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The Riddle of UX Writing
Lessons from fortune cookies, fairy tales, and neuroscience
The fortune cookie is no ordinary cookie. It eschews the gooey chunks, decorative frosting, and other cheap thrills typical of the confectionary genre. It carries a certain dignity and grace. A gentle arch and intimate fold tell you how to hold it and how to snap it in two. It has a story to tell. It would not be an exaggeration to call it a designed experience. In fact, fortune cookies were invented by a designer — Makoto Hagiwara, the landscape architect and patron behind San Francisco’s iconic Japanese Tea Garden.
Bland as the cookies may be, something special happens when you eat them among friends. You can’t help but share your fortunes. Just a few words are enough to transform the cookies into a shared experience, a ritual that gives closure to a communal meal and tells you something about yourself. Fortune cookies also have something to teach us about design: Words matter.
Words matter because words are how we think. Words are how we make sense of the world and relate to each other; they’re a uniquely useful design element. Believe it or not, writing itself was invented for the sake of design.
