Episode 7: Rise of Content Design with Liva Paudere, VP Content Design at DBS
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Hi everyone, I'm Dalen, founder and design educator at QRIS Core.

Welcome to our Working in UX Design podcast series where we interview a UX design leader in the industry on their experience in this emerging field. We've had UX professionals from Grab, AirAsia, Google and more join us previously and we're bringing you more exciting interviews this year. Stay tuned for this week's interview with our special guest who is working in UX design.

Hi, good evening everyone. This is Daylon over here and welcome to our monthly webinar sessions where we interview a special guest who is working in the field of user experience design and tonight we have Liva Poudaire who is currently the VP of Content Design for DBS Bank. Previously Liva was a producer for the film and TV production industry before she actually jumped into marketing

And as part of DBS UX team of 60 people with 15 nationalities and counting, she designs content for the entire experience, consumer experience of DBS.

and she's also someone who's obsessed with structure, taking a lot of inspiration from the iconic Sherlock Holmes. So tonight we will be speaking about content design and how it's actually increasingly common as a term in the user experience design view, and how do content designers work with UX designers and how do they play a role in the design of experiences overall.

So thank you, Oliver, for joining us tonight. Hi, thank you for inviting me. Lovely. Maybe let's start off by asking you a question. You know, how will you explain content design or what you do to someone who is not too familiar with the term? So I think...

A couple of years ago, I tried to be clever and I used to say that it's the button and not the banner. And then I realized that no one really understands what I mean. And it was just unnecessary. So basically content design is design, but with words. We work very closely with UX designers and UX researchers, and we write the content that a person sees when they're trying to accomplish something.

So this is the content that helps me achieve whatever I want to achieve rather than the marketing content that usually, well, sometimes tends to interrupt people and tends to ask you to do something that you were not planning to do at that particular point in time. That's a great explanation. And how did you end up in this space or sector? Because I know you were doing something quite different previously. How did you end up being a content designer?

It was extremely, I mean, it was an absolutely an accident. I had always kind of worked with content, either in content marketing, or even when I was in TV, I wrote a lot of things.

And then what happened was that one of the companies in Singapore, I don't know if someone might know Honest Bee, the famous Honest Bee in Singapore. I actually applied for a content marketing position and at least I interviewed for a content marketing position. At least I thought I was doing that. I thought I was hired for a content marketing position and I ended up doing content design. I did not know what it was. Turned out I liked it.

Wow. And seems like a very serendipitous opportunity. So what were you doing back at Honest Bee that, and how is it different from content marketing that you say that this was content design? Yeah. So I was very much used to writing, first of all, like longer form content. I think when one of the questions talked about inbound marketing, so I kind of

you know, fell in love with inbound marketing. I was doing blog posts. I was doing social media, basically everything that is related to selling stuff to people. Right. And then at Honest Bee, I was suddenly part of a UX design team, which I had never been a part of. I really knew nothing. And I had to look at a product that

from a point of view of not trying to sell you something, but of trying to facilitate your journey when you're trying to achieve something. And the way that I was writing had to change because the content had to become a lot more invisible because it's no longer about the stuff that you put on buses or on bus stops or on banners that kind of is supposed to

catch your attention and kind of shouts at you, right? And a lot of times in a wonderful way, but it's still very loud. So this was very muted down content that when it's done well, it's actually often very much invisible.

And that's such a nice way to put it. The work you do is very subtle. It's very invisible. What would an example of content design be from maybe something you worked on in Honest Bee or at DBS? Yeah, so it's basically every little label and button that you see. So let's say when I owe you money for lunch, right? And I want to transfer, you know, 15 bucks to you.

I will go into my DBS app and I will, let's say I will go to pay now. And then there might be instructions, how I can search for a recipient. There will be a button that will tell me that, okay, if you press this button, you're absolutely transferring money out of your account, right? As opposed to a button that simply asks you to review something. So all those little things in this journey, right? There are multiple places where I could be maybe

unsure or hesitant or unclear and our job with content design is to make sure that you can do it seamlessly and at no point in time you feel like you don't have the confidence to press that button you always always need to know what's going to happen when you press a button and it's the name of the button it's the labels it's the instructions it's everything

Wow. That would also probably mean that in terms of writing copy, it's you're writing shorter copy versus longer copy back in your content marketing days. Yeah, absolutely. But I wouldn't say that it's that shorter is always better because I can be very, very concise and I'm probably going to sound rude sometimes.

