5.4.1 Constructing Value: Making Words (In)Visible

When it comes to status production in UX writing, visibility and invisibility are closely intertwined. While UX writers may strive to produce writing that goes unnoticed by users, at the same time, they have to ensure that they do not erase their own visibility as (language) workers – at least not within their professional field. Indeed, such professional visibility is a central contention for most UX writers. As an entry point to these matters of status and visibility, I offer Extract 5.1, taken from a blog article titled Getting a seat at the table as a UX writer.Footnote ¹ Here, a UX writer from Dropbox lists ten tips for establishing the importance of UX writing within a company.

As part of these tips, readers are emphatically told that to gain influence and authority, UX writers need to ‘explain[] [their] decisions objectively’ (line 1) so as to ‘elevate [their] visibility as the go-to words person’ (line 2). In other words, by making overt their metalinguistic knowledge, UX writers can draw attention to their linguistic expertise and establish the (economic) ‘value’ (line 1) of their work. Visibilizing words – or, rather, the production of words – thus seems to be part and parcel of being a UX writer. It is also, I suggest, a matter of de-naturalizing the linguistic labour of UX writers, of framing their writing as a skill they have acquired through training and education rather than as an innate quality that all people possess (cf. Duchêne, Reference Duchêne and Thurlow2020). This overt display of metalinguistic knowledge constitutes an ‘appeal to professionalism’ (Fournier, Reference Fournier1999) in order to claim a particular position of status and expertise. I will return to this point later; first, however, I want to unpack how UX writers engage in such visibility work and how this relates to issues of semiotic ideology. For this, I turn to my interview data.

With regards to the potential invisibilization of their work, many of my interviewees suggested that while most people working in the web and software design industry would generally accept (and expect) that the visual design of software had to be created by an expert, the verbal or linguistic aspects of the interface would still be treated as an afterthought, as something that could potentially be written by anyone. Clearly, this is a matter of semiotic ideology: language is considered not only less important than the visual mode but also seen as somehow less complex, as something that anyone – or at least anyone with the credentials to work at a software company – can produce. Therefore, the status of UX writers’ work vis-à-vis that of their colleagues seems to hinge on UX writers being able to successfully push back against an (over-)privileging of the visual mode in software design. This was particularly apparent in my interview with Lisa,Footnote ² who had been working as a UX writer for slightly more than a decade when I interviewed her. In Extract 5.2, she talks about her struggle in asserting the importance of her work, suggesting that her colleagues – especially those working on the visual design of interfaces – typically do not understand the importance of words in user interfaces.

Evidently, Lisa feels that her skills are invisibilized: her colleagues have all but ‘forgot[ten]’ (line 4) that the verbal design of software interfaces matters. In contrast to this, she positions herself as someone who understands that communication is multimodal, or as Lisa puts it, that ‘communication can happen in a bunch of different ways’ (line 1), with both ‘visual communication’ (line 1) and ‘the actual words’ (line 3) playing an important role. Interestingly, Lisa seems to understand visual communication less in terms of representation and more so in terms of the spatial or even temporal composition of a text. It is ‘the sequence in which you present information’ (line 2) that matters, which suggests a particular attunement to the dynamic nature of software interfaces, or to what Carnegie (Reference Carnegie2009) calls the interface’s ‘rhetoric of interactivity’ (p. 164). In any case, Lisa clearly constructs herself as someone who sees meaning making as multimodal: language matters, but so do other modes.

Regardless of her multimodal understanding of communication, though, Lisa’s position as a UX writer evidently means that her own work is primarily concerned with words and writing; it is therefore in her interest to highlight the importance of the verbal design of software interfaces. And indeed, she goes on to point out that while visual aspects matter, ‘the actual words you use are super important’ (lines 3). Note the use of the intensifier ‘super’ to emphasize the role of verbal content; additionally, the adjective ‘actual’ here highlights the different, possibly higher status that words apparently (should) have vis-à-vis visual content (see Tognini-Bonelli, Reference Tognini-Bonelli, Baker, Francis and Tognini-Bonelli1993, on the use of ‘actual’). Ironically, then, although UX writers often claim that the form of language is not the point of their work (see Chapter 4), when it comes to making the case for their profession vis-à-vis other semiotic work in software design, the verbal form of their work may suddenly and strategically be emphasized as a distinguishing factor. Making words visible and drawing attention to them as an integral part of software design can thus be another way for UX writers to establish the legitimacy of their work (cf. Chapter 3).

Lisa also positions UX writers as uniquely capable of recognizing the value of words in software interfaces. She repeatedly stresses that her colleagues who work on the (visual) design of software misunderstand the importance of language, saying that ‘the design field lost sight of that’ (line 4) and that ‘they [designers] completely forgot that words are part of the picture’ (lines 4–5). Her laughter (line 5) seems to underscore a certain incredulity at how one could forget that communication in/through software interfaces also entails language. In this way, Lisa implies that the professional invisibility of UX writers is not due to a lack of expertise but a lack of comprehension. It is not because of what she does, but because of her colleagues’ (mis)understanding of how communication works that her work as a UX writer is valued less than that of designers.

Many of my interviewees emphasized the way language was devalued vis-à-vis other modes. As a second example, I offer the following extract from my interview with Helen. Helen has worked as a UX writer for six years; before this, she worked as a technical writer for two decades.Footnote ³ In Extract 5.3, she talks about how her colleagues in visual design (mis)understand the role of language.

Much of what Lisa does in Extract 5.2 can also be seen here. Helen’s main concern is, again, how the skills that are specific to UX writing are undervalued vis-à-vis the semiotic work of her colleagues working on the design of the software: ‘it feels like design is elevated and writing is the afterthought’ (line 4), she says. Note also the similarity in how Lisa and Helen talk about this. Both invoke forgetfulness and a general inattention to words/writing on the part of designers; against this foil, UX writers can then be framed as the ones that are able to understand (and explain) the value of words in software interfaces. Like Lisa, Helen positions herself as capable of recognizing the value of both writing and design. She claims that they are not only equally important (‘of equal weight’, line 3), but that they are also inseparable: they are ‘two sides of that same coin’ (line 5).

In this sense, her understanding of communication is not just multimodal but transmodal (cf. Thurlow & Jaworski, Reference Thurlow, Jaworski, Cavanaugh and Shankar2017b; see also Kress, Reference Kress1997 on synaesthesia) with individual modes such as written and visual communication mutually influencing or conditioning one another. Again, this interrelatedness of (visual) design and writing – and the multi-/transmodal understanding of communication that this is based on – is here framed as something UX writers like Helen understand but their colleagues do not.

