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The words that you use throughout your app or site are just as important as the interaction and visual design. But the words – or copy – are often an afterthought. All too frequently we use words like “Submit” and “Cancel” on our UIs as if we’re talking to a computer and not a human. We need to bring a personal touch to the words on the screen.

This openSAP course Copywriting: Improve User Experience One Word at a Time explains why it’s vital to think about the words as part of your design. Using real-world examples, you’ll get practical advice on how to write effective and compelling copy that will delight your users.

The course received the Distinguished award and the Best of Show in the category of Instructional Materials.

Self-paced since November 27, 2018
Language: English
Subtitles (auto-generated): Deutsch, English, Français, Español

Course information

Course Summary

In this course, you’ll learn why copy is so important for your users’ experience and how copywriting fits into the design-led development process. Domain experts provide insights and best practices, and by participating in the exercises, you’ll get practical experience in writing copy.

Here is what some participants are saying about the course:

  • "Thanks to all people involved: Andrea Anderson, Sophia Marx, Leslie MacKay, Crystal Ngai, Doug Savage, Kieran Turley, Susanne Wilding, Sandra Chinoporos, Elaina Williamson. Special thanks to Doug Savage for the core concepts. And biggest thanks to Bill Beard, he is a perfect communicator, and very talented in keeping the listener focused." Read the original post

  • "I really enjoy this course. It is well guided and good structured, I can understand what our lecturers are sharing and it really helping me in copy writing. What I wish is that I that I hope there will be a continue of this course, which bring us to more in-depth. Thank you very much and wish you have a nice day." Read the original post

  • "All the presenters in this course were knowledgeable on their topics and spoke well." Read the original post

Course Characteristics

  • Starting from: October 29, 2018, 09:00 UTC. (What does this mean?)
  • Duration: 3 weeks of learning content (1-2 hours per week) + 1 week to finalize peer assessment
  • Peer assessment: November 5, 2018, 09:00 UTC – November 27, 2018, 09:00 UTC
  • Course language: English
  • How is an openSAP course structured?

In This Course, You Will:

  • Gain an understanding of the term copywriting and how it fits into the design-led development process
  • Discover the importance of writing effective and compelling copy in your software
  • Get the basics of copywriting, including using natural language to speak with your audience
  • Understand the importance of terminology
  • Learn best practices and tips for writing copy, and practice those skills with weekly exercises
  • See how the copywriting process is implemented in SAP projects like Fiori

Award Winning Course!

We are delighted to announce that this course received two awards as part of the STC Chicago Technical Communication Competition. The course received the Distinguished award and the Best of Show in the category of Instructional Materials.

STC-Chicago-awards

Course Structure

Each class is designed to enhance your learning through these elements:

  • Video lectures – You’ll hear experts present topics that include real-world examples
  • Self-tests – You’ll take short, ungraded quizzes to help assess your understanding of the content
  • Graded assignments – You’ll take graded quizzes to earn points
  • Weekly challenges – You’ll participate in exercises that expand on the class topics. One of the challenges includes a peer assessment where you can earn points
  • Further reading and resources – You’ll get links to additional materials from domain experts

During this course, you’ll earn points for assignments and weekly challenges. If you earn 50% or more of the available points for the course, you’ll receive a record of achievement.

Course Content

Week 1: Introduction to Copywriting
You’ll get an introduction to copywriting and hear from branding expert Bill Beard on why copywriting is critical for today’s development teams. SAP content experts provide insight into their experiences in working with copy. You’ll do a hands-on exercise, then publish it in the Discussion Forum.

Week 2: Copywriting Basics
Bill describes how to prepare for and test your UI copy. You’ll also hear from SAP experts about using conversational language in your UI and the importance of using consistent and clear terminology. You’ll do a hands-on exercise, then upload it to take part in the peer assessment.

Week 3: Copywriting Best Practices and Case Studies
In week 3, Bill covers the best practices for writing copy. You’ll also hear from SAP experts on how they’ve implemented the copywriting process within their own design-led development cycles. If you are participating in the peer assessment, you’ll review and grade a few submissions from your peers.

Week 4: Complete the Peer Assessment
You’ll receive your peer-reviewed submission and can see the points you were awarded and the written feedback from your peers. You have the option to rate your peers’ feedback.

Target Audience

  • User experience (UX) designers
  • Software developers
  • User assistance (UA) developers
  • Product owners and managers

….and anyone interested in improving their copywriting skills.

About Further Content Experts

Further Content Experts

Course contents

  • Week 1:

    Introduction to Copywriting
  • Week 1 Challenge: Find an Example of Good Copy

  • Week 2:

    Copywriting Basics
  • Copy Improvement Challenge (Peer Assessment)

  • Week 3:

    Copywriting Best Practices and Case Studies
  • Week 4:

    Complete the Peer Assessment
  • I Like, I Wish:

    We Love Your Feedback … And Want More

Enroll me for this course

The course is free. Just register for an account on openSAP and take the course!
Enroll me now

Learners

Current
Today
5,149
Course End
Nov 27, 2018
1,810
Course Start
Oct 29, 2018
1,195

Rating

This course was rated with 4.51 stars in average from 218 votes.

Certificate Requirements

  • Gain a Record of Achievement by earning at least 50% of the maximum number of points from all graded assignments.
  • Gain a Confirmation of Participation by completing at least 50% of the course material.

