On this page:
- Meet Day 1 speakers and panelists
- Career journeys, advice, and industry evolution
- What's the most unexpected twist in your career path that led you to where you are today?
- What's one piece of advice you'd give to someone just starting in content?
- What's the best piece of career advice you've ever received?
- How has the field of content design evolved since you started your career? What are some of the most notable changes you've observed?
- Content Design bookshelf
- Balancing creativity and professional growth
- Navigating challenges in Content Design
- Collaboration and impact in Content Design
- How do you foster effective collaboration between different disciplines in your projects?
- What strategies have you found effective for advocating for the value of your work within your organisation?
- How do you measure and communicate the impact of your work to stakeholders and leadership?
- How has your perspective on team collaboration changed as you've progressed in your career?
- How has remote work impacted your work process and collaboration, and what strategies have you found effective for remote teamwork?
- Looking to the future of Content Design
- Resources: Events, podcasts, blogs, and more
- Growing In Content 2024: Day 1
Content Design is a dynamic and ever-evolving field, requiring a unique blend of creativity, strategic thinking, and adaptability.
As we gear up for Growing In Content 2024, we've had the privilege of sitting down with 14 of our Day 1 speakers and panelists to gain insights into their journeys, philosophies, and advice for aspiring Content Designers. In this article, we'll explore their responses to a range of questions, offering a glimpse into the minds of some of the industry's most experienced professionals.
Editor's Note:
This article is Part 1 of our 3-part series featuring speakers from Growing In Content 2024. Stay tuned for insights from Days 2 and 3 speakers in the coming weeks. Don't miss out on these valuable perspectives – sign up for our newsletter to get notified when the next installments are published, and to receive updates about the conference.
Meet Day 1 speakers and panelists
Day 1 of our conference covers a wide range of topics crucial to Content Design, including:
- Inclusive design patterns for 2025
- The future of Content Design in the age of AI
- Finding growth opportunities in challenging work environments
- Storytelling techniques for career advancement
- Designing content for sensitive subjects
- The importance of multicultural content strategy
- Panel: Strategies for recovering from layoffs
- Panel: Developing your personal brand in the content industry
For the full program and to register for this free day of learning, visit our program page.
Growing In Content 2024 – August 19th, 21st & 23rd
Join us for three days packed with insights, networking, and inspiration. Get started with a free day of learning and networking, then dive deeper with two days of expert sessions and valuable connections.
Register now to attend!
Career journeys, advice, and industry evolution
Every Content Design expert has a unique story and perspective on how the field has changed. In this section, our speakers share the unexpected twists in their careers, the advice they'd give to newcomers, and their observations on how Content Design has evolved.
Question #1
What's the most unexpected twist in your career path that led you to where you are today?
Getting recruited as a technical writer for a cybersecurity startup. If I hadn't been headhunted I never would have had the confidence to apply to a role where I'd be expected to write from a place of authority in what ultimately turned out to be basically a foreign language. I was employee #12 and only the second non-engineer hire (me and the UX/UI designer holding it down). It was drinking from the fire hose, times approximately one million, and an experience that was full of imposter syndrome and self-induced panic attacks if I'm being honest but man—I grew so much as a human and as a content designer there. Definitely not a fun time, definitely not my favorite job, but I do have a lot of appreciation for what I learned there in hindsight and how it steered me to where I am today.
After I finished my graduate degree, I printed a list of over 100 advertising agencies and started calling them to introduce myself and ask for a meet and greet. At the third or fourth agency I called, I spoke to another Puerto Rican who told me to stop by the agency. Within a week or so, I was hired as their copywriter! They loved my first pitch and it was turned into a full-blown direct mail, radio, and TV campaign. If I hadn't overcome my nerves and reached out, I wouldn't have landed that opportunity.
My friend Upma brought me to an intro to UX class a decade ago—she was super excited about it and I was mildly curious. It was fateful: that random weekend workshop kicked off my shift from working in editorial to working in design. I was lucky enough to have a series of jobs around that time that let me bring in the new stuff I was learning.
I thought I’d be a proper journalist - working with newspapers or even be on camera. I ended up working for a startup once, and it changed my 5 year vision for myself. Now, that 5 year vision continues to impact the next 5, I have come far from hard core journalism.
I started my own business when I was 25 and never looked back. I learned so many skills that come in handy in content design leadership, like selling a story, owning my narrative and managing the expectations of people from all kinds of backgrounds.
It was when I stumbled upon an article on Medium by someone who, just like me, had been disillusioned with what they were doing as a marketing writer and found their calling in UX writing. That was exactly four years ago!
Taking a freelance content writing role after bottoming out as a musician. Grateful for the generous people who helped me develop a career in content and design.
Looking for jobs in an overly saturated market, encountering multiple rejections, and yet landing on a job that taps into everything I've been trained for since the start of my content career
It didn't feel like it at the time, but layoffs with previous companies were blessings in disguise. If it weren't for those layoffs, it wouldn't have led me to bigger and better career opportunities.
A networking event! I never thought talking to someone who wasn't a recruiter was how I'd land my first job in tech.
