New offer! Enroll in Fundamentals of UX Writing, get our new Error Messages video course FREE.
New offer! Enroll in Fundamentals of UX Writing, get our new Error Messages video course FREE.
After significant growth at Xello’s content team, Craig Bell discovered not everyone was speaking the same language.
Hiring new content designers and UX writers is an exciting step—it means your organization will begin to see the benefits of investing in the customer experience, by making your product’s language concise, clear, and easy to understand.
But organizations can often run into challenges when they begin to scale up design teams. With a mixture of junior, mid-level and senior designers, teams often start to make decisions based on different principles.
EdTech company Xello experienced this challenge after several years of growth. The company redesigned its product with a focus on user experience (UX) and content strategy. This was an entirely new practice for the content team, but an exciting one with the team growing from 4 to 11 people in a short time span.
But there was a key issue. Although the team now had a significant number of new content designers and was tackling exciting challenges, not everyone was on the same page.
The result? More debate and a much slower design process. Because the team was now comprised of both experienced and junior content designers, not everyone had the same UX training—which meant everyone was working from different principles.
Craig Bell, the Director of Content at Xello, knew something needed to be done. The team was often spending too much time reiterating design principles or justification for design decisions.
“There are a number of people in the team who didn’t get the same grounding in UX,” says Craig.
Craig knew the team couldn’t afford to spend hours debating decisions that could be made much quicker if everyone was on the same page. He also knew that he needed to get his newer team members up to speed quickly.
So Craig trusted the UX Content Collective to provide everyone in his team with foundational knowledge in UX writing essentials.
“It just seemed like a good idea to find a program that would be would provide the same sort of foundational understanding of UX and how it applies to writing to the whole team and also so that we can have sort of a shared language.” He elaborates, “I also really liked the notion that it was created by UX writers for UX writers.”
Since participating in the program, the Xello content team has noticed several improvements. Team members are now better able to communicate and explain their writing choices, making the decision-making process efficient. The shared understanding of UX principles has also led to more effective collaboration and a higher-quality user experience for Xello’s clients.
The team is no longer spending hours debating and justifying basic design decisions. Instead, Xello is now able to spend more time on the more challenging edge cases—the tricky problems that design teams should be focusing on.
One unexpected benefit of the training was the interest it sparked in other departments. A non-content team member enrolled in the program, spreading the value of UX writing beyond the core content team.
“For newer team members, content team members, they’re able more often now to explain why something’s being written in the way that it has to other team members without the need for me to translate,” says Craig.
If you’re ready to give your team skills to succeed, we’re here to help. Continue learning about how we can help, or get in touch via the form below.
Over 125 content designers reveal how they use language models, their thoughts on the future of the industry, and more…
We’ll also send you news, discounts, job listings, and more
