Principles

Clarity, confidence, and consistency in messaging promotes product reliability.

Words give meaning to your meticulously designed product. Without the proper messaging for your product’s navigation and functionality, uncertainty creeps into your users minds. The messages and naming conventions you use throughout your product complement its design. No matter how well-constructed your design, poor messaging can doom your product’s effectiveness. Clarity, confidence, and consistency in messaging promotes product reliability.

Clear

Clear writing is important in guiding users through Liferay’s products. Longer, more detailed text is not always more helpful. As a rule, we should make it easy to understand important. Be concise and specific; understand your user’s needs in a given situation, and provide them with just enough information to be successful.

• Use simple, natural language.
• Remove unnecessary messaging for obvious interactions.
• Remove unnecessary words or irrelevant ideas.
• Start phrases/sentences with an objective.
• Rely on progressive disclosure and documentation to fill in gaps in understanding.

Current

Liferay’s products live in the present, they exist to help users now. Our communication should be positioned around current happenings and the actions needed to move users towards their goal.

• Speak in present tense.
• Describe current context.

Confident

Set a tone that will increase trust and confidence. Confident communication will put users at ease when making difficult decisions. Generally speaking, confidence will be inspired by clarity, consistency, and use of an active voice.

• Use an active voice.
• Don’t be arrogant. Avoid saying things that are self aggrandizing like best of breed and unrivaled analysis.

Consistent

Consistency is a signal of a polished product. Conflicts will adversely affect the perception of quality. Consistency in writing can have many benefits, but above all instills trust in the user of a Liferay product.

• Have a consistent message. This gives the user freedom to focus on what they’re doing, instead of reinterpreting different versions of a message.
• Consistent sentence and phrase construction will improve overall comprehension.
• Use the correct voice and tone to align product screens with user expectations.
• Be consistent in your style to provide scannable visual cues.

Conversational

Liferay’s products are a reflection of the people who work here. To improve user experience, we personify and humanize the interface through our writing. The product should be conversational and avoid “machine speak.”

• Speak in first person on behalf of Liferay.
• Address users in the second person.
• Refer to 3rd parties using gender neutral pronouns.