I never thought I'd work in gaming, but it opened a lot of doors for me.
Going from humanitarian aid to designing digital apps - writing being at the core of it all.
Being offered the opportunity to become a people's manager when I was about to switch careers entirely.
Writing freelance travel blogs when I was an English teacher in Japan. That kick started my writing career!
Question #2
What's one piece of advice you'd give to someone just starting in content?
Often, getting started in content may seem like building credit: you can't get credit because you don't have credit, and you don't have credit because you can't get credit. Many content jobs require experience, but you can't get experience if you don't get a chance, right? My advice is to create your experience. Find non-profits or organizations where you can volunteer so you can start building your portfolio and networking. Think of new ideas to demonstrate your creativity. Don't get discouraged by the closed doors, keep knocking until the right one opens.
Pay attention to the work that makes your heart sing. And by that I mean as content designers there are so many types of strategy we engage in on a regular basis. It's important to pay attention to when your body and your mind tells you you've entered a flow state and are doing work you truly love. What kinds of projects do you find yourself putting your hand up for at work over and over again? What collaborators are your favorite to work through a content design problem with? Do you like iterating on a single line of copy or trying to find the perfect name for a feature? Do you find yourself constantly trying to corral a group into a shared definition for terms by defining taxonomy or using content design thinking to enhance storytelling to influence stakeholders in presentations? Listen to where your intuition is pulling you and build that into your deep passion skill, alongside continuing to enhance your breadth of skills. (Look up "T-shaped").
Get familiar with the basics of product design: being able to speak a product designer's language and show your work in mockups and screens is a powerful tool to get alignment and feedback. Don't be afraid to dabble in the visual side of things!
Practice the thought processes of creating and editing content. It's not about churning out the right content or lots of alternatives, it's about learning to solve business problems by leading, enabling, informing, and educating the user.
You don't need to have a formal "content design" or "content strategy" title or a job at a well-known company to be doing good, interesting, valuable content work. Find little ways to bring in your learnings to whatever you're doing right now—and know that it "counts."
You're more skilled than you give yourself credit, so don't waste time comparing yourself to others. Everyone's on a different journey and you'll have a much better time if you focus on yours and your goals.
Get to know your cross-functional partners in design, engineering, and product and advocate for a way of collaborative working. Establish yourself as the content expert!
Find one subject that you're passioned (research, accessibility, conversational design, tech writing) and dive deep! Become a subject-matter expert.
Read the second edition of Mike Monteiro's Design Is a Job.
Trust your gut, people will trust your guidance if you trust yourself.
Give yourself space, stay curious, and keep absorbing and learning — you'll reach where you need to be in due time.
Be bold. Be flexible. Be you.
Network, learn and grow with other content folks in the industry.
Question #3
What's the best piece of career advice you've ever received?
This E.L. Doctorow quote: "Writing a novel is like driving a car at night. You can see only as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way."
I think it extends out to life, to work, to everything. Often we're so focused on long term goals. And while I think it's important to have a high level north star that is ambitious and does not change, I like to focus on really tangible goals for the upcoming year vs. getting too hung up on what I'll specifically be doing in 5-10 years. I've seen that shift so much over my lifetime. Defining the space directly ahead of you and ensuring those goals ladder back to your larger vision is plenty.
Take on the jobs that are both exciting and terrifying. Then, talk about what happened (the good and the bad)!
If it isn't a hell yeah, then it's a no. (This applies to a new job opportunity, an exciting project, a speaking gig, even a networking opportunity.)
Speak up. There's not point in having a diverse team if you're keeping your thoughts to yourself.
To think about opportunities and solutions - not just pointing out the problems.
You don't have to know all the answers in advance, learn to be comfortable with not knowing everything and just give yourself time to learn what you don't know yet.
Slow down and take others along.
Find your voice, and chart your own course.
There's power in saying "I don't know."
Just be you.
Be authentic.
Question #4
How has the field of content design evolved since you started your career? What are some of the most notable changes you've observed?
The label "content designer" didn't exist when I was starting—which in itself is a reminder for all of us to hold our titles and work identities a little looser, knowing things inevitably change and evolve. I spent so much of my career working on massive websites that the big attentional shift to products felt really dramatic to me—and until I had some of that work under my belt, it made me feel a little insecure.
When I started in 2010, content design and UX writing weren't career paths. We were lumped in under technical writing or marketing copywriting, because the discipline just hadn't been developed yet!
I think good content design combines the best interests of the business with UX. This means for me content design, at its core, is still the same, though we have at times stopped talking about it and focused more on talking about the output of our work (e.g. microcopy, information architecture). When I hit a difficult spot in a project or my career, I like to remind myself what content design is all about and it usually helps me find focus and energy.