Overall, Lisa and Helen both construct a difference in UX writers’ and designers’ understanding of how communication works. UX writers are characterized as people who recognize that communication is holistic and multimodal, while designers are portrayed as misunderstanding specifically the role of language. There is certainly a degree of exaggeration in how they are explaining this; indeed, Lisa herself mitigates her claim somewhat, saying that it is ‘like’ designers forgot about words (Extract 5.2, line 4), not that they indeed never think about them; similarly, Helen says that it ‘feels like’ design is valued more highly (Extract 5.3, line 4). Regardless of this, though, what is interesting is that in their accounts to me as the interviewer, these two UX writers both highlight the differing semiotic ideologies of designers and UX writers as a way to emphasize the unique expertise (and value) of UX writers. These UX writers thus at least implicitly challenge the notion that anyone can write software interface texts. Similar to the explication of metalinguistic knowledge (cf. Extract 5.1), this emphasis on UX writers’ understanding of language and other modes reframes the otherwise taken-for-granted and naturalized language work (cf. Duchêne, Reference Duchêne and Thurlow2020) that goes into writing interface texts as a particular skill that UX writers – but not designers – possess. As such, it is a claim to expertise and professionalism (cf. Chapter 3), highlighting UX writers’ supposedly unique value.

Beyond drawing attention to the (multi)modality of their work and its concrete output, UX writers also put considerable effort into visibilizing the processes of their linguistic labour; recall Extract 5.1, where UX writers are advised to regularly offer metalinguistic commentary on their work in order to increase their visibility vis-à-vis their colleagues. Indeed, visibilizing one’s work processes in this way was something most of my interviewees saw as an important part of their day-to-day work, stressing that their work involved not only the writing of interface texts but also what they referred to as ‘evangelizing’: advertising the value of UX writing within the usually quite large company that had hired them as a UX writer. Six of my interviewees explained that they held regular consultation sessions for non-UX writing colleagues, with the two-fold aim of helping others solve language-related questions and of making them aware of UX writing in the first place. In Extract 5.4, Mona talks about her experience of organizing such consultation sessions upon joining a renowned software company as the first UX writer on the staff. Like Lisa (Extract 5.2), Mona has worked as a UX writer for about a decade and can be considered a seasoned UX writer.

As Mona explains, her consultation sessions (or ‘writing labs’, as she called them in our interview) are open to ‘anybody … with any piece of writing’ (line 1), which allows her to potentially reach a large number and a wide variety of colleagues through this practice. As such, her consultation sessions constitute a more oblique way of visibilizing UX writing work: Mona herself calls her practice ‘sneaky’ (line 2), as she explains that her main goal with these sessions is not to produce concrete linguistic output but to rather focus on broader, invisible processes that make up her language work.

Mona portrays the consultations sessions as a way for her to re-orient her colleagues’ understanding of what UX writing is supposed to be about: while they may initially ask her to ‘fix the words’ (line 3) or ‘spellcheck’ (line 3) something – tasks pertaining to the verbal form of interface texts – Mona herself uses these requests as an opportunity to instead focus on the communicative context (‘the entire process’, line 4) and the communicative function these texts (should) fulfil, namely advancing a particular ‘business goal’ (line 4). The concrete linguistic output, in turn, is deprioritized. One might understand this as a matter of semiotic ideology, this time not in terms of the value of different modes, but rather with regards to the nature of linguistic signs in interfaces and the consequences these signs should produce. For Mona, UX writing appears to be less about words as symbolic representation and more about what these words do or ‘provide’ (line 6), specifically in terms of business or economic value.

The kinds of consultation sessions that Mona discusses were also mentioned by other UX writers I interviewed, including some that were working at larger companies with more UX writers. Consider Extract 5.5, where Bethany, who has been working as a UX writer for five years, responds to my question about what her typical workday looks like. Note that Bethany works at a large, international software company that employs a lot more UX writers than Mona’s employer.Footnote ⁴

Despite the larger size of the company and the fact that Bethany is neither the only UX writer there nor a recently hired one, a large part of her job (still) consists of ‘educat[ing] others about what [UX writers] can do’ (lines 1–2). Like in Extract 5.4, what is at stake is again what Bethany’s colleagues come to understand as UX writing in the first place. Specifically, Bethany is interested in making sure that she is not seen as someone that ‘pretties up the placeholder text’ (line 3) and simply polishes what somebody else has written. Like Mona, she thus seeks to shift attention from the verbal form of interface texts to broader, contextual issues. Once again, this is connected to showing how UX writers ‘can add value’ (line 4), presumably also in an economic sense. Bethany and Mona are not the only ones concerned with this; recall Extract 5.1, where UX writers are likewise advised to ‘show the value of UX writing’ (line 1, emphasis added) in order to gain legitimacy. The same principle seems to be at work here, too: in order to popularize UX writing within a company, the work needs to be framed as profitable.

Overall, then, (in)visibility in UX writing is closely linked to matters of economic profit, all of which points to a ‘transactional or entrepreneurial frame’ (Urciuoli, Reference Urciuoli2008, p. 224) that UX writers mobilize to make their work visible in a highly neoliberal environment. (See Marwick, Reference Marwick2013 on neoliberalism in the so-called tech industry.) This neoliberal and typically implicit obligation to prove one’s value as a profitable worker is of course something that characterizes much language work (e.g. Urciuoli, Reference Urciuoli2008; Urciuoli & LaDousa, Reference Urciuoli and LaDousa2013); it is also something that Redish (Reference Redish1995) identified several decades ago as a key issue for technical writers, a language profession that is often seen as adjacent to or even as a precursor of UX writing (see Chapter 2). In short, in order to gain recognition, creditability, and resources, language professionals have to make their linguistic knowledge visible by linking it to matters of commercial or economic value. Yet, much as the status of UX writers hinges on visibilizing the (economic) value of their language work; UX writers’ claims to linguistic expertise are also centrally characterized by invisibility.

As I have noted before, the work of most elite language workers hinges on its backstage nature – on being kept deliberately out of sight for users/consumers (Thurlow, Reference Thurlow and Thurlow2020c). Some wordsmiths manage to articulate exactly the invisibility of their work as a skill, which allows them to claim unique value on the linguistic marketplace (e.g. Mapes, Reference Mapes2023, on speechwriters; Droz-dit-Busset, Reference Droz-dit-Bussetforthcoming, on copywriters). This, I propose, is also the case for UX writers. Yet, unlike speechwriters and copywriters, who claim expertise by erasing their own authorship, UX writers do not obscure their involvement in the production of software interface texts; rather, they claim to render these texts themselves invisible. As I will discuss in the second part of my analysis, the aspiration of creating invisible interface texts is inherently normative. Before turning to these ideological implications of invisibility, though, I want to examine how UX writers deploy this discourse of invisible writing to position themselves as elite language workers. For this, I return to Lisa’s case (Extract 5.2). Recall how Lisa was concerned with distinguishing her own expertise from that of her colleagues. In Extract 5.2, she talked about the different semiotic ideologies UX writers and designers hold in terms of which modes should be prioritized in interface design; Extract 5.6 shows that she extends such distinctions and differentiations to how UX writers and designers approach microcopy (i.e. interface text) itself. This might be understood as a difference in terms of their linguistic ideologies, that is, their beliefs about how language, specifically, is supposed to work in software interfaces.

