Scott Kubie

Scott Kubie believes in you.

If you're a writer contributing the words on a product team, he believes in you. If you're a front-end designer or developer tasked with writing, he believes in you.

In his book Writing for Designers, Scott sets out a simple path to help you get the writing done. He also has good ideas about how to organize content work for digital products.

He's not a fan of prescriptive style manuals and guidelines. Instead, he shows how helpful tools can guide writing work.

Nor does he like "best practices." Instead, he shares collaborative methods that make "good design work happen."

Scott and I talked about:

his background in communications, information architecture, UX design

an early UX writing job he held at Wolfram Research and the variety of terms used there to describe his work: UI Writer, Content Strategist, Copywriter

the need for both product-oriented writers and writers who work on marketing and website content

the proliferation of job titles related to UX writing and content strategy

the importance of thinking like a designer when you are working on a UX or product team

his distinction between two common content strategy job titles: "content design is an elevated form of writing; UX writing is very app and interface specific""

the importance of tailoring content workflows and governance to the unique needs of each organization

the importance of documenting your content model and of embedding it into your organization culture

the almost-universal disconnect between design and content job descriptions and what people actually do

the importance of collaboratively making "good design work happen" - as opposed to adopting best practices

how his main inspiration comes from users, not from product goals, team structure, etc.

how there's nothing wrong with being "just the writer"

how he shows the bigger value of writing at a macro level - continuity, consistency, conceptual development, etc.

the importance of taking in and considering the big picture, of not "staring at the button," and how he helps his collaborators in this process

the superiority of helpful tools over style guides and other rules

his inspirational closing message: "I believe in you. You can do good design."

Scott's Bio

Scott Kubie is the author of Writing for Designers and a general champion of all things UX + content. He loves to empower design teams with tools that add clarity, reduce complexity, and lead to better products. Scott publishes the UX Writing Events newsletter, a personal blog called Brutalist Bookends, and the creatively-named You Get Email from Scott Kubie, a personal newsletter.

Video

Here’s the video version of our conversation:

https://youtu.be/-bMpBDbIccs

Podcast Intro Transcript

When you're a writer on a design or a product team, you need all the inspiration you can get. Scott Kubie can help you. His book Writing for Designers sets out a simple, sensible path to get writing work done. He also has plenty of pragmatic advice to help word people collaborate effectively with their design and technical colleagues. But the most significant insight you may take away from this interview is Scott's relentless focus on his source of inspiration: his users and customers.

Interview Transcript

Larry:

Hi, everyone. Welcome to episode number 73 of The Content Strategy Insights Podcast. I'm really happy today to have with us, Scott Kubie. Scott is the author of Writing For Designers and well, that's how he's best known. He's known for a lot of things, but that's what I wanted to talk to him today about, is writing for designers. Tell the folks a little bit more about your background Scott.