Content Design

Project I: Slack Sales Elevate Launch

Sample UI mock-ups with placeholder text.

• Is this necessary? Cut fluff. 
• Can we shorten? Ibid. 
• Is it clear? Clear is kind.
• Is it on-brand? Voice and tone matter.
• Does it lead with the benefit or value proposition? WIIFM ("What's in it for me?").
• Does it tell a story? The onboarding flow must cohere well.
• Is it too self-promotional? Nobody likes a brag.
• Is it visually cluttered? Simplicity reigns.
• Is it missing anything? See the forest through the trees.

Some of my hands-on copy iterations in Figma.

Project II: AmeriCorps Library Intranet Redesign

• I gathered focus groups to prove what people really wanted. What drives them batty? What do they wish were here that isn't? How can we better align our values to the vehicle of this internal tool? 

• Through that, I learned that different groups had different needs for this intranet. Some people, depending on role, wanted minimal involvement — to them, it was just a vehicle to house documentation: a massive database. Didn't have to be pretty, so long as it got them what they needed. 

• Other people skewed toward the opposite end of the spectrum: They desired community, felt isolated at their school sites, and wanted to connect to the broader mission for why they showed up every day to serve low-income students. 

• By listening to both the junior AmeriCorps cohort and senior staff needs, I was able to design a framework that fit our primary use cases and satisfied the team as a whole.

• I also conducted my own research with our third-party vendor for which tools and layouts proved successful for other companies in the past. I reviewed previous employee surveys to see different pain points and gaps. 

• Most importantly, I kept our core values always in front of my face and asked myself how I could incorporate form with function, bringing these five to the design, layout, and intention of every aspect we created:

  • • • • 1. • 1. Reading Matters

               2. Big Challenges Are Our Thing

               3. Volunteers Get Results

               4. Together We Are Better

               5. Data Drive Decisions

• We soon realized that different people preferred email to an intranet for daily communication. Other people adored having everything in one central place and used the intranet and its team pages more than any other means of communication. 

• To suit these diverse needs, I created a weekly digest that was emailed out to the entire staff with important highlights, directing people to The Library as our central engagement platform for further details. I branded The Library as our "social and informational hub," and used this catchphrase everywhere to create a culture around what this tool was, why we used it, and how it could benefit the organization as a whole.

• I also recognized the need for ongoing feedback, and created a "Submit Feedback" card on our website that allowed people to offer suggestions in real time. I mirrored it off of our tangible Core Values Cards (which we handed out frequently around the office) to act as an inviting appeal and garner participation. By pairing this design with something already familiar and beloved to our culture, my aim was to make feedback just as easily welcomed as our practice of handing out these little cards. This helped me meet real user needs on a regular basis and implement qualitative data to further upgrade and iterate our platform.

• I continued to find ways to inject greater brand values, personality, and visual appeal, as well as tools to suit the overall user experience. Over time, I was able to embed videos, custom font, corporate appreciations, carousel announcements, and scalable systems of team resources for each of our 14 regions. 

• Through peer feedback and iteration, focus groups, 1:1 interviews, and asynchronous modules, we were able to refine The Library into a model that worked for everyone. I then created a Library Ambassadors program where one representative from each region would be educated on The Library basics, so each team could be empowered with ownership to decide stylistic changes instead of relying on a single administrator for all design questions. 

• I chose to enable people in that way so that systems could better scale, and the decentralized knowledge would disintegrate siloed thinking.

• People reported being able to do their jobs more efficiently, with a higher sense of unification and sharper focus. They could customize regional nuances while still having standard operating procedures across the nation.

• The new design also put our vision at the forefront so we could better serve our mission — empowering children to be lifelong readers. 

• I also did further investigation of ways to automate our systems: This saved massive amounts of time in the coming years, where otherwise The Library administrator would need to manually input each of the hundreds of new incoming AmeriCorps members to the platform. Instead, I found ways to batch upload information so the data could be automatically incorporated into unique user profiles, thus making a more seamless process for incoming members and the lead administrator alike.

I feel proud that I was able to bring a brighter sense of color (both literally and figuratively) to my organization, and this first introduction to UX design began a world of curiosity in me for how to better unite words with purpose.