Psst, content design is about to have a major moment

Hello and welcome to a new episode of content rookie. The last one for 2025 I know it's been a short year in regards to content rookie only four episodes but as you all know I have my second baby and it's been a lot y'all so yeah I just couldn't prioritize this. Hopefully next year there'll be a couple more episodes I have a bunch of people who I'm already scheduling things with so I'm very excited to make those things happen but today's episode I was very very eager to get this out to you before the new year because I actually think there's some great news. You know I am one of the people in content design who's been very outspoken about the changes content design has been going through over the years. The problems we've been facing but also of course the opportunities that they are as some of you know I've been teaching content design a lot in the past I speak at a lot of conferences and I like to keep a very factual like not like super positive not super negative just kind of try to get across the reality that I'm seeing and for the last two years I would say now if not longer I've also been very open about the fact that I do think that it's been pretty tough in the content design market to find jobs and to get jobs where we really feel like we can work to our best ability and I think it's been specifically difficult for junior and less experienced content designers to land their first opportunities and then also grow in the roles that they received because frankly speaking and I'm saying this also as a hiring manager the standard for what we're looking for when we're hiring a content designer when we're hiring a senior content designer when we're even hiring a staff content designer has definitely gone up there's a lot more expectations on these people and that's of course also the case if you are already employed and you're trying to get promoted the expectations are sky high and the expectations have really been muddied a little bit with other roles so while you know five six years ago being a great UX writer specifically was enough to have a great content design career and get you promoted now there's other skills that we're looking for hiring managers are looking for companies are looking for when they're hiring content designers and UX writers and I know that that can be a little bit anxiety inducing to hear for those of us that you know our belly hanging on and already feel like we're doing a lot that I really don't want you to look at this as the market asking more from you personally I think it's a lot about reframing the skills that all of you UX writers and content designers are really have so this episode today is really dedicated to the opportunities that I'm seeing for content designers UX writers really anyone that is into the field or interested in the field and has some kind of content and strategic or design background I think we're now reaching a time in now and I know again this is something some people get a little bit in their feelings about but in the age of AI that we're currently living in and you know don't get me wrong there's a lot of issues with that it's exhausting it's moving really quickly it's difficult to keep up the hot takes on LinkedIn are also knowing the shit out of me but it is a fact that a lot of companies are adjusting to it and changing their ways of working and specifically also the way they do you UX and design and product building because of the way AI is emerging and I've come to a point where really think that there's a lot of opportunity for us for content designers to make this our time the thing that really made me feel like okay I have to record this episode now even though it's been kind of in the back of my head for a long long time is is something called Google disco it just started being talked about a little bit more on the socials Google just released a couple of details about it and I think you should all Google that I'm intended but that is a pretty intense new development in regards to what AI tools can do but also how we can look at using AI essentially what Google disco does is it lets you create completely like your own interfaces based on what you're trying to do on the internet which in my humble opinion is what UX design technically has always been about but it somehow got lost like over years if you know trying to really define what is great UX design how do we stand out as products what is the craft like we maybe some of us lost a little bit the connection to what UX is supposed to be in the first place right it's supposed to help people navigate the internet do the things they want to do there in the fastest and easiest and most efficient way possible and AI of course is pushing that in those specifically Google disco I think is going in a really interesting direction with this and of course it's not launched to the public yet but I still think there's food for a thought and it got me really excited because we essentially need in this new era of really redefining what even is a user interface what even is user experience in these times the skills that we have as content designers are extremely valuable maybe not more valuable than the skills other designers and disciplines have but definitely their value is much much clearer and hope this music to your ears for all of those of us that have felt like hey we have to fight for our seat at the table we have to fight for headcount content design is one of the first things to go when companies downsides because it's very difficult for people to see the value in it a lot of people still look at it as just some form of copywriting no you know better than anyone else exactly what it takes to create content strategies and writing and communication that informs systems thinking that can inform how a UI is created and exactly that is the direction we're going into now I find that extremely fascinating and I'm very very excited about this so let me tell you a little bit more about what I've been up to the last couple of months when it comes to in air quotes content design so a lot of content design is now moving away from just the user interface I think we can be real yes a lot of the content designing eyes are not good enough to take over UX writing but some of them if you know how to prompt them if you know what knowledge sources to feed them if you know how to refine them can be very good at giving designers or engineers or whoever you're working with pretty decent initial copy for their flows that you just need to review so that whole chunk of like pure UX writing at least for me has really reduced the amount of that I have to do in my day to work however whatever of course start doing more of is exactly that refining prompt refining these systems that then can create UX copy really figuring out like what are some things that the system can know that can help me get the quality of the copy up get it out faster connecting it to things like localization really testing out what would this look like in German in another language but would still fit well let's start feeling weird really bringing in that cultural perspective then of course also experimenting with the variety of different tools that can do this I've even started building a couple of my own plugins I think that's also really interesting trying to see what are the fine nuances here and quality differences what even is quality what is that bar everyone in design the feels that like at least like to me the second favorite topic after a guy is craft hashtag