So it's kind of a balance between obviously, you know, short, right? Because again, you're there to achieve a task, not to read a cleverly written line. Having said that, it also goes back, you know, eventually to the brand image. So you want to be conversational and nice.

and empathize with users. So it means that it won't always be the shortest version. Yeah, that does make sense. I mean, it feels a lot like giving context as user experience designers. And we are also very mindful of context when we're designing for. And I think what really nicely described what you just said was feeling that confidence to press that button, like

sufficiently giving the users enough context so they have actually the confidence to do that. That's such an important thing. And if I could ask you, you know, as a content designer or as someone who is hiring content designers, what are the common attributes of good content designers? Right. So I think someone who can find creativity in different aspects of work

And usually that goes together with being a curious person in general. Because like I said, this type of content that we work on, it's often very, very subtle. Plus, you know, same as designers, right? We might spend days or weeks understanding a difficult product, especially when it comes to financial services. A lot of the financial products are just very complicated.

So you spend a lot of time just understanding the product, understanding what are the limitations or opportunities that the technology offers you. And then your output is a few lines that are very muted down and very functional. So some people, for example, might miss the creativity. And I do this because I feel that, you know, creativity comes in a lot of different forms.

But yeah, if you're inherently curious and you're able to find creativity in this, then I think that's great. Otherwise, you're really going to miss it. You know, you're going to miss writing copy and slogans for ads and seeing your work in videos and on social media. So I think that is one. And if we go back to Sherlock Holmes...

So that is, I mean, it's a silly thing. Like I said, I wrote it ages ago when I was like first building my portfolio and I just never changed it. But logic and structure is,

So let's say you have a transfer flow, right? That has, for example, 10 screens from the very beginning to the very end. I don't know. You have to add a recipient. You have to confirm the recipient. You have to enter SMS OTP. Then you transfer money. You know, you have your completion page and so on and so forth, right? Let's say that. So if I change something on the 5th

fifth screen, it will impact all the others as well. Yeah, you have to be very structured and logical in the way you work and really think about every little thing. It's really context heavy, I guess. I don't know how best to describe it. And let's say if I change something, even on a transfer flow, it also might impact other parts of the app with completely different services. So yeah, you have to have that patience, I guess.

to just go through and think about all those details. Well, I think you mentioned something about creativity, you mentioned about logic and structure, and you mentioned that attention to detail in the sense of being thorough, but also in the sense of being thoughtful.

So those seem to be the general attributes of hiring good content designers and who are good content designers. And in this case, you work in the UX design team in DBS and it's quite a large design team. So how exactly do you go about working with other UX designers in this case?

So in an ideal world, and that is what we are striving towards, but you know, in an ideal world, UX designer and a content designer will work together from the beginning, from the, you know, discovery phase, you know, they'll work together in the wireframes and they won't, you know, work on multiple projects at the same time, right. And all of that.

And we do try to do this as much as possible because I think what often happens with content design being so new, because it's still viewed as copywriting, it's always inserted at the very end. So it's like, oh, you know, it's even in the way how we like very ingrained in our workflows. For example, you have design reviews and then you have the copy review. And those are completely two separate things. And often the stakeholders are different. So we are really, really trying to not do this because

Because when as a user, when I open an app, I don't think about all design and content. I see one thing, right? It's one thing. It has to be a holistic experience. So you can't design something and then, you know, plonk the words inside, like, you know, in the gaps. The information influences the design and vice versa. So we do try to very much work together.

It is not always possible because there usually are never enough content designers, right? It's a new field. We still have to do a lot of work about talking to our stakeholders about the value that we bring. So in an ideal world, yeah, so we work together and yeah, but then you have all those other projects, right? That you still want to offer some kind of support to.

So at least at DBS, what we do is that every content designer will be embedded in a project with a UX designer and that is their baby and they look after that baby. But then we do another thing which we call like working sessions where basically, you know, someone submits a request and we have like an hour or an hour and a half. And within that, we solve a very particular problem together.