Some changes I've observed are:
- I hear content design a lot more than UX writing these days
- There seems to be more investment in creating content design systems
- Career paths are clearer for ICs
- Content designers are moving into UX Manager roles where they lead a variety of UX folks (product designers, UX researchers, and content designers)
As a huge word nerd, it should come as no surprise that I am very passionate about how putting language to a lived, felt experience can be extremely validating. I actually didn't know the job I held at companies had a name (content designer) until I was already well into my career of being one. I professionally grew up in small, scrappy tech startups where I'd wear a multitude of hats that had to do with being the designated "word" person, but the role I always gravitated towards the most at these companies was collaborating directly with the UX/UI designer on how we used words in our products and developing the voice and tone of the organization. One thing that I've really loved seeing over the years is how much more of a community there is out there for content designers. Often the problems we're solving at an organization are by no means a unique problem, but when you're a lonely island of one at a small company, or a small and mighty team at a larger company, it can be invaluable to connect with others outside of your organization to work through problems that (a) you might be too close to to solve yourself and (b) that others may have come up with a creative solution for at their organization already. Conferences like this are a great example of those spaces for community to come together and knowledge share and it warms my heart to see.
Nowadays, I find I don't have to fight for a seat at the table just to be able to contribute to designs. Instead, I'm looking at content design under a wider lens of systems, strategy, and interaction design and spending less time on the strings.
Our role has evolved and the understanding of that evolved role continues to evolve. From just the back-end strategists, we are coming on the forefront too. From just being looked at as wordsmiths, we are now designing the experiences too.
The use of AI as assistance to create content. My colleagues started using AI to write product principles, but I just learn to continuously provide valuable feedback to demonstrate that my work is still irreplaceable by a robot.
I went from being a "technical writer who wrote all the UI text in our apps" to a "content designer and UX leader." It's heartening to see the field become a specialized design discipline with titles that articulate who we are.
I can only speak to how I've evolved in content. I thought I was very alone in my profession as a UX writer/content strategist. I didn't know how deep the rabbit hole went, and finding the history, the community, and the literature completely changed me.
Since I started my career, content design has shifted from merely seeking a seat at the table to actively driving strategic decisions. The complexity of problems we're solving has grown significantly, requiring more sophisticated, user-centered solutions.
I have noticed an increased interest and demand for multicultural content. I am very optimistic of where we are headed!
We've gone beyond the words and into being more of an equal partnership with Design.
Content Design bookshelf
Our experts each suggested books that have been instrumental in their Content Design journey. This collective wisdom has resulted in a diverse reading list that covers everything from foundational concepts to cutting-edge strategies. Whether you're just starting out or looking to deepen your expertise, you're sure to find something valuable in this collection of recommended reads.
Co-founder of Mule Design and raconteur Mike Monteiro wants to help you do your job better. From contracts to selling design, from working with clients to working with each other, this brief book is packed with knowledge you can’t afford not to know.
The Black Experience in Design spotlights teaching practices, research, stories, and conversations from a Black/African diasporic lens.
When you depend on users to perform specific actions―like buying tickets, playing a game, or riding public transit―well-placed words are most effective. But how do you choose the right words? And how do you know if they work? With this practical book, you’ll learn how to write strategically for UX, using tools to build foundational pieces for UI text and UX voice strategy.
Millions worldwide have read and embraced John Kotter’s ideas on change management and leadership. From the ill-fated dot-com bubble to unprecedented M&A activity to scandal, greed, and ultimately, recession - we’ve learned that widespread and difficult change is no longer the exception. It’s the rule. Now with a new preface, this refreshed edition of the global bestseller Leading Change is more relevant than ever.
We humans are messy, illogical creatures who like to imagine we're in control-but we blithely let our biases lead us astray. In Design for Cognitive Bias, David Dylan Thomas lays bare the irrational forces that shape our everyday decisions and, inevitably, inform the experiences we craft. Once we grasp the logic powering these forces, we stand a fighting chance of confronting them, tempering them, and even harnessing them for good. Come along on a whirlwind tour of the cognitive biases that encroach on our lives and our work, and learn to start designing more consciously.
The coauthors of the New York Times–bestselling Difficult Conversations take on the toughest topic of all: how we see ourselves. Douglas Stone and Sheila Heen have spent the past fifteen years working with corporations, nonprofits, governments, and families to determine what helps us learn and what gets in our way. In Thanks for the Feedback, they explain why receiving feedback is so crucial yet so challenging, offering a simple framework and powerful tools to help us take on life’s blizzard of offhand comments, annual evaluations, and unsolicited input with curiosity and grace.
How inclusive methods can build elegant design solutions that work for all. Sometimes designed objects reject their users: a computer mouse that doesn't work for left-handed people, for example, or a touchscreen payment system that only works for people who read English phrases, have 20/20 vision, and use a credit card. Something as simple as color choices can render a product unusable for millions. These mismatches are the building blocks of exclusion. In Mismatch, Kat Holmes describes how design can lead to exclusion, and how design can also remedy exclusion. Inclusive design methods—designing objects with rather than for excluded users—can create elegant solutions that work well and benefit all.
A practical, deeply reported survival guide for the age of AI, written by the New York Times tech columnist who has introduced millions to the promise and pitfalls of artificial intelligence—now featuring a new afterword.
Linda Kaplan Thaler and Robin Koval have moved to the top of the advertising industry by following a simple but powerful it pays to be nice. Where so many companies encourage a dog-eat-dog mentality, The Kaplan Thaler Group has succeeded through chocolate and flowers. In "The Power of Nice", through their own experiences and the stories of other people and businesses, they demonstrate why, contrary to conventional wisdom, nice people finish first.