raise the bar and you know I get where that's coming from the economy is rough and everyone wants to stand out a little bit and it's also way for us as people to try to stick out against all of these machines but I think it's actually gotten very very difficult to define what good craft is what good content design is because it's not just enough to say anymore hey we're nailing like the actual copy in the user interface here and all of our flows there's more to it right and then you know there's things that have been talked about been done for many years information architecture information hierarchy of course big deals things like naming conventions connecting different concepts even going into ontology and taxonomy all those things are important and of course we've been aware for a long time that those are from the mental part of content's design however if you bring it all together and you start really thinking about how does that then actually move out of the field of pure content design and this is what I mean with it's the boundaries of what content design is and what any kind of design disciplines are being muddied there's much more overlap I can go in to a design review I can jam with the designer and instead of trying to explain to them like hey I think maybe we can try a different component here or have you considered using a different design pattern for this I can now go in and I can for example use a prototyping tool and because I am very good as a content designer at explaining what I wanted to do at bringing in content strategy even with just a couple of prompts I can spit out prototypes that make it very easy for me to explain to others what I'm looking for how I think we could push the design and for me it's really leveled the playing field in discussions with not just designers but really any kind of stakeholders so I think there's part of that where we can really push out of content design and think about how all of these skills can help us just designing as a whole and then I will go even further and say you can even go beyond design you can think about building products and this is something that I've been lucky enough is I've advanced in my career and have been able to work much closer directly with PMs with product leads with VPs even up to the sea level to really be able to think about what are we actually building and why and really connect the dots between the design the function the finesse of how it's going to work for the actual end users and then also just purely the value prop which would normally or in a lot of places used to be owned very strictly by marketing maybe by sales teams but now all of that you can take into your day-to-day work as a content designer that I think is a real real opportunity and where we have the upside or the up hand or whatever you want to call that really is that we are so skilled in documenting and clear concise communication that makes us great at prompting if we walk or not that makes us great at systemizing prompting that makes us great at building frameworks that makes us great at the very core of what a lot of LLMs are about which is conversation design and conversation design I have realized a lot of people still think of it just as tone and voice but it goes way beyond that it goes be it goes into really clarifying what even is a decision we're asking this LLM to make what how do we let it create verdicts how does it escalate beyond just how does it talk to us what is the system we wanted to run on all of that is conversation design and again something that content designers are really really strong and by default because that's what we train and that's what we do in our day to day now we're just taking it out of the user interface out of the little Figma files into the wider scope of how businesses run and really really can impact everything we do I find it extremely fascinating and I really think as much as all of us are tired and as much as I think none of us want to start learning another new tool I think if we try to reframe it a little bit and move away from I don't want to learn all these new things I'm good at what I'm doing what I'm doing has value which 100% I agree with what us content designers have done for years has a lot of value and we'll always have a lot of value but I think we are at a place now where we can save time on the actual writing of for example UX copy and focus that time on really breaking out of this little field of content design and trying to take ownership and this is what I've been doing trying to take ownership over other things that maybe traditionally we wouldn't see as content design but I'm at least now realizing content designers are very skilled at that can really be like I mentioned venturing into other fields of the business and being the one that really connects the dots that is able to then use all of the information you gather from marketing from product from sales from customers from user interviews and combining it into great conversation design into better prompt systems into maybe creating your custom GPTs just recently I created one for a specific the incidents management was something I hadn't really done a lot in the past but I realized if I sat down or when I sat down and I really thought about how do we want to do incident comms do we want them to be proactive do we want them to be reactive what do we what do we want those verdicts to look like right like how long should this content be who should receive it when thinking through all of this which you know is traditional content strategy but then putting it into a framework that you can use to for example create a GPT or brief an LLM if you already have one anything from maybe you're a customer support agent to you know some kind of backend internal systems engineers maybe using when incidents come in we can do that really well and I'm working on those kind of those kind of use cases testing those out has at least taught me a lot about how the grander scheme of LLM work and the value that I can really add to that as someone coming from a content design background so that's kind of the gist of what I wanted to say because I still see so many people really worried about AI just taking our jobs the market of course is still rough but I really no longer feel like it's rough for content designers than really any other discipline and I've actually also seen a little bit of an uptake in roles that maybe aren't labeled content design or UX writer but that you could easily apply for because you have the skills anything from conversation designer to AI strategist anything there within those terms and terms that are related to that very likely you as a content designer you as a UX writer maybe even you as any kind of other writer that has a little bit of a more strategic focus it's very likely that you can thrive and that kind of role so I wanted to really say that to try to move away from this narrative that AI is going to just kill content design I really do not think that I've never thought that but now more than ever with the more recent developments where you know we're questioning what even is UX what even is a user interface this for us truly is an opportunity and I really hope that some of you feel as excited about this as I am and really I know it sounds scary when I first started doubling my feet and conversation design you know beyond what I've been doing for years with for example support bots I realized it sounds quite scary it feels like no I have to learn this whole new field and there's some hesitation