We found it pretty cumbersome to both get the initial copy in the product and then to iterate on it in the same ways we would iterate on visual design or bugs.
In our code base, we also had tons of different ways of defining constants and organizing our copy constants in the code. It didn't feel organized and was definitely not intentional. It made it pretty hard to imagine doing something like internationalization.
Based on all the teams you've talked to, I'm curious what stage you typically see a company start to develop better copy hygeiene? I am currently at a startup <10 people and we haven't put much thought to it.
It definitely depends on the company. For example, a startup that’s working in a highly-regulated industry where copy has significant legal implications (healthcare, banking, etc.) might have a super robust copy workflow off the bat. Others may not (this is much more common), especially if it’s primarily one person writing and reviewing the copy.
As a general rule of thumb, what we’ve seen is that (as with most processes) it’s easier to starting think about early on so you don’t end up needing to hastily put a system in place after things become unmanageable.
To be honest, lots of the challenges + workflow hacks we heard from larger teams mirrored things we heard from smaller teams
A few things in particular that might help at your stage: - Thinking about copy as part of the design process, ie. working on copy at the same time as (or even before) you work on the mockups. This is huge bc it reshapes where copy sits in your product development workflow. - Extracting strings out into separate files/trying not to hardcode strings. Like you said, this will set you up for success for internationalization + localization down the line. This will also make it easier to get an overhead view of your copy so you can start establishing more consistency (and reuse copy from different parts of the app to save time).
