Digital

Morven MacAllister, a content designer in Social Security Scotland blogs about pair writing and its benefits.

What is pair writing?

Content designers create content for everyone. We make complex services and systems easy to use and complex language easy to understand. We help users complete tasks and help teams design tasks for a user to complete.

Often the user and the task is unfamiliar to us, and that’s when pair writing comes in.

Pair writing has been gaining traction in content design circles, and for good reason. It’s a method that promises not just better content, but a better process for creating it. It works by:

• Getting diverse perspectives: When two people write together, they bring different viewpoints, experiences, and ideas to the table. This diversity enriches the content and helps it resonate with a broader audience.

• Facilitating immediate feedback: Feedback is instant. As one person writes, the other reviews, questions, and suggests improvements. This real-time feedback loop enhances clarity, accuracy, and overall quality.

• Enhancing learning: Pair writing is a fantastic way to learn from each other and develop knowledge and empathy.

• Reducing errors: Two sets of eyes are better than one. Pair writing reduces the risk of errors making it through the drafting stage. The final content is reliable and effective.

Pair writing doesn’t always need to involve the end user. I’ve had some great results when writing together with policy, operational and product colleagues. Here are some of the standout benefits of pair writing with colleagues:

• Meeting user needs and business needs: Pair writing gives the designer the opportunity to represent the user. Working with a subject matter expert helps keep the user and business needs front and centre.

• Working at pace: Save yourself an email chain and get into the meaning of what you’re writing there and then. This way you can deliver on user needs accurately without compromising the needs of the business or service.

• Shared ownership: When two people work on content, they both feel a sense of ownership and pride in the result. We want all of our communication channels to reflect good content design practice. The closer we work with our stakeholders, the more value and trust we can place in our outputs.

• Improved content quality: The collaborative nature of pair writing means that content is more robust going into review and sign off stages. It’s created from a more informed place, and will lead to higher quality outputs.

• Boosted creativity: Collaboration sparks creativity. Pair writing sessions can lead to innovative solutions and fresh ideas that might not emerge in solo writing.

My first experience of pair writing was developing new mailroom guidance content. Pair writing meant no back and forward with stakeholder comments. We raised, discussed, and resolved feedback during the session. Sometimes there’s conflicting ideas, and we tracked these in a decision log so we did not lose momentum during what was a big design project.

Here’s some practical lessons I learned from that experience that can help get you started:

1. Keep a decision log: Pair writing with colleagues working in the mailroom often brought up questions or insights we were not expecting. It highlighted that the business function was in flux. There were changes in staff, office space, and remit. Technology and processes were being updated as we were writing guidance on how to use it. There were gaps between how a process should be followed and how staff were actually working. It’s tricky to capture a process while it’s still being designed itself. We kept a decision log and recorded any changes that could have attributed to the workforce adopting new ways of working. The decision log was discussed during each sprint and changes made according to the senior subject matter experts. In this case, the managers of the mailroom.

2. Structure and record user testing: Pair writing brings with it more insight than following say a process map. And because of that, there is a danger that you write for the individual user you’re working with, rather than the whole team. Coupling pair writing with user testing mitigates this risk and highlights problems for the user while the writing process is still fresh in everyone’s mind.

3. Listen to feedback: For me, user testing also clarified that users can tell when content has been written by someone who does the job. We pulled out what wasn’t important, and wrote content in the user’s vernacular. This was evident to the user during testing and the subject matter experts involved in the process.

Pair writing isn’t just about making content—it’s about making better content for everyone. By making our processes as inclusive and collaborative as the content we create, we help users complete tasks, understand processes, and enjoy a seamless experience.

So, the next time you’re faced with a complex task, consider grabbing a partner and give pair writing a try. You’ll be amazed at what you can achieve together.