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I know, I know. A lot of AI. But I swear, the conversation in this one is really worth listening to.

For so many organizations, the use of AI is dictated by the CEO, or head of product, etc. Rarely do content designers take the effort or initiative to actually develop an idea of how AI should be integrated.

That's why this interview with Kyra Lee from UserTesting was so fascinating to me. Kyra and her colleagues have taken the initiative to create a "playbook" about how AI should be approached in their design philosophy.

We talk about that, plus...

• Why Kyra's interest moved from working in law to UX
• How UX writers and content designers can take part in quality research
• What Kyra has learned about testing content with users
• Why not ALL of your content actually needs to be in the user interface
• An approach to AI for user research that maintains a human touch...

As always, let me know your thoughts: [email protected].

(Also, yes...audio is a bit off today. Again. Please be patient as I fix some ongoing issues!)

Connect with Kyra:

• Kyra Lee on LinkedIn

• Rolling with Kyra

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Getting into content design is hard enough, but contracting roles are a different struggle altogether. While they can be lucrative (potentially depending where you live) they're also difficult to crack.

But they're also a necessary struggle to understand - often the way to start a content design career is to begin with some contracting roles.

Today's guest is a content design contracting queen. Alliteration!

Slater Katz has worked as content designer for Netflix, Chime, Verizon, Fitbit, and more. Not only can I vouch for her content design skills (she's worked with us at UXCC for a bit) but she's unique in that she understands how business goals and design goals intersect - a rare skill.

And she understands personal branding better than anyone in the biz, in my opinion.

In this interview we discuss content design contracting, how to improve your personal brand, what makes a great contractor stand out, and why asking questions when you start isn't a sign of weakness - it's a strength.

Connect with Slater:

• Slater Katz on LinkedIn

• The UX Gal

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Ah, English degrees. So often the target of snide comments and "there but for..." looks. I don't think there's another academic pursuit that's used as a metaphor for uselessness quite as much. Maybe basket weaving.

And yet, as content designers know, English majors can become one of technology's secret weapons.

Speaking of secret weapons...

Today's guest might be one of the most impressive people in content design.

Sammie Spector is the content design lead at Condé Nast, where she looks after brands including Vogue, The New Yorker, Condé Nast Traveler, GQ, Glamour, Architectural Digest, Vanity Fair, Pitchfork, Wired, and Bon Appétit. And she's one of the most impressive people I know. She has an incredible work ethic. Not only does she hold down a demanding job, she grades students and teaches workshops for UX Content Collective, and oh...she was an English major too.

Which is exactly what we talk about today. How English majors can stop feeling helpless, and start thinking about their careers. But we don't stop there. We cover:

• Why content design has a pipeline problem, and how to fix it
• What it's like working at a publishing company versus a traditional "tech" company
• Why English majors should start thinking early about how to adapt their skills to tech
• What content design can learn from software engineering to fix our graduate shortage

Sammie's wisdom should be heard by everyone in the industry. Send this to your friendly neighbourhood English grad, and give them a smile: it's gonna be okay.

Connect with Sammie:

• Sammie Spector on LinkedIn

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There's an interesting path opening up in content design: working on the actual language models underpinning this explosion of new features we're seeing.

This is a new and fairly anxiety-inducing area. But as content designers, it's important that we engage and help build any type of new technology that involves content - or it's going to outpace us.

This is why I spoke with Ben Barone-Nugent from Google for today's podcast. He's on the Gemini team, and we spoke about his work in moving from traditional "content design" into the content (and conversation) design for an chat-based LLM experience.

This is an important chat for many reasons, but here's a big one: it's important that we see a future for how content designers can be involved in this type of work. We talk about that, and:

• How content designers can work on language models
• The path from content design to conversation design to AI
• What LLMs are good at, bad at, and what we don't know yet
• The future of content design as creating content at scale
• Much, much more!

A quick note: apologies for my audio quality this month. I accidentally used my laptop microphone instead of my big fancy one. Don't hate me!

Ben on LinkedIn:

• Ben Barone-Nugent on LinkedIn

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Ron Yakar made a bit of noise last month when he wrote a post on LinkedIn discussing how he created an AI tool to help scale UX writing at Monday.com.

There was lots of debate.

"This is cool."

"This is scary."

"Why don't you hire more content designers?"

And everything in between. So, I wanted to get Ron on the podcast to discuss it. Not only because it's an interesting piece of craft, but also because it's a vision of where things are heading. So far we've been so focused on using LLMs through prompts, but Ron's tool is an example of what happens when content designers and UX writers think about meshing AI and content operations together.

We talk about Ron's background, his approach to AI, the tool itself, his process in using AI and determining when and where to use human intervention, and more.

I know I always say it. But you can't miss this one.

Connect with Ron:

• Ron Yakar on LinkedIn

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Many content designers want to be leaders. But how can they get there? Do they make great design leaders in general...and what will they struggle with when they get there?

In today's episode I speak with Aladrian Goods, design manager at Intuit. We talk about her road to content design, her struggles and successes in leadership, and why content designers make great leaders - in general, not just for our discipline.

If you want to be a leader, are a leader already, or work with leaders - then this episode is for you.

Anna and Arnaud:

• Aladrian Goods on LinkedIn

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Last year the UX Content Collective published an extensive piece about content designers in China, written by Anna Potapova and Arnaud Frattini. The piece surveyed several people working in China, and revealed an amazing amount of insight into a place many people don't know anything about.

Today, Anna (Aliexpress) and Arnaud (Alibaba Group) join me on the podcast to talk about their survey, what it's like to work in China, and what we all can learn from the type of fast-paced business practices we see there.

Given how important China has become to the world economy...perhaps there are a few things we can learn.

Anna and Arnaud:

• Anna Potapova on LinkedIn

• Arnaud Frattini on LinkedIn

Listeners get 20% off courses and workshops at UX Content Collective! Just use PODCAST20 at checkout.

The Writers of Silicon Valley podcast is back! Listen to the first new episode with Chelsea Larsson, Senior Design Director at Expedia. We discuss the future of content design, UX writing, how AI is impacting everything, and why content designers shouldn't hang on to old definitions.

And maybe…why content designers should learn Python?

I'm really excited to bring the podcast back, and really excited for you to listen.

Things we discuss during this episode:

• Generative artificial intelligence

• Information Architecture for the Web

• Open AI, ChatGPT, Gemini

• Python

Chelsea and her stuff:

• Chelsea on LinkedIn

• Smallish Book (newsletter)

Listeners get 20% off courses and workshops at UX Content Collective! Just use PODCAST20 at checkout.

The Interface is a monthly, can't-miss group chat for everything happening in content design and UX writing. The Interface has industry updates, deep conversations, and other helpful resources.

The end.