Design x Roy West
UX Writer & Mentor at Apple
Illustration by Bonnie Kate Wolf
Interview conducted by Nick Harris on August 28, 2020
Tell us a bit about yourself.
I grew up mostly in New England, but my father’s job took us to Europe and Africa for a while, which gave me a perspective of the world outside of the United States. I went to public school in suburban Massachusetts and briefly went to Princeton, but I discovered that didn’t suit me very well. I ended up living in Cambridge for a while, working in bookstores and cafes. Then I followed a girl out to the West Coast and ended up marrying her, to my endless good fortune. Today, I live in Berkeley and have a son at UCLA.
I love natural history—mainly botany and birds—and I also quite like fishing. Conservation and the appreciation of the outdoors are important to me. I volunteered for nonprofits including Calflora, a database of plants in California that I helped run for almost 20 years.
How did you get started in tech?
I started as a receptionist at a book packaging company, and I was trained in how books get made and did more work for computer companies. That started my career in tech companies, mostly working on documentation on their engineering teams. I gradually incorporated more user interface (UI) work into that, until about 10 years ago, when I had my first role working exclusively on the text you see on interfaces.
Do you recall the moment you realized that user experience (UX) writing was going to be your path?
Not really, I just sort of backed into it. While I was still relatively junior, I found myself observing the gifted writers and thinkers on the teams I was on. Instead of just thinking about how teaching material is organized, I started looking at the product’s coherence, from a more editorial perspective. Looking at a product this way felt normal to me.
The skills I was developing were either self-taught or learned from watching the senior writers and editors. When I went to Google, they actually had people formally trained in UX research and design, and it was a real eye-opener. Until then, I’d mostly been on very small teams, so going into a dedicated design team was a good check on my hubris.
“The skills I was developing were either self-taught or learned from watching the senior writers and editors.”
What topics in UX writing are of particular interest to you right now?
There are a few important ones. How can we effectively partner with research to test our assumptions and theories? How do we create a structure for using language most effectively? How do we leverage language to create the best possible user experience?
A topic of great interest to me is inclusivity, building inclusive design teams. When I was a manager, I made sure to bring women into the team. I tried to actively help women and other under-represented groups move forward in their careers into management and leadership roles. It’s really important to build inclusive teams and create inclusive products, so that the broadest number of people feel that the product speaks to them in a way they’re comfortable with.
Some apps use witty humor to try to build rapport with users, but it can feel a little indulgent and it might only appeal to a narrow demographic. I’m not against humor or irony, but I want to make sure I’m using language that feels natural to a broader audience. The places I’ve been working for the past 10 years have broad audiences—Google and Uber have products literally designed for everybody.
Trust is also an interesting throughline to what we do. It’s fragile but extremely valuable. Why do we care that the grammar and spelling on our interfaces have a degree of polish? Because it shows respect to the user. Would users trust a device if the UI writing was sloppy? Maybe not. It might suggest we are also careless in other areas, like privacy. There are so many ways that trust underpins a good user experience.
What are some of the challenges that UX writers face today?
The biggest challenge for UX writing is that it’s still a very young discipline. Companies are still figuring out how it fits into product design and development. It’s different from company to company, but most places—even companies with well-established UX writing teams—are still figuring it out. That includes how to integrate UX writing with engineering, do handoffs, and integrate better with localization.
We need to continually demonstrate the impact language can have, especially in tech organizations.
“We need to continually demonstrate the impact language can have, especially in tech organizations.”
It needs to tie in with the metrics that the product owners care about. We need to work with research, engineering, and design to make sure that we’re measuring the things that matter to the company, and that the language changes we’re making are having an impact on key business goals. That’s how you validate that you’re actually making a difference. It’s an avenue to success.
UX writing seems like a challenging field to get into, and many junior positions still ask for, say, five years of experience. What are your thoughts on that?
The good news is there’s an increasing demand for UX writing. Companies are beginning to understand that having trained writers onboard has a measurable impact on their business. There are plenty of postings for UX writers on Glassdoor, LinkedIn, etc., but not enough experienced people to fill all the roles. Hiring managers can’t keep rehiring from the same small pool of experienced people. Eventually, they’ll have to broaden their search to a more diverse pool.
Larger companies like Google, Uber, and Facebook deliberately make room for juniors. Both Google and Uber have UX writer internships designed to recruit the most gifted college graduates. Google is aware that some of the brightest UX writers will not come from UX writing programs, but from disciplines like journalism, documentation, or support, where they develop skills directly applicable to UX writing. More companies will figure this out eventually because they’re not going to just magically stumble across a large pool of people with many years of experience.
How is diversity in the field of UX writing, compared to the tech industry in general?
In my limited observation, UX is marginally better than tech as a whole, but then all of tech is dreadfully far behind. If you want to appeal to a diverse audience, you need a diverse group of people building your product. Lack of diversity directly affects a company’s ability to broaden its appeal.
Companies are currently doing a better job at hiring diverse designers and writers than retaining them. Teams are rightfully proud of finding underrepresented people and bringing them in, but if they don’t put enough effort into mentoring those people to be successful, there’s an unfortunate amount of turnover, both voluntary and involuntary.
At Google, there are specific programs to help women move their careers forward. We need to broaden that. Diversity is more than just race and gender. We should be looking more in-depth—at demographics, culture, religion, sexual orientation, and age, for example. The more richly we respect what diversity means, the more fruitful a team becomes. A fresh perspective brings new light into a project and teaches the team something new. I think we’re all continually learning.