Every day we experience the uncertainty, risks, and emotional exposure that define what it means to be vulnerable or to dare greatly. Based on twelve years of pioneering research, Brené Brown PhD, MSW, dispels the cultural myth that vulnerability is weakness and argues that it is, in truth, our most accurate measure of courage.
Leadership is not about titles, status, and wielding power. A leader is anyone who takes responsibility for recognizing the potential in people and ideas, and has the courage to develop that potential. When we dare to lead, we don’t pretend to have the right answers; we stay curious and ask the right questions. We don’t see power as finite and hoard it; we know that power becomes infinite when we share it with others. We don’t avoid difficult conversations and situations; we lean into vulnerability when it’s necessary to do good work.
Our "thirty-is-the-new-twenty" culture tells us the twentysomething years don't matter. Some say they are an extended adolescence. Others call them an emerging adulthood. In The Defining Decade, Meg Jay argues that twentysomethings have been caught in a swirl of hype and misinformation, much of which has trivialized the most transformative time of our lives.
Do you have the opportunity to do what you do best every day? Chances are, you don't. All too often, our natural talents go untapped. From the cradle to the cubicle, we devote more time to fixing our shortcomings than to developing our strengths.
An essential volume for generations of writers young and old. The twenty-fifth anniversary edition of this modern classic will continue to spark creative minds for years to come. Anne Lamott is "a warm, generous, and hilarious guide through the writer’s world and its treacherous swamps" (Los Angeles Times).
Imagine a world without Lorem Ipsum. Imagine a world where content was so widely recognised as integral to any design process, and imagine a world in which content experts sit within all areas of a business. Good content sits at the heart of our products, services and experiences and it’s pivotal to the success of our business. It’s no longer enough to rely on visual design alone.
Concrete strategies to call out wrongdoing at home, at work, at school, and elsewhere. In Say More About That, veteran inclusion strategist, coach, writer, and speaker Amber Cabral delivers an incisive and practical guide to assertively addressing inequitable treatment you see at home, work, school, and other settings. The book offers a complete communications toolkit for equity advocacy you can deploy on your own behalf and on behalf of others.
Talking to people about your designs might seem like a basic skill, but it can be difficult to do well. In many cases, how you communicate with stakeholders, clients, and other nondesigners may be more important than the designs themselves. Because if you can't get their support, your work will never see the light of day--no matter how good it is.
Without words, apps would be an unusable jumble of shapes and icons, while voice interfaces and chatbots wouldn't even exist. Words make software human–centered, and require just as much thought as the branding and code. This book will show you how to give your users clarity, test your words, and collaborate with your team. You'll see that writing is designing.
Web site design and development continues to become more sophisticated. An important part of this maturity originates with well laid out and well written content. Ginny Redish is a world renowned expert on information design and how to produce clear writing in plain language for the web. All of the invaluable information that she shared in the first edition is included with numerous new examples. New information on content strategy for web sites, search engine optimization (SEO), and social media make this once again the only book you need to own to optimize your writing for the web.
This book is a practical guide to content transformation. It lays out the process to get from an overcrowded website, app or service to something people can use and enjoy. Hinrich von Haaren has worked on transformation projects in the public and private sector. Here, he shares his experiences and those of the incredible teams he has worked with. Whether you are a lone content person or small content team, this book is for you. It can help you turn a whole organisation to a better way of working, or get an established team started on a new project.
Since Don’t Make Me Think was first published in 2000, hundreds of thousands of Web designers and developers have relied on usability guru Steve Krug’s guide to help them understand the principles of intuitive navigation and information design. Witty, commonsensical, and eminently practical, it’s one of the best-loved and most recommended books on the subject.
Microcopy: The Complete Guide is a handbook for UX writers, designers and friends. It will give you the knowledge and tools needed to write smart, effective and helpful microcopy for all kinds of digital products, with practical guides and dozens of screenshots from actual sites, apps and complex systems.
Between 2010 and 2014, Sarah Richards and her team at the United Kingdom’s Government Digital Service did what many thought impossible: they took over 400 separate government websites and transformed them into a single site designed to effectively serve its users. In doing so, they defined a new discipline: content design.
The 25th Anniversary Edition of a modern classic, with a new Introduction by its celebrated author. “Is the life I am living the same as the life that wants to live in me?” With this searching question, bestselling author Parker J. Palmer begins his insightful and moving meditation on finding our way toward meaning and purpose. As readers of many ages, backgrounds and walks of life will attest, Let Your Life Speak is an elegant and openhearted gift to all who seek to live authentically.
Our current definition of “productivity” is broken. It pushes us to treat busyness as a proxy for useful effort, leading to impossibly lengthy task lists and ceaseless meetings. We’re overwhelmed by all we have to do and on the edge of burnout, left to decide between giving into soul-sapping hustle culture or rejecting ambition altogether. But are these really our only choices?
Good research is about asking more and better questions, and thinking critically about the answers. Done well, it will save your team time and money by reducing unknowns and creating a solid foundation to build the right thing, in the most effective way.
