Writers of Silicon Valley

Listen on: Apple Podcasts Spotify Do you enjoy the podcast?   Please leave a review !  Getting into content design is hard enough, but contracting roles are a different struggle altogether. While they can be lucrative (potentially depending where you live) they're also difficult to crack.  But they're also a necessary struggle to understand - often the way to start a content design career is to be...

Listen on: Apple Podcasts Spotify Do you enjoy the podcast?   Please leave a review !  Ah, English degrees. So often the target of snide comments and "there but for..." looks. I don't think there's another academic pursuit that's used as a metaphor for uselessness quite as much. Maybe basket weaving.  And yet, as content designers know, English majors can become one of technology's secret weapons....

Listen on: Apple Podcasts Spotify Do you enjoy the podcast?   Please leave a review !  There's an interesting path opening up in content design: working on the actual language models underpinning this explosion of new features we're seeing.  This is a new and fairly anxiety-inducing area. But as content designers, it's important that we engage and help build any type of new technology that involve...

Listen on: Apple Podcasts Spotify Do you enjoy the podcast? Please leave a review !  Ron Yakar made a bit of noise last month when he wrote a post on LinkedIn discussing how he created an AI tool to help scale UX writing at Monday.com.  There was lots of debate.  "This is cool." "This is scary." "Why don't you hire more content designers?" And everything in between. So, I wanted to get Ron on the...

Listen on: Apple Podcasts Spotify Do you enjoy the podcast? Please leave a review !  Many content designers want to be leaders. But how can they get there? Do they make great design leaders in general...and what will they struggle with when they get there?  In today's episode I speak with Aladrian Goods, design manager at Intuit. We talk about her road to content design, her struggles and successe...

Do you enjoy the podcast? Please leave a review !  Last year the UX Content Collective published an extensive piece about content designers in China , written by Anna Potapova and Arnaud Frattini. The piece surveyed several people working in China, and revealed an amazing amount of insight into a place many people don't know anything about. Today, Anna (Aliexpress) and Arnaud (Alibaba Group) join...

The Writers of Silicon Valley podcast is back! Listen to the first new episode with Chelsea Larsson, Senior Design Director at Expedia. We discuss the future of content design, UX writing, how AI is impacting everything, and why content designers shouldn't hang on to old definitions. And maybe…why content designers should learn Python? I'm really excited to bring the podcast back, and really excit...

The Interface—a podcast by content designers, for content designers The Interface is a monthly, can't-miss group chat for everything happening in content design and UX writing. The Interface has industry updates, deep conversations, and other helpful resources. Listen wherever you get your podcasts: Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-interface/id1634546118 Spotify: https://open.spoti...

Yael Ben-David is one the most thoughtful UX writers in the industry. She's written numerous blogs and has spoken at several conferences on how to make sure UX writers and content designers prove the value of their work. Today, we take a look at some of the regulations surrounding the fintech industry which make writing for it so difficult. Plus, we explore the ultimate question: how do you get ou...

Jane Ruffino is one of the most experienced UX writers in the industry, with an extensive work history. She also teaches a UX writing course and consults to companies on their UX copy. But what makes Jane even more interesting is her studies - she's currently pursuing a PhD in digital acheology. In this episode we talk about how she bridges that world with the world of content design, and the disc...

Andrea Drugay has one of the most experienced resumes in the content design industry. Now she works at Slack, one of the most coveted roles in all of design. In this episode, we talk about Andrea's background, what makes Slack's copy so special - but most importantly, how to make sure UX writers and content designers bridge the experience that's outside the product, and the experience inside the p...

Last month, I spoke wth Chris Baty from Figma - and we talked about how Figma is helping UX writers enter the design process. This month we continue that conversation with the creator of a copy management system. Jasper Platz is NOT a UX writer or content designer. He says that straight up. However, he quickly discovered a love for content design when building other products. So much so, that he d...

One of the biggest challenges for UX writers is figuring out how to embed themselves within the design process. Tools like Figma are making that easier. After all, being able to edit a design without any specific software makes it harder not to give writers access. Which means it's easier for us to do our job. Chris Baty is the Principal UX Writer at Figma, and was previously the head of UX writin...