Unlike in Extract 5.2, where Lisa talked about being confronted with her colleagues’ belief that language does not matter, she here talks about what happens when they do pay attention to language. Bearing in mind that Lisa is constructing a generalized exchange here – something that happens ‘often’ (line 1) rather than a specific interaction she remembers – her narration of this hypothetical interaction still reveals her own reflexive understanding of how language is supposed to work vis-à-vis her perception of her colleagues’ linguistic ideologies. In this case, Lisa proposes that her colleagues tend to overemphasize language, wanting it to ‘sound really fun and exciting’ (line 2) and being generally concerned with making the language stand out. This evidently clashes with Lisa’s own opinion. She suggests that UX writing should rather be as inconspicuous as possible: ‘if I do a good job, they [users] won’t notice the words at all’ (line 7).

As I discussed in Chapter 4, the belief or professional value that UX writing should be unspectacular or even boring is not uncommon among UX writers. Indeed, Lisa herself also uses the term ‘boring’ (line 3) to describe how she thinks her colleagues perceive her. Such disavowals of creative or spectacular writing are, I have argued, one way in which UX writers can demarcate their profession from other kinds of language work, all while raising their own profile in the process. In much the same way, Lisa uses the notion of inconspicuous writing to distinguish herself – in this case, not from other language workers but from her (visual) design colleagues. Concretely, Lisa positions herself as an expert by disaligning with the (constructed) position of her colleagues. She likens their suggestions to ‘jazz hands’ (line 4), implying that such ‘noticeably written’ (line 5) microcopy is unnecessarily flashy. Like UX writers’ claims that their non-creative writing is better than other people’s creative writing, this too might be understood as an act of condescension (Bourdieu, Reference Bourdieu and Thompson1991) through which Lisa claims the position of someone with more linguistic knowledge and skill than her colleagues.

The position of expertise and superiority is emphasized by Lisa’s construction of herself not only as someone who knows better than her colleagues, but as someone who has to educate her colleagues on how to write microcopy. ‘[W]e just need them [the users] to … press this button’ (lines 3–4) is apparently the kind of corrective advice she gives her colleagues. Note how the use of ‘just’ (line 3) further emphasizes the condescending stance. And once again, Lisa’s instructional goals entail redirecting her colleagues from focusing on the form of interface texts to their function: what matters are not the words as such but that users will click through the interface in a particular, intended way. Like Mona and Bethany (Extracts 5.4 and 5.5), Lisa thus reorients her colleagues’ focus from linguistic form to (business) function, and she does so by writing interface texts that are as inconspicuous as possible. Through this, invisibility becomes linked to value and invisible writing becomes something UX writers can mobilize in order to increase their status as language workers.

Before turning to the more normative consequences of UX writers’ invisible writing, I want to briefly summarize my main observations about (in)visibility and status/value in the work of UX writers. As I have established in Chapters 2 and 3, UX writing is – at least at the time of writing – a relatively recent professional role in software design. It is therefore not surprising that UX writers find themselves in need of proving their value both on the larger market of language work but also – or perhaps especially – vis-à-vis their own colleagues. Indeed, the work of their colleagues in (visual) design may not be concerned with language per se, but it is certainly also work that is inherently semiotic. What distinguishes UX writers and designers, then, might be primarily a matter of which semiotic mode they prioritize in their work. As a matter of semiotic ideology, UX writers and designers seem to take a different stance on whether visual or verbal communication matters more in interface design. I have proposed that UX writers operationalize this difference in order to highlight their own expertise on language in interface design as (economically) relevant in a neoliberal marketplace (cf. Urciuoli & LaDousa, Reference Urciuoli and LaDousa2013). In other words, they render their invisible language work visible by highlighting its business value; and they do so by contrasting their approach to microcopy with the (supposedly) less complex and less nuanced approach of their colleagues. For this, they conceptualize communication as inherently multi- or even transmodal (cf. Thurlow & Jaworski, Reference Thurlow, Jaworski, Cavanaugh and Shankar2017b; see also Chapters 2 and 3), an approach that is once again closely aligned with recent theorizations in sociocultural linguistics, and one that strategically decentres language.

Indeed, instead of constructing the value of their linguistic work around the extraordinariness of language, UX writers claim the opposite as their unique skill: the ability to make language so banal and inconspicuous that it becomes invisible. In this way, they gain their status as wordsmiths through their ability to make exactly the invisibility of their language work valuable (cf. Mapes, Reference Mapes2023). At the same time, it is exactly this invisibility that makes the work of UX writers powerful and potentially instrumental in shaping societal norms. In what follows, I thus examine more closely how language is supposed to become invisible; for this, I turn to some of the media ideologies (Gershon, Reference Gershon2010) that structure UX writers’ work.

5.4.2 Producing Norms: Writing the Invisible Interface

As I have just shown, UX writers tend to see invisibility or inconspicuousness as a feature of successful UX writing. In this second part of my analysis, I am interested in the normative implications of this ideal and in how, specifically, UX writers claim to make interface texts invisible. This, I suggest, is connected primarily to matters of mediality and materiality. Evidently, it is difficult to conceive of invisibility as a concrete quality of an (interface) text, at least if invisibility is understood as a physical phenomenon (i.e. as something that cannot be perceived by the human eye). But as an ideal quality that is ascribed to texts – and often to media more generally (cf. Spitzmüller, Reference Spitzmüller2013) – invisibility is also a discursive phenomenon. Indeed, this discursive ideal has shaped contemporary Western perceptions of media and mediality for a long time; Bolter and Grusin (Reference Bolter and Grusin1999), for instance, trace such discourses of invisibility and transparency back to at least the renaissance. In this vein, I understand invisibility as a central and deep-seated media ideology that structures UX writers’ text production.

To illustrate the prevalence of invisibility as a media ideology in UX writing, I again start with a discussion of my blog article data. To recall, these are all instances where UX writers address ‘best practices’ in their work, I therefore take these articles to be illustrative of UX writers’ general or collective understanding of what constitutes good UX writing. In Extracts 5.7–5.10, I offer a compilation of statements by four different UX writers, who all suggest that invisibility is one, if not the, hallmark of good UX writing.

Not only do all these UX writers invoke invisibility as a central feature of good UX writing, but they also all offer similar explanations of what exactly constitutes such (supposedly) invisible writing. It is, so these UX writers suggest, writing that requires no (cognitive) effort from the user. We’re told that ‘[p]eople just intuitively get it’ (Extract 5.7), that ‘[u]sers shouldn’t focus on reading’ (Extract 5.8), that the writing itself should become ‘forgettable’ (Extract 5.9), and that great (i.e. invisible) UX writing is simply ‘effortless’ (Extract 5.10). Similar to this emphasis on effortlessness, all but one of the extracts contain the words ‘intuitive’ (Extracts 5.8 and 5.10) or ‘intuitively’ (Extract 5.7). What this reveals is that invisibility is typically mentioned not on its own but as part of a cluster of words. Next to ‘intuitive’ and ‘effortless’, this also includes ‘human-centered’ (Extract 5.7), ‘clear’ and ‘concise’ (Extracts 5.9 and 5.10), as well as ‘frictionless’ (Extract 5.9). Together, these examples nicely illustrate how invisibility thus becomes ‘mutually enregistered’ (Urciuoli, Reference Urciuoli2008, p. 212, after Silverstein, Reference Silverstein2003) with other terms and concepts. By repeatedly being used in the same context, these words come to form what Urciouli calls ‘a loose associational chain’ (p. 212), whereby one specific term always presupposes the meanings connoted by the other terms. As such, the meaning of ‘invisibility’ in UX writing expands as it clusters around these other terms, always also evoking the associated meanings of intuitiveness, effortlessness, clarity, and so on.

