Voice And Tone
Atlassian Design — Voice and Tone
Atlassian's personality
Atlassian's personality is defined by three core traits that hold constant across all content:
Bold — Motivating teams with the right amount of support at the right time to do their best work. Bold does not mean aggressive or assertive — it means confident and supportive.
Optimistic — Understanding where in the journey someone is and highlighting the key points. Optimism is contextual: it is calibrated to the user's actual emotional state, not applied uniformly.
Practical, with a wink — Getting to the point and being direct and concise. "Practical with a wink" is Atlassian's way of saying: efficient first, personality second. The "wink" is the occasional small delight — not humor, not playfulness, but a moment of unexpected warmth or pleasantness.
Tone framework
Tone adjusts based on where the user is in their journey and their emotional state in that moment. Atlassian's three voice traits all have a "more/less" dial that turns based on context.
| User state | Tone adjustment |
|---|---|
| Confident, interested, anticipatory (power users, admins) | More bold |
| Apprehensive, confused, or fearful (new/trial users) | Less bold |
| Ambitious, inspired | More optimistic |
| Uncertain, unsupported | Less optimistic |
| Overwhelmed, stressed | More practical (reduce flourish) |
| Successful, joyful, relieved | Add the "wink" |
The three traits rarely all dial in the same direction at once. A stressed user doing a difficult task needs maximum practicality and minimum wink, even if they're also feeling bold.
Six content principles
Atlassian organizes its content intent around six principles. These apply to UI and app content — not marketing copy.
1. Inform to build trust
"Tell people only what they need to know in the moment and nothing more." Over-informing is as harmful as under-informing — it creates noise and erodes trust.
Applies to: Flags, tooltips, contextual help, notifications.
2. Empower to inspire action
Educate users at pivotal moments with best practices. Give them enough to act, not everything you know.
Applies to: Empty states, onboarding, feature discovery, contextual education.
3. Encourage people along the path
Provide consistent support and human guidance through complex tasks. Users should feel accompanied, not abandoned.
Applies to: Multi-step flows, progress indicators, error recovery states.
4. Motivate by showing possibilities
"Show the possible benefits" through concrete examples. Abstract encouragement ("You're doing great!") is less effective than concrete possibility ("Teams that use this feature complete 30% more work.").
Applies to: Benefits modals, upgrade prompts, feature spotlights.
5. Satisfy by meeting expectations
Deliver practical answers without unnecessary flourish. The user asked a question (explicitly or through their action) — answer it completely and then stop.
Applies to: Success states, confirmation messages, help content.
6. Delight with unexpectedly pleasing experiences
"Delight means little flourishes, not humor." Use this principle sparingly and only when the user is in a positive emotional state. Delight is a reward for user success, not a default mode.
Applies to: Success states for major milestones, easter eggs, celebration moments.
What Atlassian's voice is not
- Not humorous by default (humor requires a very specific context)
- Not casual or informal — "practical with a wink" is not the same as casual
- Not uniformly optimistic — optimism should match the user's journey position
- Not wordy — "inform to build trust" means giving less, not more