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Gladys Diandoki brings a strong research mindset and a consistent focus on strategy to her content work. Her approach yields both solid design results and an increased appreciation for content design among her colleagues and clients.
It’s not only her clients who benefit from her work. Gladys is also an active leader in the field, speaking regularly at conferences, writing, and hosting gatherings like the “Beyond The Cover” book club.
We talked about:
- her content design work with the French government and her teaching at the Gobelins design school and Sorbonne University
- her early career in broadcast and magazine journalism and how lessons learned then manifest in her content design work
- her transition from the media world to UX design
- how content strategy work is integrated into her content design work
- her approach for getting stakeholders to see the real problems they are facing
- the content design book she wrote for the French market
- her designer-first professional identity
- the importance of framing and reframing her work in ways that illustrate the true benefits of her contributions
- the crucial role of information architecture and content structure in her way of working
- the importance of research and testing in the way she approaches her work and how they contribute to her consistent focus on strategy
Gladys’s bio
Gladys Diandoki is a self-employed Content Designer who is based in Paris, France. She has worked with prominent companies such as Le Monde, the French government, Renault, Dailymotion, and Ornikar, among others.
She is the author of a book titled “UX Writing, quand le contenu transforme l’expérience” (published by French editor Eyrolles) and is also a lecturer on topics like Content Design, Inclusion, and Accessibility at Les Gobelins and La Sorbonne.
Prior to her work as a Content Designer, she worked in media relations for over ten years. During this time, she represented various well-known brands such as HP, Bose, Google, Box, Samsung, and Kickstarter.
Connect with Gladys online
Video
Here’s the video version of our conversation:
Podcast intro transcript
This is the Content Strategy Insights podcast, episode number 183. It’s an unfortunate truism that content designers spend an inordinate amount of their professional energy helping their colleagues and stakeholders understand the full range of benefits that they bring to product and design work. Few content professionals are as persuasive and authoritative in this work as Gladys Diandoki. Her constant focus on strategy and her ability to reframe design problems in pragmatic, user-focused ways lifts up the whole profession.
Interview transcript
Larry:
Hi, everyone. Welcome to episode number 183 of the Content Strategy Insights podcast. I’m really delighted today to welcome to the show, Gladys Diandoki. Gladys is an independent content designer based in Paris, working mostly with the French government now, but she’s done a lot of other stuff as well. Welcome to the show, Gladys. Tell the folks a little bit more about what you’re working on these days.
Gladys:
Hey, Larry. Well, thanks for having me in the podcast. So today, like you just mentioned, I’m working with the French government since a few months now, and that’s really fun, to be honest. And I’m also teaching in Gobelins, which is a famous design school and Sorbonne as well. I’m teaching inclusion content design and with someone else, I’m also having a new class about accessibility for designers.
Larry:
Nice. So you’re a real designer, but you come from, like many of us in this profession, from journalism, and I love how you talk about how that came to be because I think as we talked before we went on the air, it became, I think, clear to me that your core competency is curiosity. And you said something like, “If I could just find a job where I can be paid to learn, that would be great.” So tell me how that figures into your pathway into journalism and then maybe on into your UX writing and content design.
Gladys:
Yes, this is what I said more than once, and I’m happy we have found a job where we can learn every day and go in the direction where we want to go if we are interested about a specific field in the design field. But yes, I did communication school and journalism. I lived two years in Berkeley and that I used to Berkeley but… Because when I moved in the US I just wanted to improve my English and before going back home. But so I spent two years. And so my major was journalism and I was able to do a KQED training through its NPR in San Francisco for a few months that I loved. I was working on a show called Forum, which is the morning show at KQED. And I was preparing, handling the shows and doing everything you need to do like find the guest, interview the guest, define with the producer who are the right people for the next show for the next morning.
Gladys:
So that was really something loved to do. When I came back in France, in fact, so I continued working for a few magazines, but I was mostly doing major relations also because I didn’t want to be a freelancer at the time freelancing in journalism. And so I did my work in major relations working for tech companies, which was super interesting. I worked for, I don’t know, Bose, HP, Google, many, many big firms, but also startups. And what I love was to be able to work for all those different companies and do super interesting campaigns that you’ll never imagine will… I mean, I will never imagine I could do. So I did that. But maybe the connection with what I’m doing today because I really see a strong connection is be able to frame the story in a way that will be appealing to the people you will be talking to.