Particularly telling here is the fact that ‘human-centered’ (Extract 5.7) is part of the associational chain UX writers establish around the word ‘invisible’. (In other instances in my blog article data, I also found the terms ‘user-centered’ and ‘user-friendly’ being used.) The use of the words ‘user’ and ‘human’ reveals that these media ideologies entail not only preconceived notions about the software interfaces but also about the users of these interfaces, who should not actively ‘read[]’ (Extract 5.8) microcopy but simply ‘get’ (Extract 5.7) what UX writers meant to convey. Once again, this understanding of how texts are read or received is quite interesting, as it is based on a more-than-representational understanding of language and communication (cf. Lorimer, Reference Lorimer2005; Thrift, Reference Thrift2007;), whereby the software interface does not need to be cognitively processed by users but is instead processed in an affective and embodied manner. The crux of the matter, however, is that within this more-than-representational understanding of the interface, invisibility appears to be associated with a particular, preconceived role users (should) take on in their interpretation of interfaces or interface texts: that of a cognitively passive but emotionally affected recipient whose (re)actions to the interface somehow ‘feel intuitive’ (Extract 5.8). I will return to this aspect later; for now, suffice it to say that users are typically cast as de-agentialized in these conceptualizations of invisibility.

The mutually enregistered meanings that cluster around the word invisibility in UX writing circulate not just in mediatized texts such as these blog articles, they also surfaced in the interviews I conducted with UX writers. Here, too, my interviewees frequently talked about invisibility as a characteristic of good UX writing. What becomes particularly apparent here is how this associational chain (cf. Urciuoli, Reference Urciuoli2008) makes it possible for UX writers to invoke the ideal of invisibility without explicitly mentioning it. Consider Extract 5.11, where Rachel, who has been working as a UX writer at a well-known tech company for four years, responds to my question about what she would consider good or ‘best practice’ examples of UX writing.

At no point does Rachel use the words invisible or invisibility in her response; despite this, she clearly invokes the same discourse of the invisible and intuitive interface that can be seen in the blog article data (Extracts 5.7–5.10). She says that good UX writing is ‘very, very clear’ (line 1); she equally emphasizes that it should require no cognitive effort: ‘I don’t have to think about it [the writing]’ (lines 1–2). More implicitly, she also alludes to the concept of frictionless by suggesting that ‘[one doesn’t] need to pause’ (lines 2–3). This shows nicely that through the mutual enregisterment of invisibility with these other concepts, the invisible interface can be invoked without being explicitly mentioned.

Once again, the ideal of an invisible or transparent medium is not unique to UX writing (recall Bolter & Grusin, Reference Bolter and Grusin1999). By the same token, the ideology of an invisible and intuitive interface is also more widespread and more long-standing. In fact, with regards to software design, the ideal of the invisible interface can be traced back to early scholarship in HCI and to early industry practice in UX design (Pucheu, Reference Pucheu2016; see also Petrick, Reference Petrick2020). Here, the invisible interface emerges as a kind of holy grail – something that has structured discussions of (ideal) interfaces for decades (e.g. Norman, Reference Norman and Laurel1990; Weiser, Reference Weiser1994; Fishkin et al., Reference Fishkin, Moran, Harrison, Chatty and Dewan1999) and that is still invoked today (e.g. Patterson & Costain, Reference Patterson and Costain2015; Hounshell & Todd, Reference Hounshell and Todd2016; Susser, Reference Susser2019). As said, this ideal permeates both scholarly discussions and those of industry practitioners.

In light of these established (or enregistered) discourses of invisibility, Rachel’s use of the phrase ‘I don’t need to think about it’ (lines 1–2) takes on additional meaning, as it echoes the title of a famous industry publication, Don’t make me think (Krug, 2000/Reference Krug2014). Authored in 2000 by UX professional Steve Krug, this book has been widely received in the UX industry and is still today often seen as an important introduction to UX design.Footnote ⁵ More importantly, though, it is one of the key industry publications that has perpetuated the idea and ideal of the invisible interface in UX design (Kendrick, Reference Kendrick2005). To be clear, I am not suggesting that Rachel is explicitly referring to Krug’s book; my point is simply that given the relationship between UX writing and the broader field of UX design (see Chapter 2), this, too, is part of the associational chain that is at work here: invoking invisibility evokes not only associated meanings of clarity, effortlessness, or frictionlessness but of course also previous, older utterances that have shaped meanings of invisibility in UX design. In other words, the (media) ideological assumptions that shape UX writers’ understandings of what constitutes successful examples of their work are part of a more far-reaching discursive formation (Foucault, Reference Foucault1972). It is this that makes the idea(l) of the invisible interface so pervasive and difficult to contest.

In order to illustrate how prevalent the ideology of the invisible interface is, I turn to examining how this discursive ideal surfaces more implicitly in UX writers’ discussions of their work. Specifically, I see this as linked to an invisibilization also of the materiality of software, which becomes apparent when one examines how UX writers describe the general context and outcome of their work. In my language biography interviews, there is a striking absence of terms such as technology, software, or even app and website – words I myself have found central for explaining what kind of work UX writers do. This is not to suggest that UX writers never use these terms, but it is interesting how persistently the UX writers I interviewed described the ‘thing’ they were working on differently, namely as a product or an experience. Recall, for instance, how Rachel (Extract 5.11) talks about how one encounters UX writing: ‘I don’t have to think about it as I’m using a product or going through a site or an experience’ (lines 1–2, emphasis added). As said, I am not claiming that UX writers never use technically oriented vocabulary when describing their work; Rachel also uses the expression ‘site’ (i.e. website) here. Yet, the seemingly disproportionate use of product and experience across my interview data is telling.

Without making more sophisticated quantitative claims, I offer the following indicative numbers of how my interviewees typically talked about their work.Footnote ⁶ Of the twenty-one UX writers I interviewed, twelve referred to what they were creating as a product, eleven of them (also) used the term experience, while two interviewees combined these terms and called the object of their work a product experience. Not surprisingly, interface was a popular term as well – although it was in fact only used by half of my interviewees (ten, to be precise). In contrast to this, the term website (including the short form site) was used only by five interviewees, the term app by three of them, and only one person used the term technology and one the term software when referring to the general context and objects of their work. The term (digital) media that so many digital discourse scholars (myself included) like to use is – perhaps not surprisingly – absent across all my interviews. Finally, it is worth noting that a simple text search of my interview transcripts reveals that the term computer occurs only in three interviews, the term (smart)phone only in two, and the term tablet in none.