Find out more in the certificate guidelines.

This course is offered by

Heather Halter

User Assistance Development Manager, SAP

Heather Halter has been a manager in the SAP central UA team for over 10 years. With almost 20 years in the software business, Heather has led global teams of UA and UX professionals in the transformation of information design.

She enjoys leading projects that help simplify and enhance the user experience, always keeping the user at the heart of the solution.

Andrea Anderson

Former VP Design Thinking, SAP User Experience Strategy

Andrea is a veteran of Design Thinking in software. With more than 10 years of practicing and teaching design thinking, she has applied the approach to software solutions, product strategy and services.

Andrea has been instrumental in leading the organizational transformation of SAP into an organization that practices Design Thinking throughout the world.

Bill Beard

Founder and Creative Director, Beard Branding

Bill Beard is the founder and creative director of Beard Branding, a strategic customer communications organization. Bill helps organizations connect with customers more effectively and efficiently at every phase of the customer experience, in order to build passionate, loyal customer bases.

Bill has 17 years of experience as a copywriter and creative director, connecting people to organizations through the blending of brand, copy, and user experience.

Sam Yen

Former Chief Design Officer, SAP

Sam had multiple roles at SAP: Chief Design Officer, Global Head of Design and User Experience, and prior to that he led the SAP AppHaus, an innovation team tasked with building new solutions, establishing new markets, and reaching new users for SAP. Sam initially joined SAP as a senior member of the Design Services Team, a group in the Office of the CEO tasked with accelerating the adoption of Design Thinking as a process for innovation and development of internal and external SAP products.

Doug Savage

Senior Editor, SAP

Doug Savage has written content in the software industry for over 20 years, working on everything from cheerful end-user apps to training courses and complex server administration guides.

For the past 10 years, he’s been a full-time editor at SAP. He is the owner of the SAP Editing service and a co-owner of the SAP Style Guide for Technical Communication. In his spare time, Doug is a cartoonist. He is the creator of the Laser Moose and Rabbit Boy series of graphic novels.

Crystal Ngai

User Assistance Developer, SAP

Crystal Ngai is a UA developer in the SAP Palo Alto location, with her main project being SAP CoPilot, SAP’s digital assistant and bot integration hub for the enterprise.

She collaborates closely with product management, development, UX (designers and researchers), translation, and other UA devs to create insightful product content. This includes defining product terminology, creating UI strings, providing onscreen text, and working on the overall product page. Crystal is also part of a Chatbot/Conversational User Interface initiative as a consultant where she is working with other experts to create best practices for designing chatbots.

Sophia Marx

Senior User Assistance Developer, SAP

As a UA developer, Sophia Marx creates integrated and seamless user assistance, in-app help, and videos, so users can quickly get started using SAP software.

With a technical communication and psychology background, Sophia advocates for users by collaborating with the User Experience team to ensure software is simple, enjoyable, and intuitive. Trained in Design Thinking and User Experience, she puts her skills to use by creating prototypes and mockups of product features and enhancements.

Leslie MacKay

User Assistance Developer, SAP

Leslie MacKay has been with SAP for over 20 years. He is currently working with the Innovation Center in Palo Alto. His focus is to create people-centric copy that is clear and concise, and that helps to make the user interface shine and the user successful.

Kieran Turley

User Assistance Development Architect, SAP

Kieran Turley is a UA development architect with SAP Business Suite. He has worked at SAP for over 13 years, with a strong focus on the areas of communication, technology, and terminology.

Kieran has documented multiple software projects across SAP Business Suite and SAP Business ByDesign. He is a terminology expert, providing feedback for the redesign of SAPterm, SAP's terminology database.

Susanne Wilding

Content Strategist for UX and Design

Susanne Wilding is a UX content strategist for SAP Fiori, SAP's award-winning design language for enterprise applications.

Drawing on her insights from a long career in translation and technical writing at SAP, Susanne works closely with interaction designers, engineers, and globalization experts on user interface texts for core user interface elements and patterns. She also develops the user interface text guidelines for SAP Fiori applications, and contributes to the SAP Fiori Design Guidelines.

SAP Fiori: http://go.sap.com/product/technology-platform/fiori.html
SAP Fiori Design Guidelines: https://experience.sap.com/fiori-design-web

Elaina Williamson

Former UX Content Strategy Consultant, SAP Ariba

Elaina Williamson worked as a consultant for the Content Strategy initiative on the SAP Ariba User Experience team, and specialized in the creation of styles and standards for UX content.

Before joining SAP Ariba, Elaina managed UX content strategy for QuickBooks Online web and mobile products at Intuit. She has been creating content and developing style standards for consumer, small business, and enterprise applications for over 20 years.  

Sandra Chinoporos

Former UX Content Strategist, SAP Ariba

Sandra Chinoporos managed Content Strategy on the SAP Ariba User Experience (UX) team. The content strategists are responsible for the user interface content that appears in SAP Ariba product workflows.

Sandra's team had created the first ever SAP Ariba UX Writing Style Guide, a cornerstone of the strategy to transform SAP Ariba products into more friendly and emotionally engaging experiences. Before joining SAP Ariba, Sandra was a content strategist for business-to-consumer selling products at eBay. She has also worked on content at Intuit, IBM, Netscape, and Lotus Development.