What we try not to do, we try not to do the projects that are in the middle where you are not part of the team, you're not embedded in the project, but you somehow end up getting involved in emails and in meetings and like here and there because it brings very little value, right? Like,

You can't really claim any impact or really make any impact because you're not part of the team, yet you're spending time on emails and all this other stuff. So it's either be part of a team or do a working session, but we try to avoid the thing in the middle. Yeah, and then what I also wanted to add, which I think goes back to your first question about what we look for when we hire content designers is we do look for people who are just generally interested in technology.

because we don't just write, we also work on tools and processes. For example, your whole content management workflow. How is content going to be approved by your stakeholders? Then it has to go to developers and it has to go through quality assurance and it has to get into the app. And then how do you update it? You know, how do you do A/B testing? And if you have to do localization, you have multiple languages and

All of that is actually really important and has nothing to do with writing and a lot more with, I don't know, project management and technology and spending a lot of time with developers.

So it sounds like very much like a good UX designer. You'll do a lot of follow-ups after the design phase and it sounds like in the ideal world you will be working in tandem with a designer and bouncing off ideas. So it sounds like in the ideation phase you'll be together. What about the research phase? Are you together with your UX designer during the research phase as well?

So for example, when I was at Honest Bee, like it being a startup and it being a smaller company, we kind of did everything. So the researcher, for example, might do the heavy lifting of obviously setting up the research and the brief and the framework and what are the objectives and everything. But everyone would do user interviews, for example, and you would actually do them, not just sit in.

For example, with DBS being a bigger company, obviously the roles are more segregated. Everyone specializes a little bit more. Sometimes we do sit in. We don't do user interviews ourselves. The researchers do those. But same as UX designers, we are extremely, extremely interested in the results of the user testing or any kind of market research or user research that is being done.

Yeah, and I think it's another great way to show the impact of your work. Let's say if you don't have data or if your release cycles are very long, you know, something takes a year to be built. And if you need to show impact, then making sure that questions that are relevant to content designers are embedded in the testing that you do is a great way to show impact.

Yeah, you mentioned a lot about impact and we'll get onto that in a bit. But I think earlier you also mentioned something about localization and it's part of your work. We have a question from the audience and she's asking, do content designers also have language localization work as part of what they are doing? Or is this like outside of their scope of work? Right. So it depends.

Can be, and it doesn't have to be necessarily. For example, if you are bilingual and you have markets that need that language, that is amazing, that is great. And you can do the base language and also translations.

Often, it's not possible. Not not possible. But honestly speaking, for example, when we hire content designers, we the requirement that we look look for first and foremost is that it's someone who is a good writer. And then obviously, if they have interest and are experiencing content design, yeah, it's good to have.

but not necessarily a priority. And I feel that reason for that is that we have found that working with our product owners and our country teams can also be very effective and they can

Basically, we do a model where we do workshops with them in the beginning to just talk about content design and what are the objectives so they understand why is this, for example, different than when we write for marketing materials. Since they are very familiar with the product and the objectives, we just coach them on how to translate the base language.

So that's something that we do. Wonderful. Thanks for sharing. Earlier, you mentioned about marketing and how you used to do content marketing. So like right now as a content designer, how do you work with the marketing team? This is actually a topic that's very close to my heart. I am personally just very, very interested in product positioning. For example, if I ask you, you know, what's the best whiskey in the world?

Johnny Walker? I don't know. And I don't know what's the... okay, let's say what's the smallest car in the world? Oh, the car, Mini, the Mini Cooper. Yeah, so you see like Mini Cooper and Johnny Walker, they came to your mind, right? They occupy a very clear category in your mind.

you know, a small car is a Mini Cooper, a great whiskey is Johnny Walker. Awesome, right? So there is a category for that. And it doesn't always have to be like the best or whatever. It can be something like small, right? Small is a category. Slow is also a category actually, right? Like it doesn't have to always be all the best and whatnot. Anyways, so yeah, so I really like this topic and I feel that the essence and the positioning of the brand has to influence everything. For example,

if I'm selling shoes, right? I could sell the cheapest shoes. I could sell luxury shoes. I could sell running shoes. I could sell whatever. So that decision will impact everything. It will impact how my branding looks like, you know, what is the shoe like? What is the website like? Everything, right? So I really, really enjoy working with branding people and marketing people. And I feel that we need to do more of it because

when I write functional copy, when I do content design, there still are a lot of opportunities to insert brand voice in there.

