interaction design
Microcopy
The small words inside an interface - button labels, hints, placeholders, error messages - that quietly guide, reassure and give it a voice. Tiny by word count, decisive by impact.
The demo
The same sign-up form in two voices. Flip between them - and try submitting with the email empty to see how each one handles a mistake.
What this demo shows (text version)
One newsletter sign-up form - a heading, an email field with a hint, a consent checkbox, and a submit button - shown in two voices that swap when you toggle. The generic voice is cold and functional: "Newsletter sign-up.", "Email", "Required field.", "Consent to marketing communications.", "Submit". The crafted voice does the same job with warmth and clarity: "Get one good UX idea every Friday.", "Where should we send it?", "One email a week. Unsubscribe any time.", "Send me the good stuff".
Submitting with an empty or malformed email reveals the difference that matters most. The generic error is "Error: invalid input." - it blames you and explains nothing. The crafted error is "Hmm, that doesn't look like an email yet - mind giving it another glance?" - same validation, but it tells you what is wrong and what to do. The fields never change; only the words do.
Same form, same fields - but one version talks to you and the other talks at you. That difference is microcopy: the smallest text doing the most human work.
My rule: write the microcopy before you build the screen. If you can't say in plain words what a button does or why a field is needed, the interface isn't ready - and "Submit" is almost never the best answer.
The error message is where microcopy earns its keep. "Invalid input" blames the reader and explains nothing; a good error says what went wrong, in plain words, and how to put it right. Nobody reads the happy path as closely as the moment something breaks.