Hi, I’m Scott.
I’m an artist, writer, and systems-minded design leader with deep experience in all things content.
As a speaker and educator, I deliver practical insights and hands-on training on topics such as clarity, writing, creativity, visual thinking, and design. I strive to make complex and/or intimidating topics more accessible and actionable.
As a coach and consultant, I help teams and individuals navigate the worlds of UX design, information architecture, and content strategy in their projects and careers.
I’m happy you’re here. Let me know how I can help.
Design & Strategy Services
I’ve worked on the content side of UX and digital strategy for over 15 years.
I’m open to projects and partnerships big and small with ethical organizations of all sizes. Please don’t be afraid to reach out, even if you worry your budget is small; I can often find a solution that fits to get teams moving forward.
Skills Training
New tools and better ways of working for your content, design, marketing, and product teams. Let’s work together to design a productive training experience that makes the most of everyone’s time and energy.
Ecosystem Mapping
A true and useful picture of your digital content ecosystem to plan what’s next.
Combining the best of domain models, content models, and brand architecture, I can help your team navigate change, imagine new futures, and reduce content chaos.
Content Leadership & Career Coaching
Structured guidance and encouragement for your current and aspiring content design, content strategy, and UX writing leaders and IC’s.
Keynote Presentations
Straight talk about writing, creativity, content, and design for your team or event. I can start the conversation that finally changes things in your organization. Speaking page
UX Audits & Rapid Analysis
Immediately actionable feedback on your product and content experience from a true expert in UX content. Don’t burn six months and half your budget looking for answers I can give you in 48 hours.
Digital Strategy Consulting
Everyone on the same page, finally. Let’s design an engagement that will serve as a pivotal moment in your company’s digital strategy for years to come.
Let’s chat! Send me some info or book a friendly, no-obligation intro meeting.
Or call me up at 1-401-203-1985.
Design Tools & Methods
Design tools, worksheets, canvases, and other thinky things.
VMT (Product Clarity Framework)
A strategy framework and canvas for identifying weaknesses in the overall conceptual model and communication strategy behind your brand, business, or product. A tool for aligning the business/brand or product/content sides of your business.
Possible Applications
Anchor practice as a business consultant or digital strategist. Ensure branding, messaging, communications, and design choices align and amplify company vision, value proposition, etc. Improve working relationship between departments. Facilitate planning of a digital strategy or content strategy engagement. Guide teaching or self-learning in digital strategy and content strategy topics.
Of Interest To
CEOs and CMOs, design directors, strategy consultants, digital strategists, content strategists, product marketing managers, product managers and owners
Content Ecosystem Mapping
A diagram-driven approach to strategic facilitation, current state analysis, and future-state design for large or complex digital initiatives.
Applications
website redesigns and consolidations, digital strategy alignment, competitor analysis, product design (especially SaaS apps and other multi-channel digital products), digital service design, content gap analysis
Related Methods
concept modeling, content modeling, information architecture, domain modeling, OOUX
Of Interest To
startups, enterprises, content strategists, information architects, brand strategists, digital strategists
Popular Talks & Presentations
How to Get the Writing Done
A reliable process for design writing of all kinds.
Dear User: Let’s Be Friends
Designing friendly interfaces, with inspiration from Dale Carnegie.
More About Me
On the professional side…
I’m the founder and director of Content Career Accelerator, a coaching & learning community for current and aspiring content professionals. The CCA newsletter reaches a highly-engaged audience of over 2,500 professionals in UX & content.
You or someone on your team might know me from my book, Writing for Designers … or from one of the over 100 public talks and workshops I’ve led at events like Button, Confab, Information Architecture Summit, Interaction, LavaCon, UX Lisbon, PUSH UX, and UX Days Tokyo.
I teach UX writing for the MFA Interaction Design program at New York’s School of Visual Arts. I’ve previously taught content strategy for Seattle’s School of Visual Concepts (no relation). And I’ve recently joined as a part-time faculty member for a UX Master’s program at URI, leading a course on design ethics.
I was the first UX content strategist at Wolfram Research, have led the content strategy practice at Brain Traffic, and was a Staff UX Content Strategist at Mailchimp.
My design and consulting experience spans large enterprises and institutions, tech startups, regulated industries, publishing, higher ed, membership associations, state and federal agencies, management consulting, NGOs, and clients as diverse as the Getty museum and the IRS.
As a consultant I tend to focus on strategy: digital strategy, brand strategy, content strategy, and UX strategy. As an individual practitioner, in-house or freelance, I do my best collaborative design work as the information architect, content designer, or user interface writer (UX writer).
I have a B.A. in electronic media and journalism from Drake University, and have been working on the content side of digital experiences since 2009.
On the personal side…
I’m currently in Providence, RI, where I live with my partner and our enormous cat. I maintain a personal and intermittent art practice that includes writing and songwriting, illustration, photography, sculpture, and painting. I am fueled by indie rock and music in general, and have been to well over 500 concerts, at which I acquired more tinnitus than I’d like but less than you’d think.
I grew up in rural Nebraska, which accounts for both my flat vowels and early interest in the web. I’ve been extremely online, as they say, since the mid 90s, and was an early participant in the world of weblogs before the term “blogging” was ever coined. One of my early website successes was a screenshot repository for the beta release of Starcraft: Brood War, a game I’m terrible at.
Before my design career, I was a founding board member and later executive director of the non-profit Greater Des Moines Music Coalition, where I helped launch events such as the 80/35 Music Festival. I’ve also worked as a coworking space owner, masonry laborer, overnight rock radio DJ, camera operator for hockey and horse racing, and purveyor of vintage coffee mugs and menswear.
I have received no awards of particular note, several “Best Hair” superlatives, and one IMDb credit for a film I have not seen.
I’m always open to artistic collaborations and creative projects, so say hey.
Recent Writing
- You’re not a bad writer. Probably.Are you actually bad at writing or is it just that writing is uncomfortable for you?That’s a question that comes up a lot in my world.I’m often in the position of teaching and evaluating the work of design students who … continue
- You can’t divide the product work into words and not words, sorryThere are at least two false divisions in product cultures causing strife today: The content is what people are there for. The interface helps people access and make use of it. Using the interface to access or use the content … continue
- Experience audits (UX audits) are an easy portfolio booster for content designersI’ve had occasion to review a lot of applications recently for a content design job. Naturally, many folks want to move from more traditional content fields like marketing or communications or web content management into newer, UX-coded roles like content … continue
- What even is a website?We all use them. Work on them. Design them. But what are they?
- Getting ready to ask for a raise or promotion in a UX content roleA year or so ago, I had a coaching call with a junior UX writer who was interested in getting a promotion and/or getting a raise in their current role … and perhaps feeling a bit conflated on whether and … continue