ALEX Go

What is ALEX Go?

Jellyvision’s flagship decision support product is available in two flavors: ALEX Benefits Counselor, which is an audio and text-based, interactive conversation you can read about in this product guide, and ALEX Go, which is a streamlined, text-only experience that you can read about…right here!

Some other key distinctions between ALEX Go and ALEX BC:

ALEX BC provides decision support for medical plans, dental plans, multiple tax-advantaged accounts (HSA, FSA, and LFSA), and retirement contributions. ALEX Go currently only provides recommendations for medical plans and HSA contributions, with some guidance on voluntary benefits.
ALEX BC provides benefits education for most modules. ALEX Go provides an overview of some voluntary benefits but is otherwise focused on helping a user select their benefits.
ALEX Go includes a family plan comparison tool that lets users enter details about other plans they may have available outside of their employer. ALEX BC includes some light education on things to look for in a spouse or partner’s plan, but does not allow users to enter details of the plan or directly compare.
ALEX Go is available in both English and Spanish. (Note: You do not need to be fluent in Spanish to write for ALEX Go! More info on translation below.)

	ALEX BC	ALEX Go
Format	Interactive; audio and text	Text only
Decision support	Medical, Tax (HSA and FSA), Dental, Retirement	Medical, HSA, Voluntary Benefits*
Education	Extensive; most benefits	Minimal; voluntary benefits only
Family plan comparison	No; some education	Yes
Languages	English	English and Spanish

How to write for ALEX Go

Personality

When writing for ALEX Go, prioritize clear, simple messaging over ALEXifying the content. Go should still reflect the friendly, approachable nature of ALEX, but because of the design constraints of a text-based product, ALEX Go’s copy has less personality and no jokes.

Why?

The text-based format requires that we use words more economically. Unlike in interactive conversations where we might throw in an extra word or two to ensure a line reads well aloud, we typically avoid this for text-based products.
We don’t want to risk annoying the user (or worse, getting in their way) when they’re trying to find the information they need. Go is the faster, streamlined version of ALEX, so it’s important to get to the point as quickly as possible.

“Learn More” pages about voluntary benefits have some room for personality or humor, though it is not necessarily from a host perspective. The priority should always be clear, concise messaging. Some examples:

“Accidental death & dismemberment (AD&D) insurance is a lot of scary words put together, but can be a big help in a scary situation.”
“Just note that the policy usually won’t pay out if you get injured doing something dangerous, like cliff diving or underground motorcycle racing.”
“Asking for help is hard, but an EAP can make getting help a little bit easier.”

Note that ALEX BC will often presume a level of social identification with the user (enough to say “we” or “let’s”). Go leans on this occasionally in CTA and button text, but the “host” is far less present throughout the experience.

In fact, ALEX Go is never self-referential. Where the host of ALEX BC may say something like, “I suggest we look at Medical next,” ALEX Go will either use the first-person plural, ie. “Let’s figure out how much you want to contribute to your HSA,” or the second person, ie. “Here are the plans that you are eligible to choose from.”

Supplementary pages that are outside of the “recommendation flow” may refer to ALEX in the third person, as with the page explaining how ALEX’s plan ranking works, i.e. “ALEX helps you find the best plan by analyzing data from people like you.”

Education

In BC and most other Jellyvision products, we adhere to the principle of “explain then name” when introducing benefits terminology. Because Go prioritizes short copy and has tooltip functionality, this principle generally does not apply. Where we display information like a plan’s deductible, label the value with the relevant terminology and provide a tooltip that the user can mouse over for an explanation.

An exception is made for long-form explanations of things like voluntary benefits, ALEX’s recommendation methodology, and the differences between tax-advantaged accounts. This content uses the same writing standards we would apply to library pages for other products, including “explain then name.”

Writing about “recommendations”

As with Benefits Counselor, ALEX Go provides “recommendations” about certain benefits, however, this word is never used in user-facing copy. ALEX may say that a plan “looks like your best fit” or “may save you money,” but we should not provide a formal recommendation or speak in absolutes. Hedging is vital.

ALEX Go also points out which voluntary benefits may be a good fit for a user. These are not ranked in order the way that medical plans are, but rather highlighted as good options based on specific factors.

For example, if a user has young children, ALEX will highlight the Dependent Care FSA; if the user is over the age of 65, ALEX may highlight critical illness insurance. As much as possible, we should explain why ALEX is making these “recommendations.”

Writing for Spanish

All copy for ALEX Go is written in English and translated into Spanish. Content is typically translated directly so that the information between versions of the product is identical.

We employ a professional translation service to ensure translations are as accurate as possible while adhering to Jellyvision’s style and voice standards. However, there are a few things to keep in mind about writing for a multilingual product to make their job easier and our content as clear as possible.

Be careful with idioms, English-specific turns of phrase, or wordplay that relies on English phonetics. These may not maintain the same meaning when translated.
Be conscious of character count. Our translators can help if you need to trim, but brevity is key since many words or phrases about benefits are longer in Spanish than in English.
Even if you are fluent, all copy should go through our professional translator to ensure consistency throughout the product.

Content types and styling notes

Profile questions	Follow our best principles detailed in the Questions section of the guide to interactive conversations. Tooltips should be used to provide context about why a question is being asked wherever possible.
Buttons	Keep the text as short as possible. Conversational language is acceptable (ie. “Let’s Continue) but not required. Use title case.
Headers	Top-level headers use title case. Anything at heading level two and below uses sentence case.
Tooltips	Titles use title case; body copy is all sentence case. Prioritize concision; there is no enforced character limit but smaller boxes are better for screen real estate.
Long-form content	Follow our guide to mechanics and formatting. We have a decent amount of flexibility with headers, bulleted lists, collapsible FAQs, and probably other design elements that can be added in Contentful. If you have an idea on how to organize information that isn’t a big block of text, talk with devs and our UX/UI designers on what is possible.