Originally, the UX writing and content strategy community was meant to descend on Seattle for the Button conference. That didn't happen (obviously). What happened instead was even better. It's crazy that digital conferences haven't been a thing until now, but COVID really thrust this one upon us. Today, I'm speaking with some fantastic UX writers and content strategists: Duaa Osman from Google, Ya...

If you want an anecdote about Steve Jobs and UX writing, then this episode is for you. But that's just the beginning. Christie Fremon is probably one of the most experienced UX writers in the industry. She started as a technical writer, working through companies like Yahoo and Cloud.com in the 2000s, before moving to Apple as a UI writer on iTunes, and then at Google.  Now, she's writing for elect...

When I named this podcast, I chose to focus the title on "Silicon Valley". Why? I don't even live there. It comes down to bias. Today's episode is about breaking that bias. Mario Ferrer was a senior UX writer at King Games, now he's a senior UX writer at Skyscanner. He's also one of the cofounders of the UX Writers Meetup in Barcelona - and he's perfectly placed to help us understand the UX writin...

First thing's first: listeners to the podcast can get 15% of tickets to Button! Use the code "UXWC" at checkout to get 15% off: www.buttonconf.com . Kristina Halvorson is the CEO and founder of  Brain Traffic , the coauthor of  Content Strategy for the Web ,  the founder of  Confab Events , and the host of  The Content Strategy Podcast . Her seminal article,  The Discipline of Content Strategy , w...

So many of the conversations on this podcast have been focused on the relationships between UX writing and content strategy. My guest today wants to help clear that up a little bit.  Scott Kubie is one of the most well-regarded voices in content strategy. Currently a free agent on contract at Mailchimp, Scott's worked previously as the Lead Content Strategist at Brain Traffic (alongside content st...

"Text might be its own vertical in the product stack." I don't think I've ever been so impressed by people so young. I'm 33, so I'm allowed to say that now. For a while, guests on the podcast have asked me: is there a way to manage our copy end-to-end? For a long time, the best answer I've had to give is something like Airtable. But now, Jessica Ouyang and Jolena Ma have created Ditto - and it's t...

Please donate to these national organisations in the United States advocating for racial justice: The Bail Project National Bail Fund Network Act Blue  (Donation split between 39 community bail funds) Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law NAACP Legal Defence Fund ACLU LGBTQ Freedom Fund ------------------------------------------------------------------ It's been just over a year since I st...

Ever wondered what it's like to work at Google? Sure you have. In today's episode, I speak with Shayla Byrd, a UX writer at Google, about what it's like there - and so much more. This might be one of the most illuminating conversations I've had in a long time. Shayla has an extensive history, ranging from poetry to journalism. Shayla Byrd is a New York-based writer who works at Google as a content...

Early Bird tickets for the UX Writing + Content Design Summit are now on sale! Buy now and save $100. Don't miss out! Visit www.uxwcdsummit.com ————————————————————————- Streaming media is the big war right now in tech. Apple wants a piece, Amazon wants it, Disney is hitting out in a big way. But Netflix was there first, and so I was fascinated to have this conversation with Ben Barone-Nugent abou...

There have been a few books on UX writing published, all of them very good, but I think this one might take the cake. Andy Welfle and Michael J Metts have written "Writing is Designing". I think it advances the conversation as it approaches writing as a design tool, and builds on the great work that has already been published by other UX writers. Listen to our conversation and you'll see why.  A f...

Are you looking for a job as a UX writer in 2020? Then no hyperbole: you need to listen to this podcast. Gordon MacRae is an instructional designer, product manager, UX writer, and more. He started the UX Writing Jobs newsletter in 2018 to collate all the opportunities for UX writers around the world, and he's learned more along the way about the market than just about anyone else. After all, you...

Spotify! Do you use it? Probably. Remember when we owned CDs? Crazy. Actually, you know what's crazy? Paying for stuff I don't have in my hands. I'm 32, so I still want to read that lyrics sheet damn it. No, streaming is better. And Tamara Hilmes is one of the people making it better. She's a UX Writing Manager at Spotify, and she and I spent some time talking about her background, what makes work...