In part 2 I created a Design Persona that describes what "personality" the redesigned blog will have.
Part of this design persona involved defining some brand traits:
- knowledgeable but not condescending
- clear but not elitist
- valuable but not limited
- friendly but not chatty
- honest but not mean
- avoid: shallow or poorly written content
In addition I thought about the "voice":
"DontCodeTired's voice is friendly and personal, it's speech-like and somewhat casual using contractions and occasional slang over formal and stuffy speech. It doesn't try to be overly cool but is not afraid to have some fun on occasion (as long as it doesn't detract too much from the information). "
This step of the redesign involves looking at the messaging throughout the site (error messages, prompts, button text, etc.) and aligning it to the design persona.
Some Examples
The following are some examples of content that I changed:
- "Contact" to "Say Hi"
- "Related posts" to "Posts you might like"
- "Comments are closed" to "Sorry, comments are closed."
- "Comments" to "Have your say"
- "Required" to "You missed this"
- "Let me know when a new comment is added" to "Send me an email when new comments are added"
- "Send" to "Send message"
- "I suggest you try one of the links below" to "Try one of these"
- "Tag" to "Tagged as"
I think that changes like these can subtly enhance the friendly feel of the site.
I may end up tweaking these a bit more but for now I am happy with it.
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