This is part of the 15-day UX Writing Challenge presented by Daily UX Writing.
Scenario: The user works in graphic design. While critiquing a design in a mobile app, their phone abruptly turns off. When they restart the phone, they reopen the app.
Challenge: Write a message that the user will read immediately upon opening the app. What do they need to know? What steps (if any) do they need to take to recover their content? What if they can’t recover the content?
Headline: 40 characters max
Body: 140 characters max
Button(s): 20 characters max
Tasks & Goals
We’ve all had moments when we’re working on something and suddenly our phone or app crashes. The sudden fear dawns on us that we might have lost all our progress and would’ve to start all over. Fortunately, some apps have autosave features that saves our progress right before the crash so we don’t have to start everything from our last manual save.
Our task is to inform users on how to retrieve their content when this situation occurs. Unfortunately, sometimes apps are unable to retrieve content unless it was manually saved. But for this challenge, we’re going to focus on apps that have autosave features.* And our goal is to ensure them that their progress has been saved and guide them back to their project.
Note: Not every app has an autosave feature like Google Docs. Mostly the business teams and engineers will determine whether or not this feature is worth adding (it usually is). If they do include it, it might also be nice to have a history log of all the saves that the project has gone through.
Concepts & Ideas
Suppose that we did have an autosave feature and each time the user quits the app without manually saving, a pop-up notification appears and tells them that their progress has been saved automatically.
We could write something like:
Headline: Your Progress Has Been Saved
Body: It seems that the app closed without a manual save. Don’t worry, your progress was automatically saved for you.*
Button: Go to Project | Close
*Note: We’re assuming that the autosave does a good job at saving often so that the user doesn’t have to redo work from a few hours ago.
The headline is short and straight to the point. It’s likely that the user is stressed and we need to quickly assure them that their progress was saved.
With the body, we need to inform them the reason for this pop-up and guide them on next steps to continue where they left off. That’s why we have a button that takes them directly to their last project.
It’s also important to note that the language doesn’t blame the user or state anything other than what the app knows: the app was closed without a manual save. The app doesn’t know that the phone crashed or anything else and that helps keep the copy focused on informing the user that their progress was saved regardless of what happened.
Here’s what the notification would like:
Conclusion
Losing your progress due to something out of our control sucks. If our apps have features that save progress in situations like this, our users will be (hopefully) grateful. We, as UX writers, should assure them that their progress has been saved and guide them so they can start back where they left off.
Again, I’d love to hear how’d you tackle this challenge. Also don’t be afraid to let me know how I can improve this copy. Thanks again!
