Content Design: It's Not as Broken as You Think
Image source: BBC
You’re sitting at your desk, the same one you sit in day in and day out. You move your eyes away from the screen just to give them just a second of rest, and you notice something. There’s a crack in the wall. You aren't sure if it's always been there, but it seems to expand with each passing day. You wonder if it's going to get worse. As the only one who seems to care, you start thinking that the crack might be your fault, and it's your responsibility to fix it.
Between summer vacation and some unexpected fires at work, I missed an important discussion about Content Design (CD) started by Nicole Alexandra Michaelis. In her article Why I no longer believe in Content Design, Michaelis explains how she lost her faith in Content Design, and listed multiple frustrations that many of us can relate to:
Low CD awareness in organizations leads to writers being invited into projects too late, without any opportunities to influence the design or clear success metrics for content.
CD losing their jobs during layoffs, therefore, being less important than other specialists.
Junior writers being set up for failure due to a gap between what is taught at Content Design courses and what our job actually is.
These challenges seemed to gradually erode content practice, like that crack. Having these challenges unresolved, Michaelis argues, makes it hard to believe in the idea of Content Design. I never thought about Content Design in these terms. You don't need to believe in Content Design for it to happen. As long as there are digital products, there will always be Content Design. It will happen with or without people with fancy titles like Content Designer, UX Writer, UX Content Strategist, or whatever else we call ourselves this week. Here in China, where I'm based, we even have an "operations" role; It has little to do with content operations but instead marries content strategy with hard business numbers. But it’s a story for another article.
Words have to be created somehow, so they will be. New ways to write words will emerge, and better ways will eventually prevail. If you don't believe in sunrise, the sun will still show up in the morning. Sunrise does not rely on faith to happen. When we ask whether Content Design is worth believing in, what we really mean is whether our craft is developing in the right direction, in a timely way. Are we ok or not? Is that crack in the wall the bearer of our impending doom? Is it a temporary inconvenience or a lifelong problem? I think it might be helpful (and somewhat therapeutic, for sure) to step back a bit, and look at the history of UX design and Content Design.
The Case of Lost Influence
Content Design is a part of a bigger movement for better user experience. It's been just over 35 years since Donald Norman came up with the term "User Experience Design"; the very idea of putting the user first when creating a product. Content Design is a specialized branch of the wider design thinking framework; it cannot possibly develop faster than the other realms of design thinking have. UX Design has been around for over 35 years, and Content Design only started to come together in the early 2010s. This very timeline should stop us from being jealous of UX designers who have "so much more influence". They've also had 3 times longer than Content Designers to establish their craft. If you look beyond tech giants that can afford highly specialized employees like Content Designers, you will see that many UX designers still don't have as much influence or power as you might think. As of 2022, UX designers are still fighting to get a seat at the table and writing articles about it.
But who is to blame? Michaelis raises this in her article, but leaves the question unresolved. Jody Allard, the author of "Why I still believe in Content Design", argues that it's partially our own fault, for not fighting back enough. I think there is no one person or group to blame. It's not much more than humans being slow to adapt to new ideas. Change needs time. Content Designers had 3 times less time than UX designers to build any influence. We need to embrace this fact and celebrate each and every milestone as we climb this mountain, instead of worrying about not being at the top yet. We cannot be expected to change the IT world in less than 20 years, and I think we should stop trying to carry the world up on our shoulders, to quote sir Paul McCartney. This one is not on you. This one is on history.
If we were less stressed about not having that seat at the table, we can use that energy for something productive, like maybe making our own table. That is, teaming up with product developers willing to work with us, defining some product areas where Content Design can make a measurable difference, or teaching stakeholders management to some junior writers.
The Fear of Layoffs
Certainly, something that's making the future of Content Design feel so tense is the growing number of layoffs throughout the tech industry. The logic here seems to be, since Content Designers are being laid off, then they're "less important" than other roles. I get it. Everyday you open your LinkedIn with its curated feed of accomplished global Content Designers, and you see good people getting bad news. Yeah, it sucks. However, what you are experiencing here might just be sampling bias. You chat and connect with content people, some of them lose their jobs, and more and more it seems like CDs are the only ones being laid off. More than likely, that's not the case.
After talking to connections in Meta, Amazon, and other companies, I see that many people in many roles find themselves in this situation. Yes, there were cases when the whole content team had to leave. However, there were also cases when the whole design team had to leave. In a world where big corporations are prioritizing cost-cutting measures, Content Designers are not the only ones getting hurt. It's not just us. It's everybody. This one is not on you, it's the economy.
Fixing Those Cracks
If we really are to make the future of Content Design brighter, the first thing we need to do is to stop freaking out because our dream of that "perfect user experience" hasn't happened yet.