I know that I kept talking about content design being very subtle and that is true most of the time. But when you look at, for example, empty states or completion pages, you can insert a lot of personality in there. And I don't want to come up with that personality. I want to align with the brand because the moment you all pull in the same direction is so much more powerful. Yeah, what often unfortunately tends to happen is that

The digital team, the design team or whatever product team builds something. And then the marketing team tries to figure out how to tie it back to the larger brand. When in fact we should be building features that support that brand story. That's something that I definitely am trying to do the last few years.

I think we still have a long way to go, but I feel that it's actually very, very powerful when done correctly, when every single person in your company knows what is your story and they don't try to sell you running shoes when you're actually selling cheap shoes.

I love good examples and correct me if I'm wrong in terms of this analogy that I like to bring in. It sounds like most of the time teams are still working like an assembly line, right? So after

something is done, it's passed to maybe the content designer or after that it's passed to the marketing team once the product is built. So it's kind of like an assembly line kind of model. Whereas I think from what you're describing in an ideal world, what it ideally should look like, it's a little bit more like playing soccer on the few and it's like everyone has their role but then you're passing it, it's kind of like it depends on what's needed and then you trust your teammate to do it and then you're kind of collaborating and working together as a team.

Would that be an accurate description? Yeah, absolutely. And I think it's maybe, maybe now I thought of it, maybe it's, you know, like agile versus waterfall, where waterfall, you know, one team passes to another instead of, you know, you collaborate and you, you know, your ideas really, truly like come together.

Yeah, and that sense of collaboration is something that would be really great to include in the team. And I think what you mentioned that was quite important to also explain to people who may not necessarily be designers over here is like the empty state and the completed state and adding a little spice and touch to the both states, right? Especially like

Let's say payment is completed or there's actually no entries on the app screen itself. That's also where content design comes in. When you think about these gaps and opportunities, I was just wondering, do you know of any brand or any app that does content design very well and that you would actually reference them a lot?

Slack. Actually, Slack is wonderful. Yeah, they do even cute things like, I don't know, you know, all Slack users out there, you might have noticed, for example, let's say intro, I think it's, is it loading, loading state messages? Yeah, loading state messages. Yeah, you can either customize or they will just show you different ones. So they go above and beyond instead of having like,

you have a single, you know, loading set message that's always there. Instead, like I will see, you know, different messages or greetings or just funny stuff. Yeah, I think they are really, really lovely. And I feel that what they also do well is,

keeping that boundary between being funny and quirky, but still open and honest and transparent, which can be difficult to do because especially if you come from like I did from a marketing and copywriting background, the first impulse, at least for me is to, you know, Oh, we want the user to click on this button. Okay. I'm going to say whatever it takes to make them click.

But actually that might damage the relationship in the long run if you kind of manipulate me or deceive me maybe. And Slack I think is great that they know when they can be quirky and funny and they know when they have to really just be open and transparent and give instructions and tell it, say it like it is.

I think Slack is such a great example. I even asked my team to look at Slack in terms of how they do their product marketing pages because the content is just so well written and so concise as well. And it also exists in their product where you mention all these little touches that they have.

And this is a question from the crowd. What's your approach to onboarding new users from a content design point of view? Is there like any best practice for onboarding when it comes to content design?

I'm imagining how a UX designer would answer this. They would probably say it depends on your target audience and on your product and a lot of other things. I don't think there's like a single... Let's put it into context. Let's say maybe they're new to a consumer banking app, for example. Is there any best practice? Yeah.

Okay, let me think. I think this is like, I mean, it's not a new idea. However, I feel that we still have these conversations with stakeholders. So it's worth highlighting the fact that A, do it gradually, obviously, onboarding, you know, don't give a book to me, you know, give me page by page as and when I need it. I mean, it's an obvious thing to do. But I think, especially in banking, we tend to be cautious about

So we sometimes tend to design, we tend to design not for the 90%, but for 100, which means that there will be a lot of extra information that is needed in 5% of cases maybe. But it will, you know, make the experience much longer for everyone else. And this is where maybe the meticulous and pedantic and attention to detail part comes in where you

Every single word and every single sentence has to have a reason and a meaning. Don't write it if you don't know exactly why that word is there. And even in onboarding when, yes, we should be inserting brand voice and yes, we should be, you know, more conversational and drive that brand loyalty. Still, every single word needs to have a meaning.