that comes with that but then once I started doing it I realized honestly it's quite fun it's really fun because you can test this very easily you can test these things quickly you can refine them very quickly I personally get a lot of joy from that like I can refine it iterate before I ever have to show this to any kind of stakeholder which you know feels like very empowering at least for me on my end and then once I do show something to stake holders or something reaches the end customer I'm already quite like sure that this works and is in line for example in regards to tone and voice with the brand with what we want to say with the type of communication where we're finding it's not that difficult and it is quite fun and if you've ever done any kind of content strategy really you are going to be good at this I promise you you will and I think the device first is also true dabbling of feet a little bit into conversation design and to generally how to work with elements and to really going beyond the content design field will in return improve your skills in content strategy and make you a better content designer so I think it is a win-win really and while I don't want you all to spend 60 hours a week like learning all of this and doing all of this and you know I understand it's exhausting and you very likely have enough to do specifically with smaller teams not being the standard I try to look at it as anytime I can save on the microcopy stuff because maybe there is a GPT now or there is a plug-in or I can act more as a reviewer because the baseline is no longer a loremib sum I try to spend that time on you know really going deep into my content strategies skills thinking about how I can do that for conversation design thinking what other parts of the business specifically now was new tooling with AI pushing things actually need content design and y'all I go as far as saying all of them need it all of them need it and at least when I've been in positions in the past roles in the past on projects in the past where companies have giving me the opportunity to really break out of the traditional mode of content design as part of product and really go further into where else could we use content design where else do we need conversation design I've been very successful and these companies have really appreciated content design as a hiring manager this has for me managed getting more headcount getting more visibility being able to take on fun or projects being able to shape the roadmap more but even as in IC it's really had at least made me feel more motivated about my work and like I was having more impact on contributing more so I really think I hope I can motivate you going into the next year where I know a lot of us are still struggling with the current job market beat because we're trying to break in beat because there's been a lay of and we're looking for jobs beat because interviewing quite frankly is broken and exhausting but there is a light at the end of the tunnel and I think content design is having a little bit of what I like to call a rogue sounds a little bit of a renaissance but it's more than that because we're going a little bit rogue beyond what content design really is and what we can do and really flexing our skills there and it feels for me at least like finally the world is catching up not saying that no one valued content design before but it did feel for many many years like it was quite limited to whatever copy ended up in the product even with senior stakeholders that should have known better now I no longer feel like that in fact ever since coming back from my last maternity leave I haven't felt like this a single day I think that stakeholders senior stakeholders even users are really seeing the value of content design now because of the content strategy skills specifically that we have that we can apply to so many things in the wider product field now thanks to AI so yes well there's a lot of issues with it while it's exhausting why we definitely need to figure out the morals the ethics the sustainability all of those things it is leveling the playing field and as a content strategist content designer UX writer anyone that is really skilled in this or interested in this it's a great opportunity and I really hope that you feel excited now to maybe dig into this a little bit more I want to add one last point and that is I still get a lot of messages on LinkedIn every time I publish something like this asking me hey can you recommend a course I really want to learn more how do I get started with conversation design or how do I get started with building my own GPs listen now I know this is going to annoy some people but I really think this stuff is moving so quickly I would not recommend you sign up for a course I would not recommend you do bootcamp there's so much great free accessible content out there from people that are actively doing the work and figuring out as they go and really right now that's the only way to do it there is no best practice yet sorry it's my opinion other people might feel different I think there's so much free content I think there's so many ways you can just try it out you know sign up create an account even with just free credits you can get quite far and figure it out yourself and learn that for me again is one of the things that I find exciting about it like we are establishing this as we go so try to do that get your hands a little bit dirty trying to actually even if you're currently not working in content designer you're expecting you know you can keep a little bit of a side project I'm sure someone at your company will buy into that and try a conversation design out for example for a bot or something like that and learn it like that there's a lot of free content out there and if you're very eager to do a course or you maybe have extra budget to spend I know that Patrick Stafford is very much forward in the field trying to bring on experts and really keeping his courses and his webinars and trainings fresh so that would probably then be the direction I would look into if you're really looking to get actively trained and then certified in this however like I said I think there's a lot of stuff you can just do on your own go out there read around follow a couple of people that you think are doing cool stuff in the field that you think are keeping it real you know not the influencers not the ones that are trying to sell you something people that are putting out good content for free and you know some of that content might be outdated in a month some of it might just simply be incorrect because of the way that they you know we're working on things and it might not apply to your field but the beauty and it is that just by testing it out and by learning from a lot of different people that's how you're all for really gonna upskill what content strategy means for yourself and you're gonna learn a lot in the process even if you're not gonna feel like super confident in your for example conversation design fields at the end of a couple of weeks of doing this but yeah that's really what I wanted to leave all my loyal content rookie followers with at the end of 2025 I think another tough year for a lot of us it's definitely been a roller coaster in Sweden at least it the report just came out yesterday there has not been a single hour of sudden all of December which you know makes things extra fun so I hope you're somewhere with a little bit more sun and I hope to see you next year thank you so much for listening I'm Nicole bye bye