Gladys:
So for example, if I take Bose for example, I could say some stories if we’re having a new product with Monde or some publication, I will frame the story in a certain way, maybe more with business or trends, et cetera. When I was talking with a women magazine, most of the time it was more about the design and the way the product will be changing life. So I learned this muscle about framing a story according to who you are talking to. But another interesting thing I think I learned was to be able to test all the time. Before pitching a major media, I was testing my pitch to, I will not say minor, but a little bit less important media, sometimes some bloggers. But just to make sure that my pitch was strong enough. And so I really learned about putting my ego on the side because when someone hangs up on you and say, “That’s not interesting. That’s not what I’m working about.” You just learn to frame again, iterate and improve.
Gladys:
So a lot of thing that I learned by doing media relations and also journalism, asking right questions. But then came UX in the way just via a client. They were working in HR and that was, I mean, one of the specialists was working with UX people and I said, “Wow, that’s interesting and I see a lot of things that I’m already doing.” It was not about content design, it was really about UX design. But I said, “Let’s see.” And I paid myself a few trainings on UX design, UX research, prototyping, and I just loved it. And this is when I started my journey in UX, in fact, without knowing what UX writing, sorry, or content design was at the time. But this is what, I mean, the beginning of the journey that I started doing for myself to become a content designer without really knowing what content design was.
Larry:
Yeah. And the way you tell your story, that’s one of the most coherent stories of… And because it makes sense that, okay, it’s all driven by research and you were already doing UX-ey kinds of things that move from test and learn, trying things out on smaller publications before you go to the bigger one and the audience analysis stuff. And then to go from that, UX research and UX design and prototyping, often that feels like a big leap to people but in your case it seems like a very logical progression. Is that how it felt in the moment?
Gladys:
It felt like that for me, not for people seeing of my field that maybe don’t understand. But definitely for me, everything I’m doing is connected. But for example, I learn because when we do journalism we do research, but that’s not the same type of research that we are doing because we know what we are aiming for, what we are searching, and we will be framing questions in a way that will help us get our answer. I had to learn that no, I needed to take less place and learn neutrality and learn about bias and learn about what a question in research for a researcher is instead of asking a question as a journalist where you put bias in the question and because you have an aim and that’s completely different than what we do in UX.
Gladys:
So definitely, I mean, everything was connected, but I had to learn what research really is in the UX field, but also learn about putting my content in a specific context, which is now that I consider it’s less limited than just the screen because everything happens before and this is when a content strategy comes into play. But when you start understanding the ecosystem within which you are working and how you are going to apply specific elements or methods to do the job. So, yes, I had to learn how to prototype, I had to learn how to do design. But I was most learning about the techniques and methods than really the job about being a content person because a lot of things I was doing-
Larry:
Well, that’s so interesting because you’re doing all this stuff and it sounds like formulating a UX research question. Your experience as a producer at KQED, those are different but very analogous kinds of situations and this all and many other things you mentioned came up. One thing that occurred to me as you’re talking too, especially when you mentioned content strategy, you talked both in the producer role at KQED and the media relations stuff, you’re developing a lot of human-centric curiosity skills as well as diplomacy and what probably manifests, I’m going to guess, in your content strategy work as stakeholder understanding and alignment kinds of stuff. You also mentioned the ecosystem that you’re operating in. Those all sound very much like what we think of as content strategy. Do you see content strategy as… How does it fit in your practice?
Gladys:
You have people coming to do copy and microcopy. That’s definitely not the way I see my job. And we discussed about the analogy of the doctor I shared on LinkedIn, so maybe this is when I can use that because this is what I told my student a few weeks ago. I told them, “Stop using the word ‘wording’.” Which in fact it means nothing. Mostly it means you don’t really know what you’re looking at or what you’re searching or what the problem is. And I used the analogy of the doctor and I said, “When you go to see a doctor because you don’t feel well, I mean yes, maybe you’re going to say I’m sick, but it’s not going to be helpful for other people trying to find a remedy to your sickness or problem. And mostly if you’re not saying what you feel, we are going to have to ask you the question, okay, what’s the problem? How do you feel? Well, how are you in pain? Where is it? Where is it located? What do you feel when I’m touching here?”