We cannot expect ourselves to be perfect right away, because we are new to this IT game, and we're creating our processes and tools as we go. "If you truly think that the very first thing you design will be completely perfect and not require any changes [...] you’re totally delusional", as Laura Klein points out in her book UX for Lean Startups. We need to make peace with this state of imperfection and stop blaming ourselves for "not advocating hard enough." We should also understand that we will not get to the high holy land of perfect content tomorrow, or this month, or even this year. And I repeat, it's not our fault. Every organization is different, their levels of design maturity are varied, and the impact that content can create within them cannot be the same. Asking every Content Designer to get to the Big Table in the same capacity is delusional. We should stop putting all of this pressure on ourselves. It doesn’t make things better. It squeezes any and all hope and self-respect out of you, making it incredibly difficult to move forward.
By setting that bar too unrealistically high to reach, we condition ourselves to develop impostor syndrome. Not only are we pressured to get there tomorrow, we also only seem to celebrate big accomplishments. We celebrate those people who improved content that serves millions of people, or those who have created an amazing process. However, we should also celebrate that solo UX writer who somehow managed to convince her designer to give her editing rights in Figma (no seriously, how cool is that?). We should normalize the fact that yes, we have problems and then share our problems with each other. We should stop thinking that the challenges we face are only there because we’re "not good enough", and that the mere mention of our problems somehow ruins our credibility. This attitude stops us from growing, it stops us from learning.
We need to appreciate questions and stories about small wins. I would trade any article complaining about Content Design not being perfect yet for a short LinkedIn post documenting a small win (hashtag #contentwins, tag me, so I don't miss it).
We need to encourage questions, and be more open about answering them. I have talked to too many accomplished, talented, and effective Content Designers who didn't have faith in their own skill set to list themselves on APDlist as mentors. This lack of confidence in our abilities stops us from teaching and empowering others. We need more community support. We need more people who are willing to step out and share their experiences despite the fear. Of course, we shouldn't expect everybody has to serve the community, but I think we would be in a better place if more people did. New voices are needed to join in as tutors and thought leaders, and our strongest talents should try to be more accessible. Unfortunately, for every Torrey Podmajersky, Shannon Leahy, and Jaime Noordzij Walke, who are very accessible and open for junior writers, there are dozens of people who boldly proclaim that they will answer everyone who sends them a message, and then never do. Yes, you're busy, and in the long run, it's not a big deal. But it can be really demotivating for those junior writers who came looking for guidance and got ghosted instead.
We need every book, every article, every LinkedIn post, every message. The more content we create about our work, the chances any of that content going viral is better. I think Buzzfeed’s explosive traffic in the 2010s illustrated it well enough. If you create 1 sharable quiz pet month, your chances of going viral are quite low. If you create 100 sharable quizzes every day, one of them will eventually get 20 million views. The more books we write, there's a bigger chance that a designer, a PM, a back-end developer, a data analytic will have a copy on their desk. Maybe your CEO will read one of them eventually, something in it resonates with her, and she orders her organization to rebuild their process with the consideration of content goals and research.
Let's stop thinking about things we cannot control like time and the job market, and focus on those small beautiful changes we manage to make every single day. I won't come up with that "Big Elaborate Plan That Fixes Everything", as those rarely work. I will list a few things that you, my reader and content comrade-in-arms, can do right now:
1. Stop worrying about Content Design not being perfect yet. Crafts take quite some time to develop.
2. Embrace the fact that EVERYONE is getting hurt in this economy.
3. If you are a junior Content Designer, go to ADPlist and find a mentor who is knowledgeable on the topics you need advice on. Remember that there is no such thing as a silly question, only silly answers. Be brave.
4. If you are mid-level or above, sit down and write 3 Content Design things you are really good at. Anything you often get complimented on, anything your manager highlights on your performance review, anything you feel confident doing. Now go to ADPlist and register as mentor. The 3 things that you just wrote down will be topics you can mentor on. Be kind.
5. Be accountable for what you say or do for the community. Answer those messages as you promised you will. Commit.
6. Share your #contentwins on LinkedIn, and tag me so I don't miss it. I will comment on every single one. (See what I did here? Commitment!)
We have a long way to go, but as Sarah Winters wrote, "the content industry is stronger now than it has been, and it will become stronger." Maybe that crack in our wall is not one that takes us to another dimension, but it's probably that much easier to fix.
At Alibaba, we say that "believing is seeing", meaning that you need to believe in things first to make them happen. Content Design doesn’t need my belief to happen, but I believe in it regardless. I need to see things getting better. I often think about that while walking back to my desk after a lunch break with my team. Tall office windows catch our reflections, it makes us look cool and somehow unstoppable. For a brief second, I see something else.
A diverse and colorful crowd fighting for Content Design, a strong community of practice, and all the words and journeys we will create.
It's breathtakingly beautiful.