You can't make the world fair, but you can take back your power. As a woman in Silicon Valley who worked her way to the top of the corporate ladder--she's a former VP at Facebook and the current president and CEO of Ancestry--Deborah Liu knows firsthand the challenges and obstacles in the workplace that keep the deck stacked against women in the workplace and the ways to overcome them.
Design for Impact is a down–to–earth A/B testing guide. It features the Conversion Design process to operationalize effective experimentation in your company. In it, Erin Weigel gives you practical tips and tools to design better experiments at scale. She does this with self–deprecating humor that will leave you smiling—if not laughing aloud. As a bonus, The Good Experimental Design toolkit presents everything you learn into step–by–step process for you to use each day.
Radical Candor is the sweet spot between managers who are obnoxiously aggressive on the one side and ruinously empathetic on the other. It is about providing guidance, which involves a mix of praise as well as criticism, delivered to produce better results and help employees develop their skills and boundaries of success.
Do you know the science behind giving a powerful and persuasive presentation? This book reveals what you need to know about how people listen, how people decide, and how people react so that you can learn to create more engaging presentations. No matter what your current skill level, whether beginner or polished, this book will guide you to the next level, teaching you how to improve your delivery, stance, eye contact, voice, materials, media, message, and call to action.
Balancing creativity and professional growth
Maintaining creativity while growing professionally can be challenging. Our speakers share their strategies for staying inspired and maintaining work-life balance.
Question #5
What hobby or interest do you pursue outside of your professional life that helps you unwind and stay creative?
My husband, father and father-in-law are all professional game designers, so playing and designing games is very much in our DNA as a family. I find playing games gives me a way to creatively improve life skills like communication, balancing short term and long term payoffs, etc. Fun fact: as a family, we even designed a card game that gets played regularly on The Tonight Show. Shameless plug: go check out Hey Robot!
Photography, music, art, and video production, to name a few. I love to photograph mushrooms and can spend hours in the woods looking for tiny creatures and mushrooms. This has also sharpened my eyes for editing! I can literally spot mushrooms along the highway while I am driving and even while biking; it's a blessing and a curse.
I'm in a community choir that sings old Slavic music, and I got pulled into improv and clowning a couple years ago. Coming back to doing performance work—after throwing in the towel in high school—has been super fun, but also really freeing. It's been so helpful when I need to get out of my head, especially when I start taking myself too seriously.
I box to learn how to fight for my space and protect my boundaries, both physical and mental. Qigong keeps me grounded and focused, and pilates lets me explore how my body can move and helps rewire my brain. I'm also in a book club where we discuss pairs of short stories and how they relate to our lives. Our last pair was about unexpectedly realised desires: 'Quadraturin' by Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky and 'Something for nothing' by Robert Sheckley. Plus, I love trying new things. I recently tried pottery and would love to try woodworking sometime soon.
Paddling. I'm part of a dragon boat team and canoe club. I love being on the water and in nature! Gives me so much life :)
I collect vinyl records! I love hunting for new-to-me music, genres, and artists.
Listening to audiobooks, photography, and drone videography.
Walks with my family and throwing weight around at Crossfit.
I'm kind of wrapped up in design at the moment. But creative writing, and picking up an instrument ever now and again is a nice release.
Kayaking, drawing, writing, fiber crafts, and volunteering with an equine rescue.
Tons of craft and gardening. Being able to make something with my hands.
Pottery, long-distance running, lifting.
Gardening and nature walks.
Cooking and baking.
Question #6
How do you stay motivated and inspired in your work?
As Sara Wachter-Boettcher wisely noted recently in her talk for Lead with Tempo – one needs to really enjoy their life outside of work to keep on doing their best work. However counter-intuitive that might sound. I think everything in this world is intertwined. If work becomes the center of my life, I eventually burn out and loose all motivation (and this has happened before). So I really need to prioritise balancing different parts of my life in order to feel motivated and inspired at work. The inner charge that I get from somewhere outside of work is then inevitably reflected on how I feel at work.
I crave novelty and get bored easily. By default, I feel like I'm constantly trying to learn new things not because I feel like I have gaps, but because it keeps things interesting! This approach has kept me from stalling out so many times on tough projects. Like: What's a skill I don't have that I could practice here? Who can I help to add a little variety to my task list? Is there someone I want to shadow and learn from?
I always keep some short term and more medium term goals in mind at any given time. Short term goals are ones I can achieve in the coming weeks and months; medium term goals are ones that I'd only be able to fully realize at least 1-2 years out. Having both of these helps me switch back and forth and depending on my mood and energy levels that day, choose my own adventure of what I'm tackling and why it matters to me.
I'm neurodivergent, so my motivation is intrinsic. I'm told that when I was born, I didn't cry, I just looked around in wonder. I try to carry that curiosity into my work.
Working with talented people - that's the best part of it all
Remember the user that you're solving problems for.
Question #7
How do you maintain work-life balance in a field that often requires high creativity and problem-solving?
