There are at least two false divisions in product cultures causing strife today:
- Dividing product work by “words” and “not words”.
- Dividing product work by “designers” (who do interfaces) and “writers” (who do content).
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.
Words in your product can be all or part of the interface: helping people access and make use of the content.
Not all words in the experience are content. Not all words on the screen are necessarily part of the interface.
Content has to be managed like content. It has to be planned for, produced, and governed like content. Interfaces have to be designed like interfaces. They have to be imagined, iterated, tested, and evaluated like interfaces.
Beyond those false divisions, the larger falsehood causing problems may be believing that somewhere out there is the perfect recipe, the perfect ratio, the perfect process, that will magically solve this for you so you don’t have to think about it again.
There’s not. You have to scope it out each time.
Not only can you not borrow recipes 1:1 from a book or another company, you often can’t even borrow them from another team in your organization. Everybody’s at a different altitude, with a different oven, cooking a different quantity of a different item every single day. You will always, if I may, have to adjust for your locale, your pantry, and the skills of your chefs.
The energy you’ve been putting in to trying to “solve” the division of labor between writing and design, or to align on the perfect job titles, or to craft the perfect job descriptions, or to design the perfect collaborative process between designers and writers should likely be redirected toward pre-kickoff or sprint planning work that takes the unique design and content needs of a given piece of work into consideration, and scopes, divides, and sequences that work appropriately.
Trying to snap-fit the labor automatically based on “words” and “not words” is always going to be painful, and not take the best advantage of the talents of your writers and designers. Design skills and methods can help you create great content. And editorial skills and methods can help you create great interfaces. Often, you need a bit of both, on both sides.
Embrace the discomfort. Have what feels like a slow, even excruciatingly slow planning conversation about the interface copy and product content at least once. See if the work doesn’t go a little easier. Have the conversation again — hey, we learned some things last time, this is going better. Repeat, repeat, repeat. Now you’re cooking.