Making content and design equal partners? It’s doable or it’s not. It’s fixable or it’s not. Or it might be fixable, in the future, if X Y or Z things change — things that are always going to be out of your control.
Your search for a UX content job may not resemble any of your prior job searches, especially if you are trying to transition from a professional background outside of product and UX. You’ll need to look and read more carefully, search more deeply and creatively, and, in some cases, work quite a bit harder than you might have to work for another kind of job.
When reviewing or critiquing design work, it’s so, so, tempting to see something different…a different word, a different phrasing, a different pattern…and want to “fix” that difference. But making things consistent just for consistency’s sake sometimes leads us to the wrong choice.
What are you actually trying to accomplish with your content design or UX writing portfolio? Here’s one answer: Show someone that you understand it. That’s the short version, anyway, from my response to a question about portfolios and case studies during the recent SVC-hosted panel on landing your first content design job. The gist of my sentiment is that, … Read more
The fine folks at the School of Visual Concepts, for whom I occasionally lead a course on Content Strategy Fundamentals, have made the video available from a recent panel discussion I participated in, moderated by Elly Searle, about getting your first job in content design. I’m of the opinion that the job you have now … Read more
I’m going to break form and include an image this issue, which I almost never do. I wanted to share this photo, and my gratitude, for the folks who showed up to participate in the “fun run” I led at Confab 2022 this year. Lookit these hot doggers! As I told some folks in the … Read more
When it comes to maintaining a productive, creatively fulfilling life, the simple answers are terribly alluring. I’ve swooned to the siren songs of bucking up and toughening up and not giving a fuck and pulling on my bootstraps just a little bit harder. But like the Sirens themselves, those songs are just myths. What I’ve … Read more
This essay originally appeared in Issue 085 of the UX Writing Events newsletter on May 9, 2022. Holy fucking shit do I feel old. I’m back in Minneapolis, visiting, after a year away and three-ish years after the pandemic started. That’s around when I got laid off from Brain Traffic, and also stopped being able … Read more
Is content strategy … real? Product strategy? UX strategy? Customer experience? What about content design? Information architecture? Experience architecture? The answer to any of these, depending on my mood, is either yes, no, or who cares. Mostly, and most importantly, it’s “Who cares?”. Arguments about what “does and doesn’t exist” in design land to be … Read more
When the overall quality of a digital experience feels low, but I can’t quite put my finger on it, I’ve found that it often stems from one of two secret weaknesses that plague many product teams: lack of confidence and lack of trust. Lack of confidence The kind of confidence I’m talking about is an … Read more