Gladys:
And the point is to say you don’t have to know the technical words, but you need to be able to explain what the problem is, what we are trying to face together because this is when I’m going to be able to use the right tools to fix the problem. So if we take that back to, I don’t know, to a product team. If you’re telling me we are struggling, we received a lot of people to the support team for that specific issue and we have that much call, we would like to reduce that. I can come and I can say, “Oh, okay, maybe we can start working about the engagement. Maybe we will need to test that to understand that specific situation.” So the more we can be precise about at least, like I said, even if we don’t know the technical terms like it’s information architecture or its readability, even if you don’t know that, the more you are able to understand the problem we are facing together, the better it’s going to be just to start being strategic and start finding the right approach to tackle the issue.
Larry:
That’s it. The way you just said that reminds me of how our work goes so much… The language is the expression of it and how we convey it, but it goes so much deeper than it goes so deeply, so quickly. Like when you’re talking to that doctor, you don’t understand the medical part and they don’t understand your whole life, but you’re somehow coming up with a description of concepts in a way that helps them diagnose and treat your problem. And the same thing in your work, you’re feeling what their real pain is, what the right design solutions are to offer in the moment. Does that make sense?
Gladys:
Yeah, definitely. Because if you arrive and everything is already done and you can change everything but you don’t really understand what was the point. So the point is to arrive early and understand the issue and be able to say, “Okay, I think I understand the problem.” But I work for one of the French ministry and someone came to me and said, “Oh, we have an issue. We want to create a chatbot because we have an issue with the intranet.” And they said, “Okay, in fact, we have information all over the place. People spend a lot of time looking for information, we want to create a chatbot.” And I said, “Interesting, because what I’m hearing here is not a chatbot issue where you will have probably the same issue that you’re having today. The issue may be to start researching about information architecture the way… I mean, how the information is organized within your team. So who is in control of how the information is put in the system and how the research work? What are the people mechanism? I mean, what works, what doesn’t work? But in terms of information architecture.”
Gladys:
And this is the research we have done and we have seen so many issues, some of them easy to fix, which require organization reframing, let’s say, other ones more complex. But at least we knew what was the problem. And the problem was not about creating another tool or a chatbot because it’s cool, but really starting to structure the foundation. And if you’re not listening, if you don’t consider that taking the brief is the beginning of the research, in fact, you miss a huge part of the job. But this is also how you end up doing microcopy and not really understanding the problem and how content is a massive key to fix problems.
Larry:
Yeah, that’s the perfect analogy you just gave of they see a problem like, “Oh, chatbot. That’s the way to fix it.” And you’re the same thing like, “Well, we need to reframe…” And you’re reframing skills just keep coming up over and over again. And it’s also like the doctor. I have a number of friends who are doctors and they’re just sick and tired of people who do their internet research, come in and tell the doctor what they have so they can get the medication they think they need. And the doctor, like you, is good at reframing that going, “Well, let’s dig a little deeper and see what we got going on here and treat the real underlying problem.” I love the way you do this, but one of the things that I love even more is that you’re so generous with this.
Larry:
I think at the start I almost said, “Well, she needs no introduction.” Because you teach all the time, you wrote a book, you run a book club about stuff, you’re really well known in the field, but that’s because you seem compelled to connect with people and to share the stuff you’ve learned. Can you talk a little bit about that?
Gladys:
Yes, but I work in the French market and we don’t have 10 years of practice. So yes, but maybe I can go back to the moment when I wrote the book because I was doing the research for myself because I like to understand and I don’t want to stay at the surface, I like to know the why and how we do things. And so when I did my training and I started doing projects, but I still had the feeling that I was missing things. I was doing the research about content design, I was reading all the books that were available and it was not that many. So I see that the industry has changed a lot. I mean, I can be the one who knows a lot of things. If I’m the only one, what’s the point? I mean, that’s definitely my position.