It takes much more effort than simply throwing people into a room together and thinking that’s all you need to do. We should constantly refine how we think about inclusion, making sure that when we bring someone into the group, they feel included, contribute, and bring their fresh perspective to the table. It’s difficult for us as humans to learn to cherish strangers, but we must.
Is diversity in professional or educational background also important in UX writing?
There are certain essential skills needed to be a successful UX writer, so journalism and documentation are good starting points, as they teach you how language works and how to make things intuitive and clear. As writers, we don’t have a lot of editorial support, so it’s great when people with journalism backgrounds can apply their existing knowledge of style guides.
However, one of my happiest moments was working closely with an engineer on a set of features for Google Maps. He walked me through the strings and the context so that I could rewrite the terminology, but we were struggling with one of the strings. Eventually he was able to come up with a much better solution than mine. It was great because here was someone with a very different background to me who could also solve UX writing problems well.
What we do isn’t magic. It doesn’t require a college degree or even English as a native language. A person’s path into UX writing could be as simple as having an interest in language and discovering—almost by accident—that they are quite good at this job.
How would you describe your team’s design process at Google?
The most successful teams at Google are a mix of disciplines. The best teams have figured out how to combine design with product and engineering in a collaborative partnership. We were always inventing new processes, including hand-offs that respect the constraints and needs of the stakeholders and that fit in with engineering most effectively. One of Google’s strengths is that it is supportive. People are allowed to try new things and figure out their own way of doing things.
What are the most challenging aspects of your job?
At both companies, we’ve always had to figure out where to focus and prioritize to have the most impact. There’s a constant temptation to spread yourself thin to try to serve more people. Meanwhile, we’re still trying to be involved early enough in the process to have the kind of impact that makes a difference, not just putting text in boxes at the end of the project.
What are some of your favorite projects so far?
Google Maps was very rewarding, as was working at Uber on both the rider and driver apps. There’s something magical about the inflection point between the virtual and the real that fascinates me.
“There’s something magical about the inflection point between the virtual and the real that fascinates me.”
As a rider, you’re looking at the phone, watching these little cars driving around on your screen. Well, those are actually real cars. A lot of effort goes into making sure that reflects reality. At a certain point, people lift their eyes off of their phones and engage with that little car in real life. We need to ensure they have a safe and successful interaction in real life. There’s also guidance about where you should stand so it’s safe for you to get into and out of the car, and where it’s safe for the driver to stop without getting a ticket, even if that means you have to cross the street. It’s so much more than just, “This is where I’m going, and this is the kind of car I want.”
How would you describe your leadership style?
One thing I’ve really tried as a manager and mentor in the past 10 years is to help people find what works best for them. That’s how people become more successful. The other thing I’ve tried to encourage is to be cooperative. On the last two teams I led, I’m proud to say that we built a culture where people helped and respected one other, and collaborated on things together.
A great manager is focused on the success of their team, rather than themselves. A manager should make sure the efforts are going in the right direction, and the right connections are getting made. The focus should be on whether each team member is making a significant impact on the business while receiving recognition for their individual strengths and accomplishments.
What advice would you give to junior designers?
Learn from other people as much as possible. Start with understanding what other people on your team are trying to accomplish. Figure out how to align yourself with the parts you agree with that further the company’s goals.
Demonstrate that you’re listening to your stakeholders and understand their needs. Always be open to learning. Don’t be afraid to ask for help. People are very generous when approached for advice because it’s flattering, and people generally respond pretty well to that.
Keep looking for where you can learn, and keep trying to understand your stakeholders. Build alliances with them and demonstrate that you’re trying to help support their goals. These are the things that will help you grow.
Rapid Fire Questions
What’s your favorite thing to do in your free time?
I love walking outside, particularly in less interrupted ecosystems. It gives me enormous pleasure. I enjoy fishing in much the same way. There’s a beautiful quote from Jim Harrison’s novel True North that sums it up perfectly:
“It is utterly soothing to fly-fish for trout. All other considerations or worries drift away and you couldn’t keep them close if you wanted. Perhaps it’s standing thigh deep in a river with the water passing at the exact but varying speed of life. You easily recognize this mortality and it dissipates into the landscape. If there are flying insects and the trout are feeding on them you fish with dry flies. If there’s no surface activity you fish with streamers which imitate minnows or with nymphs which imitate the insect larvae that emerge from the streambed and float along with the current.”
I also enjoy playing and listening to music. I play the baroque cello, which has been a source of great pleasure for me during the quarantine, if not for anyone else who can hear me. Along with my family and friends, these are the things that give me the greatest pleasure.
Do you have a favorite book or favorite podcast?
I love Walt Whitman. I read Leaves of Grass, and, to this day, I actually have a copy in my backpack.
I’m not much of a podcast listener, but there is a podcast called Outside the MusicBox that I’ve really enjoyed. It opened up the whole world of Bach choral music to me. It only has a handful of followers, but it’s opened my ears to music that I otherwise wouldn’t have listened to.
If you could live anywhere, where would it be and why?
Probably someplace in rural California, where the ecosystem is still almost intact. Where I grew up in New England, so many of the plants are European. However, there are places in California where you can still see plants that evolved there, with the birds, insects, fungi, other animals that evolved with them.
I’ve always wanted to visit south of Perth, Australia, which has an ecosystem parallel to California and other Mediterranean-climate ecosystems. Of course, it has its own unique palette of plants, but I’d love to visit at the right time of the year to see that intact ecosystem, an analog to California.