And also about, I feel that often when we like, when we do working sessions, when we try to help stakeholders with content, I feel that the reason why we, the content is maybe not as good as it could be is because you're in your own head. You're not clear as to what you want to say. You know, I have to onboard you to, to a banking app. Oh my God, there are a hundred things you should know which one I'm going to start with. And then you start with one, then you talk about something else and you go back and

Then, you know, you put the least important thing at the top. And yeah, as long as in your own head, you're extremely like crystal clear, it will come through.

What about anxiety? Because new users are often really anxious and I think in financial technology, one of the things I used to work in FinTech as well, one of the things I learned is to just make sure that we allow users to actually kind of roll back on a mistake or just to confirm on things, right? So how do you kind of address any anxiety users may have when they're being onboarded? Yeah.

And this is where working with researchers is very important, obviously, because, you know, first of all, you need to know what the anxieties are to begin with. I mean, there will always be some obvious things, but there are things that you, you know, that you might not have thought about. And, you know, this is where research is helpful. But what I would also say again, is especially in financial services, because we tend to be cautious people and risk averse people, what happens is that

we tend to give too much information and too much instruction for things that don't matter. Let's say as part of the onboarding process, I'm being asked to upload a profile picture and like set a nickname or whatever. Okay. For my account, like,

You know, there's no way I can really screw it up. It really doesn't matter as much. But sometimes, yeah, what I see for financial services is that you give too much instruction. And when you give too much instruction, it seems like setting a nickname has suddenly become...

super important and it will somehow break everything and I will lose all my money. I'm exaggerating, but yeah. Yeah, we need to onboard users, but there are things that we can allow them to learn by themselves and we can allow them to make mistakes because it's not a big deal. Those are really good points. And I think to summarize what you just said in terms of

some best practices for good onboarding flow is not presenting everything upfront and being very gradual about it. From a content design perspective, understanding the meaning of words and making sure there is a very deliberate meaning on the words itself. Having to prioritize information, especially for financial services, that's something where

There's a lot of information to convey and a lot of things to tell the user in particular. So actually prioritizing the information would be very important. And I wanted to ask you as well, and this is a question from the audience. How often do you engage in a content audit and what would the key areas you would typically focus on during the audit? Yeah.

Okay, obviously, if you're setting up a new content design team, and you've never had one, then you know, that's an obvious time when to do an audit. Another one would be, I guess, if your marketing direction is, you know, significantly changing, because then again, everything from your FAQ to your app onboarding intro screen will have to reflect that change.

Otherwise, like, I don't know, because I feel like user experience, it never ends, right? Like a product is never done. Like we're supposed to listen to feedback and continuously improve. Yeah, so I would say if you're setting up a new team or if your marketing direction is significantly changing, I can't really think of another time. I'm sure there is, but...

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I think content audit is quite a huge endeavor to undergo as well as a team. So don't want to be doing that almost every month, I think. Yeah. So someone asked you as well, what's your most challenging project that you've been a part of and how did you overcome those challenges? That sounds like an interview question. Yeah. Are you going to hire me? I would love to, but we don't have an opening here.

Yeah.

Oh God, I'm trying to think of... Because there are challenges that are very DBS specific and then there are a lot of challenges that are around like processes and tools, not necessarily around like the writing itself. So I'm trying to think of an example that would be relevant. But what in your experience has been the most challenging project? And I guess challenging to you, right? I'm sure people feel challenged by different things. Okay, okay, fair enough. So...

Actually, I'm going to be very practical here. If you're a good writer, you can learn content design and you're going to do a great job. You're going to write awesome content that's going to help users. That's all cool, right? Usually the most challenging part is the collaboration part.

