2024 UX Speaker Series
The recording of this talk is only available to students enrolled in HCDE 521 via the course canvas page.
Content design partnership: The key to UX impact
Gone are the days when UX designers would create wireframes and leave “lorem ipsum” placeholder text for the content writer to fill in. (Or worse, the product manager or product designer filled in the blanks.) Those were recipes for inefficiency, rework, and mediocre UX impact.
Now, content designers are involved in UX projects from kickoff and are the not-so-secret sauce to designing user experiences that are clear and engaging and that drive impressive business results, from improved revenue to reduced customer service costs. Content designers are also involved in user research, driving content testing that helps identify the very best words to use in your UX to effectively engage your audience, spur action, and create impressive business results.
So wait—what’s going on here? Sure sounds like a blurring of UX roles.
Content designers are often the glue that hold UX teams together. But with the evolution of the content designer role, UX roles and responsibilities have become blurred. How exactly are content designers, product designers, and UX researchers supposed to work best together?
Erica will share examples of her work at global companies including Expedia, Amazon, and Microsoft and scrappy startups including Rover. She’ll present a UX process framework for harmonious UX team collaboration—as well as measurable impact for both your customers and your business.
Erica Jorgensen is a content design lead at Chewy.com and the author of Strategic Content Design: Tools and Research Techniques for Better UX, published in April 2023 by Rosenfeld Media. She's a content designer, content strategist, and team leader determined to bring greater respect to the content field. To that end, Erica speaks frequently at conferences including UXDX USA, UX Lisbon, Microsoft Design Week, the Web Directions Sydney, and Button: The Content Design Conference, and on podcasts like The Content Strategy Podcast, Mind the Product, and UI Breakfast. In addition to working in content roles for companies of all sizes, she has taught at the University of Washington and Seattle’s School of Visual Concepts. Erica earned her undergraduate degree from the University of Connecticut and graduate degree from the University of Missouri’s School of Journalism. In her free time, you can find her exploring Washington State’s wineries or hiking with her husband.
The UX Speaker Series is hosted Thursdays in Winter Quarter by the Department of Human Centered Design & Engineering at the University of Washington. Presentations are open to the public.
Depending on the speaker's preference, a recording will be posted to this webpage after the event. View the full schedule at hcde.uw.edu/ux.