How being an impatient person led me to content design
My journey from copywriting to content design began with a frustrating experience activating a festival ticket. Recognizing the flaws in the user experience, I transitioned to content design at Pipedrive, initially doubting the role’s creativity and challenge. Over time, I learned that content design demands creativity in brevity and close collaboration with designers to create user-friendly experiences. Despite being overlooked, content design plays a crucial role in enhancing user experience, a lesson I learned through my own impatience and subsequent career shift.
Patience has never been my strong suit. I wish I could set people’s speaking speed to X1.5. I never read the fine print. I can’t watch movies through. I don’t take pride in being that way, but one day, I discovered that my impatience, paired with my mistrust, can be channeled into good.
Frustration at its peak: the ticket activation fiasco
That day, I wanted to activate a festival ticket I had purchased the previous year. When I entered my email and phone number, I received an error message that read the system doesn’t recognize me. Me being me, I entered the same information yet again, resulting in the same outcome. I reinstalled the app, and when that didn’t resolve my problem, I finally gave in and contacted customer support. By then, I was confident that the app had stolen my precious ticket and left me stranded, so I resorted to a negative review on Trustpilot. Then, I received an answer from a support rep informing me I had entered a different phone number when I purchased the tickets. It’s then that I remembered I use two different SIM cards, one for overseas and the other for Germany, where I reside. I had purchased the festival ticket while on holiday.
Recognizing the flaws: a lesson in communication
On one hand, I was embarrassed by my tantrum. On the other hand, I also recognized room for improvement on the app’s side. The error message could’ve said something like “This user name is linked to a different phone number” or allowed me to log in to the system using a different set of credentials. If only I had been shown a different message, it would’ve saved me the frustration of the app, the negative review, and the company could’ve saved valuable support resources.
An unexpected opportunity: transition to content design
Fast-forward six months. The company I work at, Pipedrive, was looking to fill a content designer position. I was the copywriter lead at Pipedrive at the time, mentoring two copywriters and responsible for marketing copy across multiple channels. I knew nothing about content design but was offered the chance to move from the marketing department to product, which intrigued me. This was an opportunity to step my skills up a notch and, more importantly, possibly save an impatient person just like me from throwing a tantrum.
On the other hand, and as I mentioned, I knew nothing about content design. I only knew it meant I’d be responsible for fewer words than marketing copy. I wondered whether my managers didn’t trust me enough to write long sentences. I assumed the new role would be neither challenging nor creative. Lastly, I didn’t understand what content and design have to do with one another.
A year in review: 4 lessons I learned as a content designer
It’s been a year and a few months since I took on that role. I was wrong on almost every level.
- Content design is a creative role. Yes, content design often means writing less copy. That’s exactly where it gets creative, though. A content designer must capture their users’ attention with as few words as possible to save them reading time and hassle and walk them through the product. To do that, they should distill their message until it’s fluff-free, often removing articles and other unnecessary parts along the way. Then, they put the message back together and restructure it so that its core stands out.
- Content design isn’t easy. It can be very challenging, though it entails different types of challenges than that of marketing copy. I like to look at it as riddles that require me to synthesize a paragraph or even a few paragraphs into one sentence that can be understood by everyone and anyone, regardless of their product knowledge.
- Content and design are intertwined. Not in the sense that every designer needs to be a writer and every writer a designer. Instead, I’d argue that content designers should have common sense, understand the principles of design psychology and interview as many users as possible to see the product the way a user would. As a content designer, I write copy but also review designs our product designers are working on and vice-versa. I offer my input, such as removing a visual component, adding another or choosing a different type of modal altogether. At the same time, they let me know whether my messaging is clear enough, if it needs trimming or elaborating and inform me of user feedback. We supplement each other and collaborate closely to come up with a cohesive, better result.
- You don’t need to be fluent in “product speak” to become a content designer. My background is in marketing, where I spent many years mastering the language of promotion and could describe products at a surface level. Transitioning from marketing to product design has been a significant learning curve, requiring me to shift my language and gain a deeper understanding of our products. However, this lack of prior knowledge can also be beneficial, as it allows me to approach product areas from a fresh perspective, advocating for users who are new to the product just like I once was.
The often-overlooked role: the importance of content design
Content designers are often overlooked. I would overlook them myself. I didn’t know how much user experience counts, and I sometimes forget about it still. When I do, it means the product and content designers did well. When you run into a wall, you understand just how much designing a seamless experience matters.
