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.
I start a new playlist for each year in Apple Music, going back to 2018. I didn’t post my 2023 list for some reason which was probably depression (that’s usually the reason the big good happy thing simply doesn’t happen), but here is this year’s. It’s not made of songs that came out in 2024 … 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
I had the great pleasure of visiting Tokyo recently, to speak at the long-running, COVID-interrupted UX Days event. From my perspective it was over 3 years in the making, from the initial invitation to actually being able to attend. Wild. The trip was a lot of firsts for me; my first time in Japan, my first … continue
Good question. To fully answer it, we have to explore a few related, but distinct, terms: Content ecosystem mapping is a sensemaking activity for digital strategy. Digital strategy projects could include: and so on. In a design and strategy context, sensemaking is something we do in order to better understand an environment, problem, or situation. … continue
These are some of the places I check regularly to populate the weekly events list I publish through Content.Events, and places I would personally recommend to someone interested in taking a class or course.
A few years back, a local reporter and columnist attended a content strategy conference at which I was a presenter. I had the impression he got sent there for his own professional development reasons. But he might have attended out of genuine curiosity, or for the purposes of the write-up he eventually published in a … continue
Or you will, if you subscribe. Personal dispatches from the desk of Scott Kubie, a designer who writes.