which word is used.
• Test copies more. Although testing copies was energy-consuming, it was a wise approach to gain fruitful insights. There’s nothing more liberating than reading participant’s responses, discover points of contention, and synthesize. Testing copies saves my time for the long haul, in case there was a similar copy in the future. Once there is a copy result, there’s no more need to write from scratch or conduct unnecessary brainstorming sessions.

Insight 3: Networking (or building an ally) is important

Stay on your seat, self-proclaimed introverts. I learnt that talking to people was one of the responsibilities of a manager. And I wasn’t just prepared for it. Thanks to Julie Zhuo, through The Making a Manager, she asked the reader to ask themselves: Do you like talking to people? If the answer is no, then perhaps a manager role isn’t for you.

The only UX writer, I was needed by a lot of teams. Product, marketing, engineering, business, operations, and sometimes data. I still am. But I hadn’t thought of networking until I realized: I didn’t really know any of the employees outside design team. And neither did them.

I only knew their names, never talked to them personally. I thought “oh maybe this is how everyone works here.” Which was just a justification that “I just want to work alone and get stuff done.” However, I soon knew that needed to change.

So I set a target to talk with 3 engineers in 1 week. Why engineers? Because we worked quite closely, but never really talked to each other. And I did that for a month. I created a template, consisting of questions such as:

To my surprise, there was a pattern of responses. They thought that during development stage (when the design is proceeded to coding), they assumed the writer was too busy. So requesting more copy reviews would take up a lot of a burden for the writer. So, they decided to just write the copy on their own. I mean, what? That’s what we’re paid for in the first place, dude! *sneer*

As crazy as it sounded, I just listened and took notes. As I listened more and more, the fog on my path lifted layer by layer. And my eyes opened a bit wider.

What I did then was create a specific communication channel. Every copy request from anyone at the company should make their own ticket first. Otherwise, it won’t be attended to. I also created a procedure on how to request the copies and when to negotiate due dates. This way, internal employees are aware of the workload of the writer’s team. And they are less frightened to ask for a copy review.

What could I have done differently?

Take better, more organized notes. During my interview sessions with the engineers back then, I tended to just write what’s being said. Word per word. Not the big idea. So it’s like I was transcribing their words into paper. I also didn’t synthesize or cluster the same ideas. Although in the end a pattern was discovered, I missed out the details of their point. So next time, after each interview, I’ll do a 10-minute debrief session with myself. Whether it be making sense of the points, connecting the dots, or finding the big idea.

“Focus on the path, not the trees.” — Simon Sinek

To conclude this first part of this retrospective, I want to take you skiing. You look afar. You have a destination to reach. Trees to get away from. Snow to trailblaze. You see white. Just pure white. You can’t even distinguish your breath from the cold air of the forest. It’s all one.

Someone in the back says: “Go!” And you start gliding. You almost lose balance a little, but you’ve gained it back. Few meters ahead, you get impatient and speed up a little. But the path becomes steeper. You go faster and faster. You lose balance again, and you see a big tree in front of you, thinking: “Shoot.” And you’re down.

I’ve been in that situation at work, where I knew I’d crash a lot of trees. But I just had to focus on the path, not the trees.

I know there are more mistakes that I’ll make in the future. But I’ve never been more excited. In Part Two, I’ll tell more about some of my mistakes when I finally have a team.

Stay tuned.