This is part of the 15-day UX Writing Challenge presented by Daily UX Writing.
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
Task & Goals
So imagine this: After a nice weekend, you wake up to another Monday and get ready to head to work. Once you finish getting ready, you start on your daily commute. However, traffic is especially bad today. Sure, Mondays are usually busy since everyone is starting their week but today’s traffic is unusual.
As you continue, you get a warning notification of a fire in a nearby town. This probably explains the traffic. People are drastically escaping the fire and law enforcement probably blocked certain roads to prevent people from going near, thus causing heavy traffic.
Our goal is to inform the user of the situation and provide possible next steps.
Concepts & Ideas
Okay, so before we create our copy, we need to ask a few questions:
- Is this a notification from a particular app?
- Is this a notification from law enforcement / agency?
- Who receives this notification? Drivers? Everyone nearby?
While this prompt limits us to drivers, the situation affects everybody. Nearby city fires are dangerous scenarios and everyone should be aware of them.
However, context is important. If the user is driving, are they using a routing app like Apple Maps or Google Maps? If so, then yes, this notification will be catered towards drivers and people using some form of transportation.
Local law enforcement also send warnings and notifications as well, but these notifications don’t pertain to specific apps. For example, you might have seen these:
While notifications like these are short, they also provide other resources for the user to learn more about the situation.
However, our driving users will probably not have notifications that provide additional resources because we don’t want them to simultaneously read and drive.
Since we’re asked to narrow our focus to drivers, we’re going to assume that our notification is going to come from a routing app like Google or Apple Maps.
Here’s my idea:
Headline: Road Blocks Due to Nearby Fire
Body: Rerouting you to the fastest and safest route.
Since the user is driving, we need to provide them with sufficient information with as few words as possible because we can’t have them reading for a long time while driving.
The headline tells them that there are road blocks ahead due to a nearby fire. It’s short, informative, and straight to the point. The user can infer that there’s likely going to be traffic on their normal commute.
With the body, the user needs to know what they can do next. Since they’re using a maps app, they’ll expect the app to give them steps to take. Otherwise, they’ll be sitting ducks in traffic.
Fortunately, apps like Google Maps and Apple Maps automatically reroute drivers, so they don’t have to look up where to go next and analyze the time it will take to get to their destination.
Here’s what the final copy would look like:
Conclusion
Context is important. If our desired user is a driver, we need to provide them with quick updates that don’t distract them from the road while providing viable next steps. However, if not, then we should consider informing them while providing resources on situation updates and next steps to stay safe.
In moments of crisis, drivers will often want us to automatically provide next steps for them. So it’s important to consider how we can present those to them in the most simple and effective way possible.
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!