I don't always have the clearest perspective on when I'm doing too much or too little, but I've learned to pay attention to my patterns so I'm working with my brain and body instead of against them. Like, if I'm really in the flow with something, I'll clear my calendar so I can keep that momentum and focus. Because usually if I'm in that state, I'm having a lot of fun! But if I'm starting at a blank screen or getting distracted, I've stopped forcing myself to produce. I'll get up and walk away for a bit. Sometimes it means my days stretch out a little differently than others, but it works for me.
Being a parent. You might see this and on the surface think it's intuitive, especially if you aren't yet a parent yourself. But less free time has made me so much better at being ruthless with my prioritization, and has been really helpful in getting me to diversify my identity so that work crises aren't life altering for me. It's shifted my perspective in healthy ways and helped me compartmentalize work a lot more. Work time is my time to flex a part of my brain that often isn't engaged in parenting my very young children, and vice versa. I have gratitude for when I can full step into each role in my day-to-day, and how taking over as parent when I close my laptop and pick up my kids from preschool keeps me from spiraling out work in my off hours.
For my life to have balance, I need opportunities to solve problems creatively. Work gives me that, which helps meet that need.
I find work-life blend more realistic and achievable for me. My brain never completely shuts down on weekends. I like it better that I don't need time to jumpstart on Monday mornings.
Chunking my days based on what I need to do. For example, afternoons are when I'm creative - so I do most of my content designing then.
Boundaries and being clear about how I structure my work (I prefer to do some heavy thinking at night after my family goes to bed).
I turn off my laptop at 5pm every day. Gotta set your boundaries from the get go!
I don't add work apps to my phone.
Navigating challenges in Content Design
Every job comes with its challenges. Our experts discuss common misconceptions about Content Design and strategies for overcoming work-related stress.
Question #8
What's a common misconception about your job that you'd like to clear up?
It's not important that we have a "seat" at every table. It's also not OK to have us come in at the end to fill text boxes. The truth is in the middle between these two extremes: Include content when it's time to clarify and tell the story of the product, which comes well before sketching the screens. This is where the narrative influences the interaction most effectively, sharing the right bits of the action and information at the right time. Then, we shape how the story is created (through the terminology, titles, buttons, descriptions, etc.) But we continue working long after the screen designs are delivered: We work with developers to fix edge cases with word-shaped bandages in the form of redirects, explanations, error messages, and more.
That we mainly design solutions directly with the product designers. One of the most underrepresented power duos is a content designer and an engineer. There are so many ways content designers can be the sole designer in an experiment collaborating directly with engineers. And the more that content designers know about what goes into an engineer's job, the more we can anticipate their needs and represent them at the earliest stages of design.
That I'm a copywriter and not a designer! Content and design work hand in hand. Oftentimes, my content only works with certain design elements and not others. It's definitely not just filling out text in boxes!
That it's good for introverts and doesn't require collaborating with people.
That I AM a designer and I KNOW how to use Figma.
It's easy. And it's only about content.
That we fix typos and write snazzy ad lines. No.
That my job is to advocate for content as a discipline.
Question #9
What's your go-to method for dealing with work-related stress?
First I have to figure out that I am in fact stressed out. This usually comes up during my commute. If I'm not listening to music for several days, that's when I know something is wrong. I love music, so not listening to any means my brain is asking for peace and quiet... meaning I'm not getting enough of that.
After I've identified that I'm stressed, and that it is because of work, I start to consider what is within my control. If I realize I'm on too many projects, I talk to my leader about that and work to get things off my plate or push back on timelines. If it's because there's a big deadline looming and a bunch of requirements had to be changed so we're rushing to make sure all the changes are completed and approved in time, I remind myself that this won't be forever. I also try to get on my treadmill during meetings where I'm not actively presenting. This helps put my brain at ease.
Just creating space to unwind. Boxing and qigong really help me a lot, they build up my mental resilience. But then sometimes even a walk in a park can make such a huge change. Moving in any way that one finds suitable in the moment and doing some breath work can go a long way.
Journaling. We can think thousands of words per minute in our heads—but we can only write down 30 or so. Slowing down my thoughts and getting them on paper really helps me get to the heart of what's bothering me and why. It also makes my prolific negative self-talk and cognitive distortions visible, so I can more objectively look at them.
The box breathing method: inhale for 4 counts, hold for 4 counts, exhale for 4 counts. It's a great way to ground yourself, let go of stress in the moment, and improve concentration or focus.
Taking a hike. Literally. Working remotely is my fav because I do some of my best thinking out on a hiking trail where I preferably don't have cell reception.
Exercise and a great to do list.
Canoeing.
Question #10
How do you approach receiving and implementing feedback on your work, especially when it's critical?
I remind myself that feedback is a gift. We all have areas where we may not be self-aware: whether it's in our own work, how we operate in a work function, and beyond. Someone giving you feedback wants to see you do better so even if it can be hard to receive the feedback, knowing that that person wants to see you improve can help ground you.
