Hey everyone, welcome back to another day of UX writing challenge. Today we have a scenario that is both frustrating and terrifying at the same time. For all the new readers, UX writing challenge is a news letter based free challenge that sends you an email everyday for 15 days. You can subscribe to the news letter here. Let’s get into today’s challenge.
The Challenge
Scenario: It’s Monday. A user has just gotten into their car to drive to work. They plug their phone into the car and start driving.
Challenge: How would you let the user know there’s a fire happening in a nearby town that is causing road closures? The effect on their commute is unknown, but there is a definite danger if the fire gets closer. How do you communicate this to them? When? Write it.
Headline: 30 characters max
Body: 45 characters max
This particular challenge was really tough for me because, I tend to use many words when I talk in general. The main reason being, I like to have all my details when someone tells me something, I really don’t like asking too many follow up questions, I wanted the story to be complete. Keeping that in mind, I speak with a lot of details. In this challenge, the word count limit is very less. Initially, I thought how can a user get complete information in such less number of characters, then I realized that the end user that is receiving the message is driving a car. Sending a long notification will distract the driver, which is very dangerous. Let’s get to the solution I came up with.
The Solution
Headline: Danger! Fire obstruction ahead.
Body: Take an alternative route or head back home.
The headline and body may not give complete details in this scenario, however, your message should not be distractive to the user. So, short and crisp message is accurate in the scenario.
What did I learn in this challenge?
As I was stating earlier, there are scenarios where long messages are not appropriate and they may cause more harm than good. We should always assess the situation and deliver the message accordingly.
Thank you for reading the article, have a wonderful day ahead. See you in the next one.
