When I tell people I’m a content designer, the first thing they ask is what I do. And I tell them that I’m the guy who works on the words in the interface of a product or application.
That button label? That’s me. That error message that tells you why that password doesn’t work? That’s me too. And the help text that appears after you select an info icon next to an unfamiliar term? Also me.
Every piece of content you see in an interface is something I can impact. But while I focus on (and love working with) words, I want to make one thing clear: I’m not just a words person. I also help with the design.
I’m a designer just like the rest of ’em
-me, most of the time
Wait, you’re not just working on the words?
The term “content” comes with a reputation that its only the words you see in a particular experience. A lot of people initially think about marketing copy or SEO. But despite the fact that “content” is in my job title, I do more than just touch all the words on a page or in a flow. I also design.
My contributions to the design process
There are many activities I’m involved with throughout the design process that use words and design thinking. Here are just a few of my favorites:
User journeys
One thing I really like doing is working with a team on creating a user journey. During a working sessions, we address three things:
- User need (what the user wants to do)
- Story point (how we help the user get what they want)
- Outcome (what the user does/knows/feels after)
These help create an outline for a particular page or flow. As a team, we can reference this storyline to find out how put together a design that helps the user along on their journey.
User research
I don’t have a lot of experience leading user research sessions, but I like participating in them. It affords me an opportunity to see what users are thinking and what they expect from a design or flow.
Hearing, “I don’t know what to do next” or “The documentation for this is the world’s worst” helps me understand where we can improve the design. It provides insights into where users could benefit from contextual help and what users need at a specific point in time.
Wireframing
I’ll be the first to admit that I’m not a visual designer. I’m not going to know what a good color palette is or how to create a custom illustration for an empty state.
But what I can do is put together a lot of boxes, lines, and text to make some wireframes in Figma or Miro (and maybe even borrow some library components). I enjoy wireframing because I can use information hierarchy to lay out the content for a particular page or frame in a flow. It reminds me to always put the most important information first, and to always make the next action clear.
Creating patterns
In my current role, I was initially tasked to work on component documentation as part of our design system. This exposure to components reaffirmed that having consistent, familiar patterns in place can create uniformity across products and tooling. And uniformity = familiarity = trust.
That’s why content patterns are also important: these reusable formulas can be used to add content into a design that is familiar and parallel to the content that exists in the design. They use rationale to explain what each piece of content means, and why it should be written in a particular way (formatting, voice and tone, punctuation, etc.).
In a nutshell: content design is designing
Content design is so much more than placing words on a page ad-hoc or retrofitting content into a design. While working with words is part of the job, so are things like creating user journeys, participating in user research, and sketching out wireframes.
Just because us content designers work with words, doesn’t mean we should be limited to just working with words 🙂
Austin Writes Content 