And the wonderful things such as file versioning, handover, working with developers, making sure that your content actually sees the light of day. So when I joined DBS, I was the first content designer they hired. I came from a very different environment. I had only worked in startups and startups where I had like massive amounts of freedom.

extremely agile teams because it's a startup everything is new so everything is flexible and then I came to DBS where we have like we are using technology right that's a little bit older things are connected it's massive and complicated and there are so many more teams suddenly and also in my previous startups right like we of course we did like quality assurance and testing and everything but

you know, if something broke, something broke, and then you fixed it and fine. And a DVS, because we're dealing with people's money. And again, because it's a bank and we're so much regulated, this whole quality assurance process is much more stringent, which means that things like what is the final version of the file suddenly matter a lot because there are like

200 developers and 100 other people who all need to know what is the final version of the file. And if you make one single change, the whole thing just like, yeah. So my first few months at DBS, I was working on the current mobile banking app. And the project was already underway. So I, you know, I did what I could, but I couldn't do everything. And I was the first one. And I was just suddenly shocked, like,

the scale of things and how much more important a good process is. Yeah. So in terms of that being a challenge for you, how did you eventually overcome that challenge? So I overcome it. So I realized that everyone is busy. They have this new person, content designer. You know, how is that different from copywriter? You know,

what is happening, everyone is busy, the project was like halfway already through, had to catch up on deadlines and stuff. So basically, I became my own project manager. So you can't write something and hand it off and then think that that's it, your job is done. Like,

I wrote something and then I spent 70% of my time working with PMs and POs and all kinds of people and doing my own quality assurance and checking if the correct copy has been implemented and creating bugs for the stuff that wasn't and helping together with designers, helping to restructure files to make sure that we didn't have Figma at the time yet.

We didn't have abstract either at that time, you know, making sure that everyone knows what's the final version and communicating and all of that. So writing is the easiest thing and it will take the least of your time. Well, it sounds like there's a lot of operations work involved and I hope you've not been too bogged down on that. Yeah. So what do you think is the most interesting part of your work as a content designer? I think that...

Ultimately, it's designing an experience. It's same as for designers. You're trying to step away from what you think and what you feel and what are your biases and preconceived notions and working together with a team and trying to figure out how would someone else go through this particular journey and what their issues might be and how you can help them. I think that's just...

fascinating basically yeah and does it still connect back to Sherlock Holmes in any way I don't know oh my god I think I need to update that portfolio no I I think I thought what was interesting I I happened to also catch Sherlock sometimes and it's just so fascinating how the mind of Sherlock works right like how the mind of a detective works and you're investigating and you're having clues and things like that so sometimes as

digital product designer or as a UX designer, it can feel like you're doing a bit of detective work, looking for clues about the users leave behind and all that. Yeah, I mean, absolutely. And I've had instances like that in my work where your boss sends you a screenshot of some horrible error message and then you spend the next week trying to figure out what scenarios is this triggered by? Where on earth it comes from? Who created it? How do we fix it?

And then sometimes I think of like that cheesy thing in like detective stories when you have these mind maps where things connect, right? So it's the same thing, right? Like, oh, you know, let's say we are going to create a new feature and it's a small feature and like, how is this going to change the rest of the app? And what are all the little things that's going to impact? Yeah.

Yeah, and as you were speaking about it, I mean, I was thinking about design detective being like a job title. I think that's wonderful, yeah. Design detective, I think that's great. That's awesome. I was just wondering if for people who actually want to hire content designers in their team, how do you justify to management that we need a content designer and it's a good time to hire one? Okay, so one is that

You go back to the tale about, you know, people sitting around a fireplace, right? Like language is powerful. Stories are powerful. I think everyone knows that. Storytelling is powerful. It's nothing new. So, you know, you just have to show them that storytelling extends to your digital products.

And it's actually a great place where to do it because, again, you're not interrupting people. People have come to your app to do, you know, for a reason and they are paying their attention and, you know, they are focused on your particular product. So, yeah, language is powerful and language is actually one of the simplest ways to add emotion into your products.

You know, you have a very simple transactional feature or a screen and just with the warmth and empathy of your words, you can make that experience wonderful and promote brand loyalty. And then if you want to be a bit more practical, then basically changing, experimenting with language, let's say if we come, you know, if you're talking about A-B testing or just

"Changing content is cheaper than changing design." That's gonna be a quote down the line. "Changing content is cheaper than changing design."

So you have this powerful tool, you know, storytelling, which is super powerful. Language is powerful. And it's not that expensive to change the content on your digital product. So use that tool. Use that cheap, cheap tool. I don't want to lower the salaries of all content designers in Singapore, but use that tool and, you know, inject emotion into your product.

