When I joined Stash, a relatively new fintech startup, I knew the challenges before me: I was the only UX writer joining a team of 8 product designers and 4 researchers. I would be a team of one as the sole UX writer.
At my last job as a content strategist, I was embedded on a product team. We all knew each other’s work and aligned and agreed on priorities. We had a clear sprint structure and deadlines as well as clarity around success. At Stash, I’m everywhere, and that sort of structure isn’t established in my day to day. As a result, I have to own my schedule, projects, priorities, and follow other people’s deadlines.
After a lot of work—and ups and downs—I figured out a way to make my role work and advocate for my discipline in an organization that is still learning the importance of content strategy and UX writing. Here’s how you can, too:
When I first joined, people wanted to show me their designs at the end to “fix the copy.” I realized I had to introduce language to help people understand that I also provided value as a strategist and collaborator. “Let’s work together on content,” I’d tell them.
Content coming in at the end versus the beginning of a design determines how you give feedback as well as structure your work and output. Content informs design, but in a fast-paced environment where designers had a writer review designs at the end of the process, I was initially seen as a box to check, rather than as a collaborator and strategic partner. Introducing a new role to the team meant I needed to share my value.
Messaging strategy, content, narrative: As I got to know the team as the sole UX writer, I started to introduce language to help define my work and value. Yes, I can edit and fix grammar, but my value comes as a collaborator—not simply writing copy but creating a meaningful user experience. Remind your coworkers the value that you bring. Words are design.
As a UX Writer, you touch on these parts of the process.
At the beginning, a lot of my struggle came from not having a clear understanding of what my work and output would look like. Because startup life changes day to day, and I wasn’t embedded on a specific team, I learned that the only way to stay afloat—and not go insane—was taking work week by week. This meant connecting with designers at the beginning of each week, usually in status update meetings, to determine what my workload would look like.
Determining and defining your work can help you set clear deadlines, define outcomes, and propose solutions.
Finding a way to prioritize my work took a couple of tries. In a startup, projects move very quickly, and it was easy to fall in the Slack hole of responding to every message so that I had eyes on flows before they shipped. The downside is it’s not very sustainable. To better streamline my work, I created a structure that helped define my work while also staying on top of the team’s work to create clear, meaningful, and holistic content.
I make sure to communicate to directors in product design and my own so that everyone is clearly aligned on objectives and the projects that will be prioritized for the week. At a high level, I’ve created a process that’s worked for me as the sole UX writer:
1. Create a narrative check-in
This is the most crucial step in the collaboration process: Align on a messaging strategy with your designer before anyone creates wireframes. This is where you’ll connect with design and research on the user and business problems/goals and hypothesis, and work together to outline a solution.
2. Connect before user testing
You want to make sure your words are on the page when people are reading them—especially in a user testing environment. You never want to put any placeholder copy in front of people because this is the time to see what resonates with people. You’re measuring not only readability but content comprehension. Do readers understand what you’re offering and the value it provides? Having a content-first approach helps you have a more successful usability test.
3. Add a final check-in
Before sending it off for final approval—or before the project goes live—have a final check in with designers to make sure the right content is in the right place.
While not a perfect system (yet!) I’m working to refine where things slip through the cracks, what’s working, and where we can improve. At the very least, I’m constantly in communication with my design team so that we’re continuing and committed to providing a consistent voice and tone throughout the user journey.
In order to effectively follow a process that involves a lot of collaboration, you have to build respect and trust. And that comes with a lot of relationship-building. To succeed, I needed to establish trust and respect with each teammate (many of whom had never worked with a writer before) so that eventually, they’d feel comfortable sharing and collaborating on designs.
To build trust and set expectations around the prioritization of work each week, I created a spreadsheet, updated each week, that I share with the product team so everyone is aware of the projects and deadlines. Being transpare
