Sketch is a vector-based design tool that launched an industry.

I write and manage UX copy for Sketch’s Mac and web apps, with a focus on onboarding flows, web-based Workspaces, and collaboration features.

I also create project content strategies, glossaries, update support documentation, look after the UX copy style guide, write up release notes, write blog posts and run UX writing workshops.

What I learned

As a design tool, Sketch is about optimising the journey an idea must take to become something real. In short, Sketch augments the creative process.

But software as a service easily ends up being another layer of noise, a barrier that needs to be surmounted, a lens that blurs what’s real. Using software should be more like breathing, not reaching.

That got me thinking about our fundamental relationship with software and tech in general.

I suggest that software should be more like a sense and not a service: an invisible enabler. Right now, the tools and apps we build are still very much separate from us and poorly translate the reality we inhabit.

A shortish contract during which I wrote UX copy for a variety of projects, including forex payments, a client/consultant booking platform, and the Nedbank in-branch sales portal.

What I learned

The in-branch sales portal was particularly interesting because it highlighted the disparity in bureaucratic, vaguely hostile banking vocabulary versus how people actually speak.

In the slideshow below you'll see how I changed the conversation from an authoritative, reactive tone to something altogether more human, a positive conversation that implies success rather than assumes failure.