When Oliver Lindberg invited me to share a few tips for his article on UX Writing for the Shopify Partner blog, I immediately said yes. I wanted to spread the word about one skill that I find super helpful for any UXW’s daily work: negotiation.

After sending him my tips, I kept thinking about the importance of this subject. So this story is an extension of those ideas.

We often hear about how UX writers should be great communicators. It’s almost on every job description: flawless grammar, passionate about languages, superb writing and editing skills, and so on. But we don’t talk enough about how we should use our communication skills to interact with other roles and stakeholders effectively.

A key aspect of our work is giving visibility to our design process. And a common scenario is us trying to explain experience decisions in front of people who don’t necessarily know about UX and its value.

Negotiation is one of our daily activities as UX Writers, whether we are conscious of it or not.

Here are a few things I have learned about negotiating on two levels.

Negotiating within your product team

Choose your battles

UX Writers interact with every role within the team: developers, product managers, UX designers, business analysts, and scrum masters. Every meeting, workshop, and refinement session can unchain a new discussion. And yes, we should always have a say on anything that can directly or indirectly impact the experience of our users. But no…we can’t win all the time.

Technical feasibility, time to market, business needs, and KPIs are all significant factors when making team decisions on how to approach the product and the users’ stories. Reaching agreements often means we need to compromise. And that is fine.

The gentle art of saying no is key to any UXer, but this also means we should come up with alternatives, proposals, and ideas to enrich conversations, instead of blocking them.

Michael Corleone’s product team would not be too happy with him as a UX Writer.

Use your influence to define the MVP

Commonly, teams working with the Agile methodology approach are under a great deal of pressure to deliver fast. For a new product, this means dividing the backlog in different releases and deciding which features are essential for the MVP.

Technical aspects seem to be the priority during these conversations. What can we do with the least amount of effort? The definition of the Minimum Viable Product is one of the big battles every UXer should choose. We need to ensure that, even for the MVP, the experience we are offering is valuable for the users.

For this one, be strong.

Negotiate with your PM over backlog decisions

After defining the MVP, teams have a long list of tasks and features to include in future iterations and releases. Product managers have ownership of the backlog and its prioritization, however, UXers should work hand in hand with them to let them know what aspects are more critical from the users’ standpoint.

**We advocate for the experience, but product managers should be our main ally and defend the value of our role. **Let’s not forget they act as the first filter to every request we get from other areas. Whenever a stakeholder reaches out to them to demand a change of text without any solid argument, we should expect them to respond that UXWs are the experts and that we will evaluate the case and make a decision.

And for that, we need to develop a relationship of mutual trust and fluid communication.

Negotiating with stakeholders

Choose your words wisely

Applying your company’s voice and tone to every text is something we are used to doing as UX Writers. But we should also excel at communicating effectively at meetings and whenever we interact with stakeholders. We need to develop a specific voice and tone to do this.

**Depending on who we are talking to, we will have to be more direct, use euphemisms, or explain in more or fewer details to get our point across. **Knowing how to read your audience to understand which words to use takes observation, time, patience, and a lot of work.

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