All Mac apps in one
Setapp Subscription
MacPaw was my first "big" tech job and also my first position as a UX Writer. I started off as a Copywriter on the Marketing team in 2015 but when the company announced a new product in the making, I realized there was no product writing role to support it. Setapp was a dreamy idea: a single $9.99/mo subscription for a whole suite of Mac applications, a lot of which would cost you way more on their own.
I initiated a UX Writing position, advocated to have it for the Setapp team, and learned the craft on my own to be able to do the job. In 2017, Setapp was conceptualized and the first basic UI was shipped. From there on it has undergone multiple iterations but the IA and the general feel we established around 2018 is present in the service until now.
Company /
MacPaw
Role /
UX Writer
Duration /
2 years
Dates /
2017-2019
Project brief
User problems
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There are thousands of Mac apps for every task, a lot of them are bad. Poor quality, security issues, bad UX, you name it. To find the right app for the job, users have to rummage through piles of trash or hope that App Store reviews are not fake.
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Apps are often expensive. Users who work a lot and have multiple creative/dev tasks daily are spending on average $50-70/mo. on apps.
Product solutions
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One directory of Mac apps to cover any and all daily tasks mosts users have.
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One monthly price instead of 500 separate subscriptions. Setapp was dubbed "Netflix for apps." But now Netflix has tiers and Setapp is still $9.99/mo.
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Quality control. Every app goes through rigid testing and security control to ensure it won't break your Mac, harm your system or files, and that it, in fact, does what it says on the label.
My impact
Information Architecture
The first version of Setapp had no UI. It was a Finder folder with about 30 apps we got on board initially. Once the collection grew, I've created it's first IA and key app collections.
Taxonomy and glossary
We had to make a decision on how to group and organize the apps, and how to refer to specific areas of the product. I've analyzed user interviews that our PMMs ran (we didn't have researchers), did my own market investigation (App Store, ProductHunt, Reddit, etc.) and defined the terminology in the app.
Product content
As the only UX Writer on the team (and for a while, at the whole company), I wrote the majority of both web-based account management and the macOS app UI.
Setapp evolution from 2017 to the present.
Baby steps for content in Ukraine
Setapp at MacPaw was my first big UX Writing project. Ukraine, while being an absolute pioneer of software design and engineering, was hopelessly lagging behind in terms of content due to the simple fact that not enough people spoke enough English.
When I carved a position for myself, it was one of the few in the country. And as such, had no community or mentorship available around. So in the next couple of years I tried to change that by giving lectures on copy and product content, leading meetups, and trying to make the discipline happen.
