Version Control: How a UX Writer Weighs One Word Against Another | Figma Blog (opens in new tab)
A UX writer explains how a seemingly simple menu label for Figma’s offline prototyping feature revealed deeper questions about user expectations and product behavior. The team tested technically accurate, goal-oriented, and action-focused wording, but each option created confusion about what would happen after clicking. The central lesson is that UX copy must connect users’ intentions with the system’s actual behavior. ## The Challenge: Explaining Offline Prototyping - Users wanted a way to present prototypes reliably without an internet connection. - Engineers built an initial version that loaded prototype content in advance. - The remaining challenge was finding a few words that accurately explained the feature without requiring technical knowledge. - The writer argues that language exposes underlying product assumptions: choosing a verb forces the team to clarify what the system is really doing. ## Version One: “Preload Prototype” - “Preload prototype” accurately described the technical behavior: - Prototypes normally load screen by screen. - The feature gathers the necessary content upfront and retains it for later presentation. - However, “preload” implies that loading happens before the prototype appears, like “preheating” an oven. - Users had already loaded the prototype, so the prefix “pre-” did not match their experience. - Alternatives such as: - “Load full prototype” - “Load all screens” - “Load all assets” - These labels created a trust problem: users might reasonably assume that a prototype shown on screen was already fully loaded. - The wording needed to communicate that the initial load was incomplete without making the product seem unreliable. ## Version Two: Focusing on the User’s Goal - The team shifted from describing the technical process to describing the intended outcome: - “Present prototype offline” - “Prepare to present offline” - These phrases connected more directly to the user’s motivation: presenting without an internet connection. - However, “Present prototype offline” suggested that clicking the option would immediately begin presenting, even though it only prepared the prototype. - “Prepare to present offline” was more accurate but ambiguous: - Users would not know what preparation involved. - They would not know how far in advance to select it. - Both options might have worked within a larger workflow with explicit preparation steps, but they felt too imposing and unclear for a simple toggle menu. ## Language as an Interface to Computing - UX writing treats menu labels as actions or intentions: - Imperatives tell the program what to do. - Phrases can also express what the user wants to accomplish. - Terry Winograd’s principle that “people act through language” captures the problem: words connect a user’s mental model to a computer’s behavior. - When the wording, user intention, and system result are out of alignment, the interaction becomes confusing. - The article’s third iteration begins by examining what users can actually control, but the provided text ends before that approach is explained.