Department of one; navigating work as a lone content designer

Onboard slowly

As a lone content designer, you’ll be in charge of most (if not all) areas of the product so take your time to onboard. Talk to and meet as many teams as possible. Then, run an audit; how does content design work at your company? What are the main priorities of the company right now? What tools do they use? Do they work? The more answers you get, the more questions you’ll have — asking them during your onboarding will be easier than asking later on and it’s the best way to learn.

Set up a workflow early

And be prepared to revisit it, revise it, and present it to stakeholders again and again. Using your knowledge from the onboarding period, start creating a workflow but get a feel for your surroundings first. Is the company open to change? Go wild and suggest a workflow that works for you (and takes other stakeholders into consideration). Is the company more reluctant to change? Find a weak point and start by improving that one area first.

When I joined Gett, they had been working with freelance UX writers who required a workflow that looked different to the one I established after my onboarding. I’m being brought in at a much earlier stage of a feature’s lifecycle now, and am also managing the localisation of two additional languages.

Connect the dots

As lone content designers, we have the power to connect the dots between different features and teams since we interact with so many different people and roles. At Gett I work on our mobile app, the driver’s app, the web platform, and often lend a hand to the marketing team as well. Content designers, and lone content designers especially, have a birds eye view as we often work across more than one product or area of the company. If we keep our ears and eyes open, we can make connections that other stakeholders are less exposed to.

I worked on a cancellation message recently with two separate teams and when the penny dropped, I connected between them and we ended up streamlining the work and coming up with an elegant solution, faster. Bye bye silos!

Department of one (but don’t tell anyone)

Being a lone designer can get.. well.. kind of lonely. But we can still have impact and get our well deserved seat at the table. When it comes to rationalising your decisions, or explaining things to other stakeholders, conduct yourself as a department. Instead of saying ‘I don’t think we should write headers in upper case’, say ‘We write headers in sentence case’ — it’ll go much further and help establish your place within the company.

Data wins arguments

I didn’t make that up, but I certainly live by this rule. People will question your decisions, so be prepared to back them up. How? With data! As part of my day to day work, I use data from all sorts of sources — competitive research (how do mobility products write their cancellation notifications?), user feedback (do people understand the word ‘change’ more than ‘edit’?), our own data analyst wizards (how many people add a credit card to their business profile but don’t order a ride), and other tools such as Usability Hub, Mixpannel, Airtable, and Mobbin. It’s a good idea to familiarise yourself with some of these tools. Without a content team, they’ll help guide and support your content decisions.

Keep sharing

So there aren’t any other content designers around — don’t let that stop you from sharing your ideas and iterations with other people. In fact, make an effort to share as often as you can. Set up a weekly critique meeting with your closest allies (product designers) and let them give feedback on your work. Just remember that feedback is just that — feedback — you don’t have to agree with it or act upon it.

Create a community for yourself

It’s important to have a place to ask questions and get feedback from other content designers and since you won’t find them around the office, it’s a good idea to create a community for yourself elsewhere — join and post on Facebook groups, ask questions on Slack, and check if there are content design conferences that are worth attending.

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Working as a lone content designer is hard at times, but we’re never truly alone. Just because our team mates aren’t also content designers, it doesn’t mean they can’t add value to our work both professionally and personally. Make yourself visible, build bridges, and if you’re a lone designer reading this — get in touch so we can be alone together!