Gladys:
So writing that book was also a way to start explaining my industry to French people mostly because it’s in French people and people speaking French just to say, okay, this is what people having done this job for a while in the industry do the work right and this is what we can learn. So I consider that we need to have an echo and spread the words and to make a change and stop being the people doing voice and tone, which is annoying. No, it’s not voice and tone, which is annoying, but be focused… I mean, when people consider that is the job, that’s not the job. And when people, because they don’t envision what you do, keep thinking that, “Oh, yes.” But I don’t think I have enough work for you to do by yourself. Maybe you are also going to do localization, which is I haven’t done that.
Gladys:
So doing a book club or doing a talk because I’m often invited in podcast or to do talk even in Quebec at the end of last year, it was super interesting is also the point of start really open our mind even as content designer. So we are able to do things, we can manage teams and design team. It doesn’t have to be content, and we see more and more people doing that. So open your perspective. And also thank you because you said something that is super crucial to me. I mean, I don’t feel bad when I’m called content or UX writer or writer, but you saying you are a designer and this is where I want all the people doing content design, UX writing or anything or even the people we work with. I want them to see us as designer. We are doing the work, we are reading books about design, we are discussing, we have a lot of skills that we can put on the table that are design skills. And the more we’ll be seen as that, oh yes, the better it’s going to be for us.
Gladys:
There is nothing bad with being content people, and I’m super proud of that and we can change and we see that we can change the world and we can change perspective and make people feel good in product, et cetera, which is great. But we are designer like any other designer, and we learn a lot and we bring a lot to the table.
Larry:
Yeah, as you’re saying that I’m reminded of… I can’t remember if we talked about it before we went on the air or not, but we were talking about the brief. When you get a brief from somebody who’s unfamiliar with your whole skillset, they’re often just talking about either… I think the first example is just, “Oh, just put the words in here.” But you just mentioned at a different level in this whole stack of things, it’s like, “Oh, you’re mostly concerned with voice and tone, but it goes so much deeper than that.” Anyhow, it’s like that. The fact that those surface level things are not the whole job. Tell me, I know you must have success stories about helping people understand the full depth of your design skills that you bring. Can you talk about maybe an incident like an episode where somebody thought, “Oh great, she’s just going to fix our voice and tone.” And you did a lot more.
Gladys:
Yes, but maybe I know with time we start reframing the way we explain our work or even the way we think, and I know you were part of the people I was having discussion with about know the try for really technical things about the content field that for a while I was not ready. I mean, I was at the time where I needed to fix and be strong about certain things. So today say my job is to create informational system. When I went to Montreal a few months ago, I used the analogy of the Metro because we have a Metro in Paris, but they have a Metro in Montreal. And it was interesting to see that we are going to use… So we have different level, you have what you see. But I showed the sign and I said, “If I want to help someone go from that place to another place, I need to start framing the information in a certain way.”
Gladys:
So you have the surface and what you see, but then if you start thinking about the system, you see that, okay, so now we need to think the sign as a system to make sure people are not getting lost in the in the Metro or in Paris, in Montreal or anything else. But you also need to understand that there is other layers because when I’m taking a brief, you are going to tell me what the problem is maybe for our business, then I’m going to do research and I’m going to understand what the problem is, but also how people fix the problem or what they do. But just by listening to them and I will be able to model the information and start finding either patterns or things or things that can be interesting for us to fix the issue we’re fixing. So it’s a really deeper level, but which is super key to fix what we came to fix.
Gladys:
And in the middle, in my perspective, we have information architecture because how do we make that model possible and reachable to the people looking at the surface? We need to architecture things. And what I love is, for example, I explained to my student lately, I said, “If we look at Instagram, because I did not work on Instagram, but we know that for a while, even Facebook, we had information structure in a chronological way.” And I mean, I was upset when they change it and when they change it was because they used AI. So because the technology evolved too, but also because when AI is learning about your behavior, we can then say, “Okay, they’re looking a lot of that. I’m going to give them a lot of that. They’re doing a lot of that.”
Gladys:
You know it’s not just, how do I frame the screen? Or how do I display the information? But also with the aim. If I want people to spend more time on the product, maybe it’s less interesting to show them the content in a certain order because it’s not very impactful for our business, but okay. But if we are framing this way, they may going to spend more time. This is also why now we are having more of what maybe we have looked for, but also more videos because you are captivated by image that are moving more than by picture, that are statics. I mean, they did that for aim, but it’s information architecture and AI, but it’s information architecture that helped frame that. I mean, there are a lot of things we can say about information architecture and how strategic that could be. But when we understand that the structure is the key, then you can start digging in deeper and deeper and being stronger with that just to understand what you are doing and not just doing something because you are comfortable with what you know today.
