What is content design?

Problems Too often, few product teams or UX partners know what content design is or how to best engage with a content designer when one joins their team. Content designers are often put in the position of educating their teams on their discipline, usually while juggling too many assignments. After I was asked to present about…

Problems

Too often, few product teams or UX partners know what content design is or how to best engage with a content designer when one joins their team. Content designers are often put in the position of educating their teams on their discipline, usually while juggling too many assignments.

After I was asked to present about the importance of copy at a UX Research Quarterly meeting, I decided to use the opportunity to explain what content design is and to create a resource that content designers at Indeed would be able to use.

Solutions:

Created a presentation called “More than words” to explain that while words (aka copy) are important, it’s not all that content designers do.
I built on that deck to create a “What is content design?” presentation, incorporating feedback from other managers, and shared it with content designers across Indeed.

Outcomes:

Shared the initial presentation at a quarterly meeting with the research team. Recruited 3 other content designers and managers for the Q&A panel.
Was invited to share the presentation at a Design Systems conference.
Other managers used the deck to help onboard content designers and teams collaborate with UX partners.

What my teammates had to say about my work:

“Yvonne put together a UX Content Design playbook, to which she generously let me contribute slides and examples. That playbook has been used multiple times as the foundation for presentations by my team on how best to collaborate with content design … the entire UX team (design, content, and research) used the playbook as a foundation for educating their new product and engineering partners on how to work successfully with UX, as this was a team that had had little experience with UX in the past.”
– UX Content Director

“Yvonne not only participated, but took a leading role, in our Q2 SMB UXR Quarterly. This was the first time we partnered with another team for the Quarterly, and I think it successfully showcased how these teams can work together. Yvonne also put together an incredible deck on Content Design, which I think helped the audience further understand how to work with her team.”
–UX Research Director