As said, I do not want to make any quantitative claims here; my goal is simply to give a sense of how UX writers (in contrast to, say, academics) tend to talk about so-called digital media. What emerges is that terms that connote technological materiality and mediality (like app or software) are relatively absent in favour of terms that emphasize more ephemeral, non-representational aspects (as experience does) or expressions that point to the neoliberal and economic context of UX writers’ work (as product does). Interface is of course somewhat of an outlier here, as it might be seen as at least indexing the digital nature of UX writing – though interface itself, too, is a term that obscures the materiality of technology, describing only ever its surface or boundary.Footnote ⁷ Again, there is a link here to the broader field of software design and computer science, where the materiality and physical manifestation of digital media are generally abstracted away (see Borning et al., Reference Borning, Friedman and Logler2020). Both product and experience are certainly also indexical of the larger professional field in which UX writers situate themselves. In this regard, product is a term that points to the highly entrepreneurial context of software design (Marwick, Reference Marwick2013), while the term experience indexes UX writers’ orientation to the field of user experience design (cf. Chapters 2 and 3). What both product and experience obscure, however, is the digitally and technologically mediated nature of UX writing (and UX or software design in general) and, thus, its mediality and also materiality.

In practice, of course, the materiality of digital media does matter. Indeed, sometimes, materiality may be what matters most, such as when people use a smartphone in public spaces (or even just pretend to use one) in order to signal to others that they are not available for conversation (see Ayaß, Reference Ayaß2014 on media as involvement shields). At other times, it is the specific channel that matters, such as when making a phone call is deemed more appropriate than writing a text message or vice versa. This, of course, is at the core of Gershon’s (Reference Gershon2010) media ideologies; the very materiality of media is what makes them semiotically meaningful. However, such meaning potentials that are linked to the material nature of digital media and their mediated-ness are entirely erased in UX writers’ discussions of their work. UX writers appear to take invisibility as such a fundamental given of how digital media (ought to) work that the technological medium is taken for granted to the degree that it can be left entirely unspoken and become subsumed under the vague notion of product or experience.Footnote ⁸

What emerges as a fundamental media ideology in UX writers’ work, then, is their understanding of the materiality and mediality of digital media as merely technical components that can be ignored rather than semiotic resources that contribute to the production of meaning. Thus, the invisible interface becomes a mere carrier or container. Because as Spitzmüller (Reference Spitzmüller2015) points out, for a ‘thing’ to become a ‘sign’ – or, more broadly, a semiotic resource – it needs to be not only perceivable but also interpretable. It is in this way that meaning making is centrally connected to materiality; it is through their material nature that signs become legible to social actors (Spitzmüller, Reference Spitzmüller2015).Footnote ⁹ This material condition is exactly what UX writers erase in calling the object of their work a product or an experience. Overall, this leads to a form of medial invisibility (cf. Spitzmüller, Reference Spitzmüller2013) whereby the software interface is reduced to being a mere and neutral carrier of information. The software interface and the microcopy that forms part of it are neither meant to be perceived nor meant to have any impact on meaning making. What is likewise erased through this, though, is the role of users as social actors who might interpret the interface. To discuss this last point, I now return to examining how users are conceptualized in the ideology of the invisible interface. It is here that one sees most clearly that the invisibility UX writers strive for is ultimately normative, dependent on them shaping – or even prescribing – users’ actions.

Importantly, the interface becomes invisible not because users fully understand what is happening; rather, the opposite is the case: the invisible interface depends on users not engaging with the underlying technological, social, and semiotic processes. This understanding of users as passive recipients is something I have commented on earlier in this chapter (see Extracts 5.7–5.10); to make this point a little bit stronger, I offer Extract 5.12 from my interview with Sonja. At the time of the interview, Sonja had just started her first full-time position as a UX writer. Prior to this, she had completed a UX writing course and taken several smaller UX writing freelance jobs. Sonja’s account encapsulates a certain optimism about the role of UX writers vis-à-vis users, which might be linked to her relatively recent start in this professional domain. Having said which, it is exactly her status as a junior UX writer that makes Sonja an interesting case. As someone who has learnt about UX writing only recently, Sonja is a prime example of how the long-standing discourse of the invisible interface is not just something older generations of UX professionals draw on; on the contrary, it is also very much (re)produced by those that have entered the professional field only recently. These are professional wisdoms or mythologies that are being taught onwards.

Like many other UX writers, Sonja also strives to invisibilize her writing and/or personal style: ‘[y]ou don’t want to be seen in the product’ (line 1), she says. Similarly, she links this invisibility to increased ease of use and reduced cognitive effort for users. A good UX writer, she suggests, writes in such a ‘subtle’ (line 1) way that users ‘absorb’ (line 2) their writing without consciously being aware of it. What is particularly evident here is the passive role that is attributed to users. Sonja goes on to underscore this passivity of users by suggesting that they are using software ‘without really understanding … that they’ve been directed somewhere’ (lines 3–4). What emerges is a potentially patronizing stance towards users that is reminiscent of what Massanari (Reference Massanari2010) dubs the ‘users as victims of bad design’ trope, which she sees as pervading much contemporary UX design practices operating under a so-called user-centred design paradigm (p. 404). Here, users are typically characterized as incapable of understanding what software does, while designers are positioned as their ‘savior’ (Massanari, Reference Massanari2010, pp. 404–406). This is also the case in Sonja’s account, where users are only granted a position of affective re-action: they are passive recipients responding to the ‘emotional prompt[s]’ (line 4) of UX writers without actually comprehending what is going on. They are attributed neither the capacity to comprehend nor the agency to influence what is going on.

One particular belief that is connected to the invisible interface and that underpins Sonja’s conceptualization of software interfaces (and digital media more generally) is an understanding of users as passive recipients rather than active contributors to interactions. The asymmetrical and asynchronous nature of the interactions between producers and users of digital media certainly facilitates this understanding. Nonetheless, as scholars in sociocultural linguistics have demonstrated well, audiences are never just passive recipients; rather, they actively shape interaction (see, e.g., the classic work of Goffman, Reference Goffman1981, and Bell, Reference Bell1984). I will discuss this matter in more depth in Chapter 6, where I suggest that UX writers ultimately engage in crafting particular audiences; for now, however, my point is simply that for all their claims to user-centredness, UX writers often seem to entertain a relatively simplistic understanding of the (interactional) role users may take on when using software. In this vein, the user as an active interpreter of the interface is erased; users are instead cast as agentless recipients of the UX writer’s directions.

Understanding users as passive recipients, however, obscures the darker, manipulative aspects of what UX writers can and, according to my interviewee Sonja, even should do through their work – directing users in such a way that they are not even aware of it. If users are thought of as agentless to begin with, steering their actions can be more easily reconciled as a natural outcome of UX writing rather than explicit manipulation. It is in this way that interface texts are rendered (seemingly) natural and neutral, despite the fact that the decisions UX writers take are inherently normative, shaping what users can do with and through digital media in the first place. By seeking to create an invisible interface, UX writers thus produce a particular, restrictive interactional situation that leaves little room for reflexivity on behalf of the user and, ultimately, no – or only little – social agency for users.

