A designer who writes.
I have blogged intermittently since the mid 90s. Thankfully, much of the early teenage angst is lost to time. This collects my writings from this site, an earlier personal website, and some newsletter projects over the years, in mostly chronological order. I also publish new writing here. I publish somewhat more formal writing about content strategy and design careers at Content Career Accelerator.
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 don’t consider themselves to be writers. In the somewhat recent past, I’ve been … continue
There 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 creates an experience. Words in your product can be content: what people are there for. … continue
I’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 design or UX writing. You might even be one of them! I believe strongly that … continue
We all use them. Work on them. Design them. But what are they?
A 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 how those two ideas are connected, or if they should be connected, or … well, … continue
Let’s imagine something together: Your digital product company has decided to build a new headquarters. The design of the building calls for a brick exterior. (Great choice, by the way.) Do you imagine you will hire bricklayers to lay those brick? Why bother, right? Who needs ’em? Everyone knows how blocks work. Stack stack stack. … continue
Choose a writing method that works for your team, content, and audience. Writing ain’t religion, friends. It’s okay to attend more than one church. Let’s take content design, for instance. Content design is generally my top choice when: A) writing content that has to support as broad of an audience as possible, and/orB) making content … continue
If you’re a UX writer, content designer, or similar, you need to learn to resist the pressure to be clever, to be funny, to be creative, to “make it pop”, to “give it personality” — especially if you’re not sure that it’s appropriate for the experience. (It’s probably not.)
I’ve learned not to trust what I think I think, what I think I believe, what I think the answer is, right in the moment.
This originally appeared as Issue No. 125 of the Content.Events weekly newsletter on April 24, 2023. It’s our anniversary, or thereabouts. It’s okay, I didn’t get you anything either. I just wanted to mark the occasion. The first issue of the UX Writing Events newsletter — the original banner of this publication — went out … continue
Or you will, if you subscribe. Personal dispatches from the desk of Scott Kubie, a designer who writes.