Words alone can't fix bad design
And band-aid solutions don’t last
Sitting on a squeaky couch across from my new therapist, I congratulated myself on addressing my years-long anxiety. I shared my history and symptoms with her, then asked the BIG question, “How do I fix this?”
My new therapist nodded knowingly. She leaned forward, her smile beatific.
“Go home and take a scented bubble bath. It will soothe your nerves.”
Brilliant! Easy! Within my realm of control!
I drove home on the wings of hope. I floated up the stairs, drew a bath, and poured in witch-level amounts of herbs, crystals, and fizzy bits. I soaked. I steamed. I transformed into a scented blob and waited for the anxiety to evaporate in a cloud of expensive Whole Foods bath magic.
The bath did not cure me. There are not enough lavender sachets on Earth to solve a mental health crisis.
Today I know this was bad therapy.
More specifically, it was a bad diagnosis.
It’s a curb-side commentary from your neighbor while your car sputters in the street: “probably the alternator or the starter. Maybe the belt is loose, how old is that battery anyhow, friend?”
It’s “You just need to fight harder for a seat at the table,” to people systematically excluded from centers of control.
It’s painting over that moldy spot in your garage. That’s better.
Bad diagnosis focuses on the surface, never the root. It leads to band-aid solutions that cannot last because they’re “solving” the wrong problem.
Writers are no strangers to a misdiagnosed problem. You might have experienced it in a review.
“Can we make this more clear?”
“Can we say this less confusingly?”
“Can we add some words to explain this better?”
Of course you can. You are a writer, and someone (perhaps with the letters V and P in their job title) has asked you to write. So you write.
But it doesn’t work. Because words alone can’t fix bad design.
In a memorable talk called “Pencils Down,” content designer Andrew Schmidt unveiled a deep truth about content design: in most cases, writing for software products is easy. There are frameworks and standards to help you do it. But when something is challenging to explain in clear terms, it points to a deeper structural problem. And this is what makes content design hard.
Imagine a product manager walks over to your desk and says the following:
“Yeah, hi. So when users unsubscribe from our marketing emails, they keep getting issues for another 14 days or so and 5% of the time it won’t unsubscribe them at all. This bug is definitely on our roadmap to fix, but {insert-backlog-priority-babble}. So anyway, I heard you’re a genius with words! Could you wordsmith a lil’ something explaining how customers might get two or three more emails and also that sometimes they might have to log out and sign back in and click unsubscribe again?”
And before you can respond, they continue:
“Also, it’s on mobile, so no more than 20 words if you can help it. Tomorrow would be great if possible, but no rush. But also, kind of a rush. It is OK if I just watch you write it now? I can wait.”
And so, ever the dutiful writer, you raise up your pencil in search of some magic words to compensate for extreme flaws in the backend of your email service.
Put your pencil down.
You are a Word Person, but you are also a designer, a shaper of experiences. Most importantly, you are a human being with finite moments in this life. You deserve to not waste your time on an impossible problem.
On top of that, it’s bad business. You’re not just investing your time on an impossible problem, you are wasting everyone’s time by going along with the ruse. You’re accepting the bad diagnosis and pouring in the epsom salts, sure that the anxiety will be gone in the morning. Magic words won’t fix a deep, intractable issue, and acting like they do makes you complicit.
Instead, consider this an invitation to look below the surface, and challenge your product partners to find the real problem. Give yourself permission to clear the path, and do your best work.
Don’t settle for a bubble bath, when you really need therapy.
Smallish Picnic
A soft blanket in the grass for pals and practitioners.
Andrew Schmidt is a content designer extraordinaire. He is responsible for infusing brilliant, human language in products such as Slack and Figma. We are adherents to the church of Schmidt. You can be too.