Evidently, much of the potentially manipulative practices that emerge are due to the particular business context in which UX writers exercise their work. Most likely, it is the companies UX writers work for that are the ones interested in manipulating users (cf. Extract 5.12) rather than the UX writers themselves. As I will suggest in Chapter 6, this may be understood as a form of symbolic violence (Kramsch, Reference Kramsch2021; see also Bourdieu & Wacquant, Reference Bourdieu and Wacquant1992), whereby users are incited to act in particular ways that are supposedly in their best interest while primarily serving the interests of these companies. Amidst this, UX writers, as I have shown in the first part of the chapter, are under constant pressure to prove their (business) value; as such, part of their striving to create invisible interfaces is likely a way of managing this tension. At the same time, though, and as I have shown in the second half of the chapter, this ideal of the invisible interface is also more deeply rooted in the professional practices of the field, including academic scholarship in HCI that influences the profession. It is through the ongoing and often unquestioned circulation of these enregistered discourses of invisibility that UX writers ultimately become complicit in the perpetuation of the ideal of the invisible interface as well as its cultural-normative consequences.

6.5.1 Automated Participant Roles

When people interact through digital media, they always interact on two levels, with other humans and with the software, both of which influence their actions. Digitally mediated interaction hence always entails a ‘pragmatic duality’ (Sjöström & Goldkuhl, Reference Sjöström, Goldkuhl and Liu2004), which also impacts the kinds of participant roles that surface. I will discuss this by considering how websites ask users to accept cookies. To this end, Figure 6.1 offers a compilation of cookie consent notices from my dataset.

Figure 6.1 Cookie consent notices. From left to right, top to bottom: Kokojoo/Dayog Kabore; Titan Comics; UserZoom/Usertesting Technologies, Inc; Stack Overflow; Sage Publishing; Boardgame Arena

Figure 6.1Long description

Top left. The text reads, We love cookies. That’s why we’re working on great new innovative products. For now, though, you’ll have to be happy with the cookies we use to ensure you get the best experience on our website. Therefore, we would be happy if you accept these cookies. If not, you can just adjust your settings and preferences. Two buttons are below this, 1. Cookie setting, 2. Yeah, let’s rock it. Top right. The text reads, Our Cookies. We use cookies to give you the best experience on the website. To see how we use these cookies, please refer to our privacy policy. By continuing to use the site, you consent to their use. One button is below this, it reads, Count me in. Left middle. The text reads, Before you continue to UserZoom. By clicking Accept All, you agree to the storing of cookies on your device to enhance site navigation, analyze site usage, and assist in our marketing efforts. Two buttons are below this, 1. Accept all, 2. Learn more. Bottom right. The text reads, Your privacy. By clicking Accept all cookies, you agree Stack Exchange can store cookies on your device and disclose information in accordance with our Cookie Policy. There is no button below this message for users to accept cookies or not. Bottom left. The test reads, By using this website, you agree to our use of cookies. We use cookies to provide you with a great experience and to help our website run effectively. Bottom. The text reads as follows. We use cookies on this website. Sorry, you can’t eat them. Two buttons are below this, 1. Read more, 2. Got it.

A cookie is a small text file that a web server can store on a user’s computer. Cookies are used to remember information about the user, for instance, the user’s location or the username that was last used to log in on a page. More complex cookies can also be used to record people’s browsing behaviour, which can later be used to make inferences about the kinds of audiences that visit a site. However, this is rarely what people consider when they consent to cookies. Indeed, the different cookie consent notices in Figure 6.1 hardly inform users of what cookies are, let alone what kinds of technical interactions (cf. Carmi, Reference Carmi2021) one is asked to consent to. Most of these texts are purposefully vague about the matter, speaking simply of offering ‘a great’ or even ‘the best experience’. Many make use of emphatic language (‘We love cookies!’; ‘Count me in’; ‘Yeah. let’s rock it’) and playful, tongue-in-cheek references to actual cookies (‘Sorry you can’t eat them!’), all of which construct a particularly (and, given the legal implications of these texts, somewhat strangely) enthusiastic tone. At the same time, however, and as Ma & Birrell (Reference Ma and Birrell2022) show in an empirical study, the language used in cookie consent notices has a significant impact on whether people choose to opt-in or opt-out of cookies. Clearly, language is of key interest in these little, seemingly fleeting interface texts.

Intentionally or not, these cookie consent notices thus tend to be manipulative, something that is in part achieved through semiotic means. Beyond this, though, they are of course also highly creative. Indeed, at first glance, these examples seem to contradict UX writers’ claims that their work is not creative (cf. Chapter 4). Certainly, many of the examples in Figure 6.1 exhibit the kind of ‘literariness’ that Carter (Reference Carter2004) sees as typical of (linguistic) creativity through the use of metaphor and humour. But more important than this, these interface texts are also creative in a discursive sense (cf. Jones, Reference Jones2010): they are clearly meant to do something – or, rather to get users to do something, namely to accept cookies. In this way, the linguistic and discursive creativity that these cookie consent notices exhibit serves a clear business or economic purpose (again, see Chapter 4 on UX writers’ claims to such strategic creativity; cf. also Gormley, Reference Gormley2020, on the co-option of creativity into a neoliberal workplace ethic). As I will discuss in more depth later, the linguistic and semiotic form of these little texts thus obscures what other purposes cookies may serve – especially, what their purpose may be for corporations – and what kinds of ramifications clicking ‘Got it!’ might have. Microcopy is here used to creatively invisibilize particular (inter)actions towards users. Indeed, on a more basic level, cookie consent notices, usually implemented as modal popups, also create a specific interactional situation, whereby users are positioned in a relatively constrained participant role – one where they often have no other option than clicking agree (or turning away).

The constraint on participation is linked to how interactions like these are entirely determined by when such texts appear. There is an issue of temporality at work, whereby users are asked to be obedient in the face of urgency. As Jones (Reference Jones2020a) points out, these popups usually appear just when people wish to engage with what they obscure so that ‘not trying to adjust one’s “cookie preferences” [becomes] the rational choice’ (p. 94, emphasis in original; Gray et al., Reference Gray, Kou, Battles, Hoggatt and Toombs2018, on ‘consent walls’). Clicking ‘agree’ thus constitutes an action that means different things to the user and to the technological system. To the user, it’s a quick click made in order to continue to what they actually came for; to the system, it constitutes the permission and the trigger to send specific cookies to the user’s hard drive. The computational process and the textual performance diverge. Here, then, we have a different kind of automated action. This is not an automated text action in Eisenlauer’s (Reference Eisenlauer2014) sense, but rather automation in the sense that people become conditioned to more automatically take the action that the software and those who built it would have them take. In this case, the software interface as well as its underlying technological system (i.e. the algorithm and its actions) significantly shape the users’ interaction and, hence, the kinds of participant roles that they may take on in the interaction itself.

