Same ways of thinking, different outcomes
There’s lots to read on UX design and content design, and they often seem to be categorised and separated in this way. But is this separation needed?
(It’s worth noting I’ll be writing in general terms, and based on my own experience. How I define the practices may not be exactly the same for everyone else.)
Differences
There are clear differences and distinctions between the practices. UX design, or product design, is more concerned with designing the journey the user will go on to complete a task. Whether that’s through current systems or inventing new features to allow users to do their task.
Content design generally concentrates on the information we provide users on that journey, to help them complete their task. This could be simple microcopy, like error messages or field labels, to longer help guides.
Similarities
While the differences are clear, I think what’s more interesting are the similarities. Both sets of designers use the same, or similar, ways of thinking. It could be ‘design thinking’ as an overarching principle, user research, journey mapping or other workshops. But both disciplines glean different insights from the same things.
A UX designer may work out a crucial aspect that blocks users from completing their task. Content designers may perfect that one sentence that was stopping users from understanding.
Yet both also deal with the overall architecture. Whether that’s information architecture, or the journey structure, or even the mental models. We can use both the visuals / interactions and the content to map these things out.
Of course, there is crossover. When working in a multidisciplinary team, you’re bound to pick up ideas from each other, but also notice things the others might not. A content designer can help with UI and UX design decisions, and other designers can help with content. It’s this cross-pollination of skills and ideas that eventually leads to the best outcome for the user.
A lot of my own processes are built from working with UX and UI designers and UX researchers. Things like journey mapping, empathy mapping, how user interviews are run and even show and tell reviews.
Expertise
Reading this, you might think “Great! Let’s hire one person to do both jobs.” But I’d caution against this. My descriptions of these roles might be overly simplified. But hiring these roles separately as part of a wider multidisciplinary team gives you expertise. Hiring a content designer, rather than just a UX designer who’s expected to “do the words” as well, brings with it someone who can focus on this crucial part of the product or service. Someone who can devote time and thought to it. They’re also someone who has built experience and expertise, working on different projects for different companies. This is invaluable for informing your own content.
And the same can be said for UX designers. With a content designer on the team, it frees the UX designer up to focus on their specialities and expertise.
Originally I was planning to end this by saying content designers and UX designers think in much the same way, but our outcomes are different. But I don’t think that’s strictly true.
We definitely think in similar ways, using similar mental models and processes. Those could be physical processes to work our ideas out, such as empathy mapping, or the same mental processes to develop understanding — that holistic overview of the user experience.
But the outcome is a collective, so the differences are almost irrelevant. It’s this melting pot of what we do similarly and the different expertise we bring, alongside our user research, that builds something that best serves the user.