I fight a really deep, ingrained belief that other people's feedback is 100% correct and I'm 100% wrong. I'm also not particularly quick on my feet when challenged and like time to reflect and gather my thoughts. Knowing these two things, I've developed strategies to give myself time to process before immediately reacting or responding. A simple "I hadn't looked at it that way before. Let me noodle on that a bit and get back to you" buys me time to decide what's worth letting go of and where I may want to push back. I also use a lot of reframing techniques to pull myself out of the spiral where negative feedback means I'm bad turns into negative feedback means I'm learning. It also helps me catch when I simply don't agree with the negative feedback and need to stay the course.
I want my feedback to be timely. I needs context, examples, and I'd like to know where it comes from.
Love feedback. If I need to chat about it - I'll jump on a call with a person.
Collaboration and impact in Content Design
Effective collaboration and demonstrating impact are crucial in Content Design. Our speakers share their approaches to working with others and showcasing the value of their work.
Question #11
How do you foster effective collaboration between different disciplines in your projects?
Use the same empathy work I've been trained in for being in a UX discipline to take the perspective of my fellow collaborators. For my engineers, PMs, design leaders, PMMs, I always ask myself: what are their goals? What's likely keeping them up at night right now? How can my work make their life easier?
I find when I approach collaboration from this perspective, people really see and appreciate the effort you make to meet them on their level and often reciprocate, forging really healthy and functional relationships built on mutual support.
I've learned: You can't just focus on the work. Cross-functional teams with healthy relationships do great things—cross-functional teams with dysfunctional relationships may be able to do great things, but at far too high a cost. (And let's be real: usually the end product suffers.) Upfront work to understand each other's needs and priorities, working styles, and sensitive spots will save you time in the long run. And when the back-channelling begins, it's time to have a real conversation.
1:1s can be really helpful for building trust and helping those in other disciplines understand what it is that you do. Honestly, I’ve had a lot more folks be more engaged and open to working together once they understood why design functioned a certain way and how to best work with them.
Encourage radical transparency and clear communications! Not every cross-functional partner understands or has the context to your work and vice versa: build an environment where everyone is welcome to ask questions with no judgment.
I use design sprints, workshops, and relationship building to invite diverse perspectives from design, content, engineering, PM, and support.
Have workshops or sessions or brown bag lunches so others can get to see what you do, thus think about ways to collaborate moving forward.
Communication. Let my work be known and inviting these people to my process.
Learning everyones styles of working and working with that.
Question #12
What strategies have you found effective for advocating for the value of your work within your organisation?
You can advocate for the value of your work by telling the story of your impact in general business terms. Being able to frame content design outcomes with regards to time saved, revenue generated, complaints decreasing, or better customer experiences are universally understood wins that can resonate with a wide array of colleagues, disciplines, and levels of seniority.
Storytelling is key. I've been tasked with writing so many "why content design matters" decks, just like everyone else, and I've never found them to be at all persuasive. But talking about specific projects, teams, and processes—what worked and what absolutely failed—has always flipped the script from me trying to get people to care about content to people coming to me because they're curious about how content can help them.
Talk about the shared goal for the entire team and what I can contribute to the goal—basically the opposite of preaching the importance of content design.
Show, don't tell. Do the great work that needs to be done early and often. Your reputation will precede you.
Making work a little bit more fun always works, co-creation activities and other opportunities for active interaction are super effective.
Get involved in the company's top bets and projects, ignore the rest.
Question #13
How do you measure and communicate the impact of your work to stakeholders and leadership?
Most projects have goals outlined and those goals are often connected to company goals. When you show how your work helped meet both of those goals it tells a better story than just stating you increased/decreased a thing by X% or X$. Those changes don't mean much until you tie them to the goals on the roadmap.
Measuring success varies from project to project. You might need to focus on data (engagement, growth, retention, leads, conversion), building a foundation for the future, compliance. It depends.
Experimentation is big part of my daily life as a UX Writer in my company, and UX Writers also work on copy-specific experimentation strategies – so then it becomes rather easy to showcase your work to anyone as you have specific numbers as your evidence. I also make sure to document every step of my work and share with stakeholders what I'm doing to demystify a little bit the 'behind the scenes' of UX writing.
Ensure the right success metrics are set up at the very beginning of a project. Ensuring everyone is aligned on what success looks like so I can then make design decisions that are validated by data. Testing not only variations of copy but also a control that doesn't have any copy in it to quantify the impact on having helper text, period.
I do that by timely documenting work and showcasing that work through community/team forums at my org.
Data partnerships, detailed design rationales and quad alignment every step of the way help a great deal.
Have set metrics and see if your project has improved any of them. Ask customer experience team for analytics.
I share a quarterly email with stakeholders about some nuggets of work the team have done and the impact.
Question #14
How has your perspective on team collaboration changed as you've progressed in your career?
We tell ourselves so many stories about what our teammates are thinking, why they're acting the way they are, and what we can expect from them. So many of those stories are flat out wrong. It's led me to be a lot more candid and vulnerable about my ideas and challenges than I was early on, with a totally ulterior motive of getting them to do the same. If we're all focused on holding territory it's hard to create anything innovative and new. But if we're inviting each other in to help us solve tricky parts of our work, we can lighten each other's load while learning more about what everyone does and why. And we also have to lighten up and laugh. I'll happily play the team jester and lose some "respectability" if it means we're not miserable.