Larry:
Yeah, I just jotted down structure is the key. I love that as a content modeling nerd and information architect in many ways. But as you were talking about that, it’s like that’s such a powerful way to connect everything together. Again, it keeps coming back to connections with you. But it seems like that information architecture layer and it gives you a toolkit. And as you were talking about the social media feed at a place like any LinkedIn or Twitter or Instagram or any of those that once you have it structured, you can serve any number of business intents and you can do it in a way that promotes engagement. As you were talking there, the whole field of modern design just came flying out for me. Once you’ve articulated the need for that structured information architecture layer, do you find you’re able to do more in different things with the design teams you’re working with?
Gladys:
Oh, definitely. I love strategy, and my point is not just to come and fix your copy, my point is to come and fix your path and your UX. So the more we start understanding what is behind and the tools we have at our disposition, the better we start. I feel stronger, I feel more comfortable, I have real solutions. And also when someone say, “Oh, like it. I don’t like it, blah, blah, blah.” I come with the background and I know exactly what I’m aiming for. So I can come with, “My recommendation will be to use that.” Or, “We are going to test that.” And then we can test but I can also explain why this is a good point or one proposition that could reach and I can explain what goal I’m trying to reach, what methodology I’m using.
Gladys:
Also, because most of the people… Let’s be honest, a lot of people say, “I’m doing information architecture.” But information architecture is not only about creating a path and putting buttons here and there and information, it’s about also knowing why research is key and why I can use all the data from my research in my design. It’s also about understanding the bottom-up and the top-down strategies. I mean, the more I started digging and reading and learning and doing trainings too, the more I said, “Yes, this is what we need more of when we are content designer or content strategist.” Because it’s not about an advice, it’s about methodologies that exist and that we can, I mean, use just to explain. And we know how people are when you come and say, “Oh, I think that this is best, that could be best.” Or, “There is this method that was used here and there and that we can apply for that and that reason because this is the aim.” I mean, you are a little bit stronger in your position because we know that it’s for a lot of women.
Gladys:
I know the industry is not only, I mean, not only women, but also non-binary people and a lot of people. But the stronger we get with knowledge, the better. I mean, the easiest my life is when I’m talking to people because I know what I’m talking about.
Larry:
Yeah, well, not only that, you know what you’re talking about. And I think a lot of us as practitioners get by with just heuristics about here’s the best way to do it. But everything you do is research-based and you’re coming to these meetings with the evidence and the research. I just love that. But hey, Gladys, I can’t believe it. We’re coming up close to time. But before-
Gladys:
Already?
Larry:
I know. It always goes way too fast. I’m sorry. I can’t control time. But before we wrap up, is there anything last? Anything that you want to make sure we get to before we close?
Gladys:
Yeah, maybe one thing because of what you just said, research-based and testing. Like I said, the more we know about things, the easiest it gets. And the more you know things, you also know that there is not only one way to the things, but several. And that needs to be tested and researched. And I really, really, really want for all of us content people but also any designer to be stronger about research because this is what makes a huge difference in addition to knowing the techniques, but this is what makes a huge difference, this is what makes us more strategic and this is how also we… Because when you take a brief and you understand the issue and you start having the data, but you can also measure by testing, not by just having an advice on things. Yes, with every layer we discussed but being able to research content but also all the other aspects and being able to test is going to make us… And you will not do without us nowhere.
Larry:
No, if that’s the message that people take home from this conversation, just do your homework, do more research, I’ll be super happy. Hey, one very last thing, Gladys, what’s the best way for people to connect with you if they want to follow you online or connect?
Gladys:
I’m on LinkedIn. We have the Beyond The Cover book club. If you’re interested, so you can also meet. If you see an author who speak English most of the time, you can join. And LinkedIn and Instagram if they want to.
Larry:
Okay, great. I’ll put all that in the show notes as well. Thank you so much, Gladys. I really enjoyed the conversation.
Gladys:
Thank you, Larry. It was a pleasure.
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