It does sound like a very cost effective way and a very efficient way to actually do a lot. And I agree with you that it's definitely something and I do pay attention to good content that's well or good copy that's well written in general or even good content design that adds little touches in a digital product.

And how do you decide how much is too much, right? Because I think as writers, sometimes we may have the tendency to include a lot. And like you said, right, from a regulatory perspective, we probably have to include a lot out of requirements. But sometimes also the marketing team might want to include a lot of things. So how do you kind of manage and balance the length or the amount of words and things like that?

So I think first of all, you should not take, you know, anyone's first opinion as the final final decision. If someone tells you that, oh, we we can't do this or that it has to be this way. Like I would always ask twice because a lot of things are just legacy decisions.

This was the approved paper form that you had 20 years ago. And now that paper form has been just transplanted into digital environment without any thought of whether this makes sense or not. So, yeah, so I wouldn't take it for granted that you can't change things. But secondly, you know, marketing team wants to include something. We need to include terms and conditions. All of that is fine, but it all doesn't have to be on the same screen.

You can identify multiple points in the journey, which is the right point. I was listening to, oh God, Design, Design, Design, Design Conference in Jan, when was it? Actually, beginning of this year, yeah. Someone said this really great thing is that if I'm buying, I don't know, shopping online, whatever, they asked me for my email.

And that is usually before I've, they asked me to confirm my email, you know, so that they can send me the order stuff and whatever. And at that point, I don't really care about it.

But then once I've placed the order, you know, we all do that, right? We check our inbox. Do I have the confirmation? And then we take a screenshot of the order confirmation screen just in case I don't get the email. So then I have the screenshot and then I'm going to tell them, you know, I paid for these pants. Where are my pants? Then this guy said that...

you know, maybe then this is the right time to ask me to confirm my email because at this point I actually care because I want to receive the order confirmation. So it's the same thing. Yeah. So just multiple user journeys don't have to plunk everything on the same screen. That's a good point, I think, about actually addressing the need of the user at that point in time and allowing a very natural flow of things to happen, right? Because we're requesting the users to do something

It certainly does feel like a lot of the work you do is about addressing anxiety from the users, but also, I guess, also managing that chaos from the number of people that you have to work with. And yeah, like, would that be an accurate description of the week of a live of a content designer? Yeah, I think with design, there is a bit of barrier of entry because designers know design tools.

So not everyone can design, right? I know that some people try in PowerPoint and that's fine. Actually, there's absolutely nothing wrong with it. But yeah, there is a barrier of entry, right? With language, it's a little different because all of us can write. So we tend to, as content designers, we tend to get a lot more input compared to UX designers sometimes.

What I usually try to do is, you know, you bring the conversation back to what are we trying to achieve? What is your hypothesis? What is your goal? And you try to move people away from copy editing your copy because then it just becomes horrible very, very quickly when you have like 10 stakeholders all sending you their copy edits.

Yeah, we try to take the conversation back to what we're trying to achieve. You know, give us your requirements and we will, you know, try to come up with something for you.

Oh my goodness, that is so irritating to have your copy edited by other people when their position is not being a copy editor and that's not even their job title or scope of work. Wow, that must be really tough to manage. As you mentioned, you're getting more requests than say a designer. So how do you manage your critics then as they are kind of like talking to you about your work?

All of us want the best for our users. We really do. Like I sincerely, you know, no one wakes up in the morning and decides, okay, I'm really going to screw someone over today. Like no one thinks like that. Usually most people wake up and think, okay, I want to do a decent job, right? What we all do, what we think is best.

Just because our opinion of what is best sometimes doesn't agree, that's fine. So for us, we just try to co-create so-called

We are on the same side, you know, working for the same company. What is the problem we're trying to solve? You know, let's discuss it. And then when you bring people in and co-create with them, you are suddenly on the same side instead of trying to argue and prove that, oh, my design is better, my copy is better, you know. I have last two questions. So thanks for sharing your insights and experience so far. Someone from the audience just asked, you know, do you have any tips for designers who can't write? Yeah.