I've always felt like we had to be in the team as a team, each of us providing our unique talents and perspectives, respecting the differences among us, and focusing our efforts in concert with each other. I've gotten better at it over time, but that's still the goal!
I'm taking more charge driving the evolvement of certain dynamics and relationships, rather than waiting for someone to do it for me. I create and nourish connections that I think are important and can help me in my work.
The more senior you become, the more important it is to share your work and establish your own perspective. Don't be shy about saying what you think!
Less confrontation, more confidence, curiosity and collegiality.
Question #15
How has remote work impacted your work process and collaboration, and what strategies have you found effective for remote teamwork?
Have regular jam sessions with designers and product managers! Don't work in silo. Present your work in team crits to get feedback. I haven't really had to adapt my process since most of my partners have been all over the US for years!
Looking to the future of Content Design
As the field continues to evolve, our experts share their thoughts on emerging trends and technologies shaping the future of Content Design.
Question #16
How do you see AI tools changing your work process?
I think AI today is helpful in brainstorming content. It’s really nice just to see what “someone else” can come up with (even if it’s often terrible, haha). I hope that in the future it can help save me time on things like content audits, presentations, pulling up the best customer service calls to listen to, and delivering research insights that can help spark conversation. In my dream world I’d be able to have AI execute Excel functions like vlookup.
Automating the more manual tasks (checking for sentence/title case, ensuring brand-specific words are used in the correct way, checking for character count limits, checking international translations to ensure the German isn't insanely long, etc) to free up more time for individual human content designers to make an impact in their cross-functional teams.
I think AI gives an opportunity to 'outsource' or speed up the routine and have more space for truly creative and strategic work. Something that AI actually can't do.
I use AI to support pieces of my process that are repetitive, to get new perspectives on my work, or to generate lots of ideas in a short period of time.
I can use AI tools as a starting point. But at the end of the day, would still need to use my own discretion to see whether or not it makes sense.
Question #17
What steps do you take to ensure your work is inclusive and accessible to diverse audiences?
I include the people who will be using those experiences whenever possible, with surveys, interviews, co-designing, and more. Accessibility guidelines have advanced quite a bit since I started, and they are more available than ever. I also work to identify, understand, and mitigate my own biases.
"Don't make something about us, without us": make sure that the people giving you feedback and input on your work include a diverse range of voices and perspectives. It's helpful to ask yourself: who's voice is missing from this work, then include those folks in your process.
Early partnerships with our localization and accessible POCs and continue to educate myself on these topics.
Research, testing, join accessibility guilds, educate myself, collaborate with diverse leaders.
Have an accessibility checklist ready to check against your copy.
Always asking questions and looking at things from different lenses.
Co-designing with those audiences.
Question #18
How do you balance creativity and innovation with the need for consistency and adherence to guidelines?
This isn't art, it's design: The constraints plus the goals are the job. Creativity and innovation use these constraints as a lattice, a ladder that helps us find new and better solutions. When we can produce a solution without creativity within those constraints, we can get creative and innovative about how to do that production as rapidly as possible, and get on with the harder problems.
This is one of the ways I'm looking forward to AI helping us. AI is a great tool for helping us automate the more manual tasks (checking for sentence/title case, ensuring brand-specific words are used in the correct way, checking for character count limits, checking international translations to ensure the German isn't insanely long, etc) to free up more time for individual human content designers to make an impact in the creativity and innovation categories. It allows us to scale consistency, without forcing humans to work on tasks that (while important) can often be pretty soul crushing and not feel like the best use of our time.
"Learn the rules like a pro so you can break them like an artist." But also, don't be a misogynist like Pablo Picasso.
Push the limits. I always try to say things in the most conversational way, and debate with legal team to see if that would work with our users. If not, we just continue to massage the messaging until all parties are happy.
Resources: Events, podcasts, blogs, and more
In addition to books, our speakers recommend a variety of other resources to keep you informed and inspired. This section includes podcasts that offer regular doses of industry insights, websites that provide up-to-date information and tools, and other valuable resources such as conferences and online courses. These recommendations are designed to help you stay current with the latest trends, techniques, and discussions in the rapidly evolving field of Content Design. Explore these resources to continue your learning journey beyond the pages of books and to connect with the broader Content Design community.
Conferences and events
- Lead with Tempo
- Button
- UX New Zealand
- UX Lisbon
- From Business to Buttons
- Config
- Utterly Content
- UX Nordic
Podcasts
- The Interface
- Content Design with Friends
- Writers of Silicon Valley
- Finding Our Way
- Content Rookie
- Content Strategy Insights
- Content Strategy Podcast
- Writers in Tech
- Technically Speaking
- Full Stack Whatever
- Lenny's Podcast
Blogs
Articles
Videos
Websites
Growing In Content 2024: Day 1
We hope this Q&A has piqued your interest in what's to come at Growing In Content 2024. Join us on August 19th for Day 1, where you'll have the opportunity to dive deeper into these topics and more with our expert speakers.
Register now to be part of this enriching experience and to continue growing in your Content Design career. Day 1 is free to attend for everyone. Paid tickets start from $99.