Beth Dunn is the author of Cultivating Content Design, a book that shows content leaders how to create the kind of successful content design program she has built at HubSpot. The secret to Beth’s approach is communication. First, she listens intently to her colleagues and stakeholders. Then she invites them to workshops and other activities […]
Patrick Bosek: Structured Authoring for Future-Proof Content – Episode 98
Patrick Bosek helps businesses author and manage content that is structured so that it can be used for many purposes, not just one-off publications. Structuring documentation this way creates intelligent content that both addresses current customer needs and anticipates future demands. The DITA standard underlies this approach to creating and managing the smart, adaptable content […]
Patricia Gomez and Mario Ferrer: Content Design “Glue” – Episode 97
Patricia Gomez and Mario Ferrer lead the content design team at King Games, the makers of Candy Crush and other popular mobile games. They operate at a scale that might intimidate some people, designing experiences for nearly a quarter of a billion users. Serving that many customers forces them to be thoughtful about the tools […]
Cheryl Platz: Design Beyond Devices – Episode 96
Modern digital experiences meet humans where they are. Talking to a voice assistant. Typing on a keyboard. Reacting to a vibration delivered by your smart watch. Operating a VR game character with a gesture controller. Wherever you want to be, there is now a device and an interaction modality to take you there. Cheryl Platz […]
Marcelo Lewin: Content Modeling for Headless CMS – Episode 95
Marcelo Lewin focuses on content modeling, a long-standing practice that is growing in importance as the need for intelligent content emerges. Content modeling helps you manage your content separately from its presentation in any one medium. This skill is crucial in the new world of omnichannel content delivery, where your content is as likely to […]
Patrick Stafford: UX Writing and Content Design Education – Episode 94
Patrick Stafford has a unique view of the state of content work in the fields of UX design and product management. As the CEO of the UX Writers Collective, his livelihood depends on understanding where the profession is going, which skills are in demand, and how writers and designers can best prepare themselves for UX […]
Rachel McConnell: Content Operations Leadership – Episode 93
In Rachel McConnell’s world, if content strategy is the engine, then content operations is the oil that keeps it running smoothly. Rachel leads one of the biggest content operations in the world, a team of 100 content designers and editors at BT, a large communications services company in the UK. Her team is a mix […]
Nicole Buckenwolf: Making Sense of Complex Product Graphs with Taxonomies and Ontologies – Episode 92
Nicole Buckenwolf organizes the product information that you see at businesses like Amazon and Etsy. Big retailers use product graphs, ontologies, and taxonomies to classify and categorize the millions of products they carry. Building these massive catalogs involves a variety of users and collaborators. Both the vendors who provide the products and the shoppers who buy […]
Scott Berkun: How Design Makes the World – Episode 91
Scott Berkun can help you understand design. His new book, How Design Makes the World, helps both practitioners of the discipline and consumers of the products that they create understand how design shapes our world. We talked about: his journey from computer programming to UX design his early switch at Microsoft from UX research to […]
Sabine Ocker: Taxonomies, Ontologies, and Content Metadata – Episode 90
Sabine Ocker helps enterprises organize their content. She uses taxonomies and other content metadata to make sure that customers get the information they need, when they need it. Sabine’s superpower is her ability to talk about her work in a way that resonates with business decision makers. This ensures that she always has the budget […]
Noah Iliinsky: Data Visualization and Information Design – Episode 89
When you’re drowning in data, it’s good to have an information designer like Noah Iliinsky looking out for you. Noah takes a human-centered approach to a data visualization, connecting people with information tucked away in massive datasets. His purpose-driven process is designed to help users quickly extract the insights they need from a flood of […]
Tom Johnson: Documenting APIs – Episode 88
Documenting APIs is one of the newer jobs in the technical writing domain. Tom Johnson enjoys the unique challenges of collaborating with and writing for the developers who create and use these Application Programming Interfaces. He also enjoys reflecting on his work and sharing his insights with his fellow technical communicators. We talked about: his […]
Chris Savage: Video Content Marketing and Analytics – Episode 87
Chris Savage founded Wistia to help businesses understand how well their video content was performing. Early on they stumbled across content marketing, using their own how-to videos to grow their own business. When COVID-19 hit and customers started interacting with companies virtually, Wistia really took off. We talked about: how he founded and has grown […]
Rahel Anne Bailie: The Content Empress – Episode 86
Rahel Anne Bailie has earned the title Content Empress. One of the original cohort of content strategists, over the past couple of decades she has become a leading expert on content operations. While she focuses on content, she might better be described as a business analyst and consultant who helps companies with their digital transformation. […]
Noz Urbina: Adaptive Content for Personalization – Episode 85
Noz Urbina can help you navigate the hype around personalization and create genuinely helpful customized content experiences. Noz focuses on the fundamentals that create useful, usable adaptive content. He starts with customer journey mapping and persona creation to develop an evidence-based picture of his users. Then he builds modularized content models that address those user […]
Autogram: Content and Design Systems for Enterprises – Episode 84
Orchestrating the strategy, design, and software work that comes with enterprise-scale digital projects is a complex and painstaking mission. It’s hard to imagine a team better equipped to take on these challenges than the founders of Autogram. Karen McGrane, Ethan Marcotte, and Jeff Eaton have each mastered huge swaths of digital business practice. Karen built […]
Carmen Martinez and Paulo Azevedo: Conversation Design Teamwork at Flixbus – Episode 83
Carmen Martinez and Paulo Azevedo combine her linguistics and ethnography skills with his computing and product skills to create computer interactions that feel almost human. Carmen and Paulo collaborate to design conversation experiences for FlixBus, a company that helps millions of travelers around the world book bus travel. It’s hard to create natural-feeling conversations between […]
Sara Wachter-Boettcher: Design and Content Leadership – Episode 82
Sara Wachter-Boettcher helps design and content professionals discover and express their leadership ability. Leaders can come from anywhere. You don’t have to be in a management role. With some personal work and a little courage, you can lead from wherever you are in the digital design and content world. Sara and I talked about: the […]
Scott Abel: The Content Wrangler – Episode 81
Scott Abel is a content strategy original. He first took the title of “content strategist” in 1999. Since then, Scott has practiced content strategy and become a leading voice for the discipline. When he’s not running his consultancy, Scott organizes content events, publishes and writes books and articles, and keynotes and speaks at industry conferences. […]
David Dylan Thomas: Design for Cognitive Bias – Episode 80
David Dylan Thomas can help you tame the unconscious biases that can undermine your design decision-making. These biases are strong. You may never conquer them all. But recognizing them and accounting for them in your content strategy and design work can mitigate the hazards they present. You need to be on your toes at every […]