Yeah, I do. I think just think about the information that you need to convey at that point in time. Like don't use lorem ipsum. I know there are a lot of like fun lorem ipsum generators. Like you can have a lot of fun with it, but don't just write in your own words. It doesn't matter. Like imagine that you are trying to explain this to your friend or to your mom and just write the

what you think they need to know at this point in time and on the screen and that's it. And I think that already would be, you know, a great, a great copy actually. And we have like a litmus test that we use is that right the way you speak. And if you write something and you say it out loud and it sounds stupid,

Which is actually hard to do sometimes. But yeah, like then, you know, maybe write it differently. But yeah, just think about how you would explain this to a friend and that's it. I've got a very interesting question from the audience. Who has the last word in content design or UX writing? Is it the UX designer or content designer? And I think that's a pun intended, right? Who has the last word? Neither one of us.

It's the business owners who are responsible for their business KPIs and who hold and who basically, you know, who have the money. Okay, so money speaks in this case. I have another one which also came from the audience. Does the content come first or the layout comes first? It sounds like a chicken and egg problem.

Yes, yes, it does. The idea, the goal comes first. For example, we were redesigning our DBS design team website and now we want to redesign it again. You know, like you look at something that you've done a few months back and you think, oh my God, this could be so much better. So when we were doing that,

We were thinking first and foremost, what is unique about designers at DBS, right? Like there are so many famous companies. There's like Google and Facebook and we are a small local bank, you know, what's so great about us. And yeah, so we thought about that in very practical terms. I don't know, like, I think it's fluid. Like, I think I wrote some ideas. I wrote some messages. My teammates did some wireframes. At some point it came together. I don't know.

Okay, wow. Yeah, it's the eternal question. Did the chicken come first or the egg came first? I think it's such a good advice to focus on the objective. Great advice. And yeah, I think someone in the audience is saying it's really great that you mentioned the tip about reading it out loud after writing it to see how it sounds.

I think this is a great question as well that she's asking and she said it's accessibility and screen reader tests. Is it also part of your work, right? To make sure it passes that screen reader test. It is, but I think it should be, we should focus on that more. Accessibility, it can sometimes be in general a hard sell because, you know, when you have to explain, you know, how

why we should spend money on that. But yeah, it definitely is. I think at a very basic level, like there are some tools out there where you can test how complicated your sentence structure is. So you just put your text there and you know, you, it gives you the reading, it grades the reading level grade basically. And that is a very simple thing because yeah, we should all be writing as simple as possible. Yeah. And using less long words and stuff like that.

yeah wonderful and that's a final question just out of curiosity if i'm a designer or if i'm just interested in content design how do i become like you how do i become a content designer i'm a ux designer or i'm coming in from another industry how how do i actually get into this uh accidentally interview for a content marketing role no i don't know no accidentally interview for a content marketing role okay and it turns out to be a hundred center no i think

I don't know. I can speak for myself, but like when we hire, like I said, I look for just great writers, people who genuinely love language because content design can be learned. So, you know, have a good portfolio where, you know, you show that you really, you know, you love and appreciate language. And yeah, like a lot of people, they do their own case studies, right? And that really helps.

I think it's the same as you know, how do you get your first UX design job, right? Like you do a course and then you do some case studies and you write some articles and people appreciate that as well because we want to see how you think as well. Wonderful. I'll give you the last words and last thoughts, like any final advice for everyone here. I believe they're all interested in content design and most of them should be designers here. So yeah, any final words of advice?

Same as with design. I think what you said about relieving anxiety, same as UX design, content design needs a lot of empathy. And same as any other form of writing, with content design, you write something, then you look at it the next day, you delete two thirds of it, and you change the one remaining, and then you'll have something decent like

Editing is more important than writing and content design seems in any other form because

Most of the time, this is subtle type of writing. And as writers, we want to show off and we want to be clever. And that is why when I first got into content design, I said it's the button and not the banner. And no one understood me because I was trying to be clever and it doesn't work. So write something, look at it the next day, sleep on it, use like a natural reader or something to read it out loud, edit it, cut it.

a step away from your ego and you know make it simpler rather than clever and that is wonderful advice I believe this is also golden advice if you happen to be an advertising copywriter as well so yeah thank you liver for your sharing and for your experiences and thank you for dialing in and tuning in I hope you enjoyed this episode

If you did, please let me know what you think. Get in touch with me over email at mail at curiouscore.com. I would love to hear from you. Do also check out our previous interviews and other free resources at curiouscore.com. And until next time, I'll see you on the next episode. Take care and keep leaning into change.