6.5.2 Stylizing Users

Cookie consent notices do not only construct specific participant roles, they also construct particular subject positions for users. In other words, through these texts, users are also stylized in particular ways. Consider the cookie consent notice in Figure 6.2: not only does this interface give me only one kind of action that I can take (agreeing to cookies), it also makes me take this action in a very particular way, that is, by declaring that ‘I’m cool with cookies’. Through this, the interface establishes a particular identity that I am supposed to perform in this exchange. This becomes particularly clear when trying to imagine who might utter a statement beginning with ‘I’m cool with …’. It’s much easier to imagine this being said in an informal exchange between two friends than in an encounter between a judge and a lawyer. This is not to say that such an utterance would or could not be made in the latter instance, but it is generally associated with social encounters and social identities of the first type. It indexes a particular register (cf. Agha, Reference Agha1999), and, hence, a particular speaker, but also a particular addressee. In this case, the website of this company was written in the same casual style, and I assume that this constitutes a deliberate stylistic choice – the company in question is an artificial intelligence start-up that might well want to construct a particular image for itself. In other instances, I found cookie consent notices that employed a more formal style. However, the point that I want to make here is that any style choice, even a supposedly ‘neutral’ one, will index a particular register and hence create a particular subject position. It is in this way that users are stylized into predetermined social roles. Here, then, the impact of UX writers’ work on audiences and addressees becomes especially apparent.

Figure 6.2 Cookie consent notice: Crystal AI

Figure 6.2Long description

The text reads, Our website uses cookies to improve your browsing experience and show you adverts in line with your preferences. See our cookie policy and learn how to change your preferences here. A link below this text reads, I’m cool with cookies, followed by a rightward arrow.

For UX writers, knowing their users (i.e. their audience) is a key concern. For this, they typically engage in a range of research practices, which, to name but a few, may involve interviewing users, showing them draft copy or doing usability testing (often in collaboration with dedicated UX researchers). In this sense, UX writers write their texts for a particular audience, engaging in more or less conscious audience design (Bell, Reference Bell1984). However, I argue that UX writers not only write for an audience but at the same time also invent and craft said audience through their work. To be clear, it is rare that UX writers are the only ones that impact microcopy (see Chapter 2); their work is often quite collaborative and may involve colleagues from business, design, engineering, or, in the case of legally sensitive content such as cookie consent notices, also legal experts. Yet, while these other professionals may impact the text, it is UX writers that are seen as the author of the final microcopy, and it is they who are responsible for its (linguistic) style – and, thus, for the strategic stylization that is done through microcopy. It is in this way that they construct a superaddressee (Bakhtin, Reference Bakhtin1986), a social identity that users, if they wish to use that software, have no choice but to take on.

By attending to user stylization, it becomes clear that the audiences that are designed and configured in the production of these texts are also social identities and, hence, a matter of normativity and power. There is a politics to these interfaces (Selfe & Selfe, Reference Selfe and Selfe1994; see also Djonov & van Leeuwen, Reference Djonov, van Leeuwen, Flowerdew and Richardson2017), one that is, I suggest, particularly important to address in order to understand how people’s interactions with and through software are also shaped by how professionals like UX writers ‘design’ certain people as users so that some people are made into (legitimate) audience members while others are not. In this way, the normative uses and users are demarcated from those who do not fit the configuration that is given, which is typically a white, Western, and heteronormative one (see also Chapters 1 and 5). For as Stanfill (Reference Stanfill2015) reminds us, while users have the option to ‘go elsewhere, adapt, or contest this [a site’s intended use]’, the inbuilt ideal is still always present and ‘must be reckoned with’ (p. 1961). Crucially, interfaces such as those of cookie consent notices implore people to do something and to interact with them. In doing so, they quite literally have to take on the subject position that the interface proposes – ultimately becoming complicit in how they are being stylized by the producers of these texts.

6.5.3 Imposed (Inter)Action

Digital media interfaces impose not only social identities, they also constrain the interactions that may take place. This, I suggest, is linked to how UX writers (and other professionals in software design) design particular interactions through their work. Consider, for instance, the interface of the cookie consent notice in Figure 6.3. What is apparent here is that the interface, though presenting users with a choice of how to act, really only affords one kind of action: to consent to the use of cookies. It is possible to select which cookies to allow, but ultimately, as I will discuss below, users cannot choose not to allow any cookies. What is more, the multimodal design of this interface very much suggests that one particular action is the preferred response (cf. Sacks, Reference Sacks, Button and Lee1987): ‘Select all and confirm’. Not only is this option visually the most salient one, it is also the only one that is presented in the typical form of an interface button – and, as such, the one thing that users are most likely to perceive as something that can be clicked in response to this popup (affordances are relational in the sense that people need to perceive them as potential actions, cf. Hutchby, Reference Hutchby2001). While the interface does also afford other responses, such as clicking ‘confirm selection’ to confirm a custom choice, this action is much harder to perceive. In other words, the affordance of these two actions differs.

Figure 6.3 Cookie consent notice: Swiss International Air Lines

Figure 6.3Long description

The tick-box for the so-called necessary cookies is pre-selected, while the other three tick boxes for statistics, comfort, and personalisation are not selected. Below the types of cookies is an almost invisible accordion link that reads, Show details. At the bottom of the cookie consent notice is a big red button that reads, Select all and confirm. Left to this and much less visible is a text link that reads, Confirm selection. Above the entire cookie selection block is a long text that is again visually less prominent and that reads, With the use of cookies, we can ensure the best user experience for you. Some cookies are necessary for running this website, while others are used for statistical purposes, comfort settings, or for personalized content. You can decide which cookies should be allowed, but please consider that some functionalities of the website may no longer be available based on your settings. Find more information in our data protection statement and cookie policy.

Importantly, as scholars in HCI have shown, such default and/or pre-selected choices have a significant impact on how people consent to the use of cookies (Singh et al., Reference Singh, Upadhyaya, Seth, Hu, Sastry and Mondal2022). In this way, certain designs can manipulate the choice that users make in terms of whether they accept cookies or not (e.g. Utz et al., Reference Utz, Degeling, Fahl, Schaub and Holz2019; Machuletz & Böhme, Reference Machuletz and Böhme2020; Bauer et al., Reference Bauer, Bergstrøm and Foss-Madsen2021; Bermejo Fernandez et al., Reference Bermejo Fernandez, Chatzopoulos, Papadopoulos and Hui2021). In fact, Machuletz and Böhme (Reference Machuletz and Böhme2020) evaluated precisely the impact of ‘Select All’ buttons, like the one in Figure 6.3, finding that such design choices resulted in a significant increase in acceptance of but not necessarily consent to cookies: while such buttons led to more participants opting-in to all cookies, after the experiment, participants often expressed regret about their choice. From a multimodal perspective, it is arguably the use of salience that contributes to these outcomes. Indeed, I myself instantly clicked the big red button when I first encountered the popup shown in Figure 6.3, not quite realizing what this would actually do, which is to select and confirm all four types of cookies and not, as I had assumed, to only confirm the so-called necessary cookies. It is in this way that the interface ultimately imposes a particular action. What this nicely illustrates is how UX writers and their colleagues may work with the (in)visibility (cf. Chapter 5) of particular parts of an interface and how they, in doing so, ultimately impact the actions that users take.

To be clear, UX writers themselves are not oblivious to such problematic aspects of their work. For instance, in a blog article titled ‘Cookies UX: just stop the madness’, UX writer Rachel McConnell addresses the problematic microcopy of cookie consent notices. Discussing an example similar to the one in Figure 6.3, she criticizes the use of what she calls a ‘double bluff’:

In many ways, McConnell picks up on the same problematic that I want to unpack. What she identifies is an issue of affordance. Specifically, I suggest that the confusing nature of cookie consent notices that she evaluates with ‘Gah, my head hurts’ is due to what I would call a feigned affordance – something that is suggested by an artefact without actually being possible.

