What should be created first, the layout or the text?
A question that cannot be answered with "either or", because both disciplines benefit significantly from each other and deliver the best results in particular when they work together.
Let's assume that the design for a digital product starts with a concept layout, which is initially provided with placeholder texts. Even at this early stage, the amount of text determined by the design plays an important role. Before the product then heads into initial testing, the placeholder texts should be filled with real-life copy.In the first prototype, UX designers and UX writers can observe the behaviour of the selected users and gain valuable insights into the characteristics of the target group(s). For instance, when the test persons reveal a lot about their typical choice of words or the use of certain expressions while they attend a personal interview. The analysis of these insights will then be incorporated into the creation of the layout and text.When optimising the wording in already launched solutions, different tonalities can be tested against each other: e.g. whether the user should be addressed emotionally or activating or rather with a practical benefit in focus. So-called “mental models” can also be applied to suggest in different ways how the software is to be used. During the testing, these versions are run against each other. The evaluation shows which of the tonalities encouraged the users mostly to click. In order to be able to make statistically valid statements about the effect of even the smallest changes in the choice of words or expressions, the number of testers should be as large as possible.While creating digital products, copy and layout usually work very closely together. For a well-rounded interaction concept, both general content and microcopy are needed. While it is possible to work with placeholder text in the content area at the beginning, a navigation menu with dummy text wouldn't work at all. It would not be possible to qualitatively assess whether it is a realistic and technically professional solution. Only a well-formulated microcopy allows conclusions to be drawn: as to whether the character length can be implemented in this manner, whether the quantity of menu elements can be perceived well, or whether text can partially be dispensed in favour of icons.Against the backdrop of implementing several language versions, it is also necessary that the layout is able to react as flexibly as possible to the most varied of space requirements – because the word length of the same term can be hugely disparate in different languages.