As discussed earlier, the interface in Figure 6.3 makes different kinds of actions possible, which differ in their affordance. Importantly, though, some actions are constrained altogether: it is, for instance, impossible to choose no cookies at all. What is particularly insidious is that the interface suggests that this might be possible. Each of the four types of cookies has a checkbox of the same shape and size. The one for ‘Necessary’ cookies is selected by default. Users can choose to check and uncheck the other three boxes; however, unlike those, it is impossible to deselect this first box. By using the same visual logic, the interface implies that there is the same action potential, when there is in fact no real affordance at all. It is what I would call a feigned affordance (similar to what Gaver, Reference Gaver1991 calls a ‘false affordance’): a deliberately designed and seemingly possible action that turns out to be impossible to take. In this way, affordances act as conditions on say and doability (cf. Maryns & Blommaert, Reference Maryns and Blommaert2002), making some actions possible and others impossible. They constitute the possible uses of an interface as they have been configured by its creators. The way that UX writers craft audiences in the microcopy they write for cookie consent notices hence not only constructs particular participant roles, it can even go so far as to impose particular (inter)actions.

6.5.4 Cookie Consent Notices as Symbolic Violence

Cookie consent notices always position users in particular ways and in particular moments. As I have shown above, more than a matter of audience design (Bell, Reference Bell1984), UX writers – consciously or not – also invent, stylize, and craft an audience when writing microcopy. Through this, they constrain the social and interactional role that users can take on, imposing both particular actions and particular subject positions onto users. It is in this way that these inconspicuous texts can also exercise a form of symbolic violence. As a way of illustrating this, I offer the cookie consent notice in Figure 6.4. Stylized as a casual interaction, this cookie consent notice, again, does not – or at least not in any direct way – inform users of how this company uses cookies. For this, users would have to read the cookie policy, a text that is often cumbersome to understand and, in part because of this, only rarely read by users (Meier et al., Reference Meier, Schäwel and Krämer2020). Instead, the cookie consent notice offers the vague explanation that ‘Cookies help us run our services and make them more tasty, so you get a better experience’. At its core, there is a discrepancy between the locution of this text (what the text says) and its illocution (what it is meant to do; cf. Austin, Reference Austin1975): veiled in humorous wordplay, the text remains unclear about the use and purpose of cookies and simply urges users to click agree. But perhaps most intriguing is the stylized depiction of an actual cookie and the playful reference to such cookies in the text: cookies supposedly make the company’s services ‘more tasty’, while the cookie policy is said to contain ‘the full ingredients’. Such visual and verbal puns are an altogether common practice in cookie consent notices (recall Figure 6.1), but this familiarizing metaphor obfuscates what cookies actually are. Creativity, here, is used to foreground one aspect (humour) while invisibilizing other, perhaps more (business-)critical aspects (the collection of user data). It is quite telling that today, nobody seems to be able to explain or reconstruct why cookies are called cookies, though there are at least three different popular origin stories that relate the term to baked goods.Footnote ⁴ Clearly, the metaphor is not self-evident. More importantly, though, it downplays any potential ramifications (recall that there is no mention of what kinds of cookies one agrees to). The use of colloquialisms (‘You ok with…?’) and emphatic language (‘Whoah!’; ‘Yes Agreed!’) further contributes to this by indexing a casual register. The request to consent is made in such a harmless, friendly way that it is difficult to contest, and yet, ultimately, it constitutes an invisible obligation to click ‘Yes Agreed!’. I suggest that this then not only constitutes a conversational inequality (the conversational options available to the company and users are clearly unbalanced) but also a form of symbolic violence (Kramsch, Reference Kramsch2021; see also Bourdieu & Wacquant, Reference Bourdieu and Wacquant1992), whereby users are incited to act in a particular manner that is said to be in their best interest while actually serving the interests of others and violating their privacy.

Figure 6.4 Cookie consent notice: ITV

Figure 6.4Long description

The title on the cookie consent notice reads, Listen up, people. We use cookies. The text below reads, Cookies help us run our services and make them more tasty, so you get a better experience. For the full ingredients, please read our Cookie Policy. Whoa, Hang on a minute, how do I change my cookie settings. You ok with our use of cookies. A button for Yes, Agreed, is at the bottom. An icon of a half-eaten cookie is at the top left.

Following Kramsch (Reference Kramsch2021), I understand symbolic violence as closely connected to the perlocutionary effect (cf. Austin, Reference Austin1975) of utterances: it is about getting people to do something, though in such a way that the request is misrecognized as natural and legitimate. Cookie consent notices like the one in Figure 6.4 specifically exploit this; they are framed as harmless, commonplace, and beneficial to the user while exerting subtle pressure (cf. Kramsch, Reference Kramsch2021, p. 115) to give consent. This is done through symbolic means; through the linguistic/semiotic form of the cookie consent notice and through the repetitive, or, as Jones (Reference Jones2020a) calls it, iterative, nature of these little texts: ‘Every action of clicking “I agree” makes it more likely that I will do the same next time, because “I agree”’ has come to be the means by which I can be “on my way”’ (p. 94) – in other words, clicking ‘agree’ becomes part of our habitus. It is precisely in the way that cookie consent notices are framed as a moment of consent that I see their violence: they seemingly give users control but demand acquiescence, resulting in both a loss of agency and a violation of people’s privacy in which they are ultimately made complicit. This can thus be understood as a form of symbolic violence whereby companies impose a certain social order that serves their own interests onto users (cf. Kramsch, Reference Kramsch2021). The crux is, as Kramsch (Reference Kramsch2021) reminds us, that all of this is done under the guise of ‘naturalness’: apparently, this is simply how digital media work.

As I briefly discussed in the previous section, UX writers are not entirely unaware of the potentially problematic effects of their own work (see McConnell, quoted above, who criticizes the convoluted and manipulative nature of certain cookie consent messages). In fact, during the last stage of my research, I presented parts of my analysis from the current chapter and Chapter 5 at two international UX design conferences. Both times, the audience was very receptive to and interested in my critique. Beyond this, there have also been increasing attempts in the industry itself to engage with such issues of trust and accountability (see, e.g., Wachter-Boettcher, Reference Wachter-Boettcher2017; Monteiro, Reference Monteiro2019; again, see also the quote by UX writer Rachel McConnell above). In this way, then, the role of UX writers in perpetuating problematic, hegemonic norms is perhaps not as clear-cut after all. Still, and as I have argued in Chapter 5, UX writers themselves tend to at least partially misrecognize the symbolic power inherent in their work by accepting particular norms and conventions – such as, say, the metaphor of the ‘cookie’ in cookie consent notices – as natural or normal. It is in these moments that the normative aspects of interface texts are perpetuated unquestioningly. For all their focus on being user centred, then, UX writers themselves, it seems, may not necessarily realize that they are not only writing for a particular audience (cf. Massanari, Reference Massanari2010), but that they also craft this audience in and through their work.