I participated in a small, virtual UX Forum hosted by Joe Welinske over at Blink UX. The day-long forum was made up of presentations and interviews on a variety of UX-related topics.
I shared a little bit about my experience moving to UX work. After the talk, I got a handful of LinkedIn messages asking some common questions.
To help answer them, I pulled together a few hopefully-useful tips:
- Be UX-minded before you have a UX writer or content designer title.
- Keep a giant list of every single thing you work on. Then try to find a UX angle in that work.
- It’s way more than writing. Learn about design too (Principles of Product Design, Design Thinking Handbook, anything on the content strategist’s reading list).
- Practice any chance you get (daily UX writing challenge).
- Read product/design team articles (Shopify, HubSpot, Dropbox, NN/g, a credible, curated mix) and listen to product or content podcasts (Content strategy insights, The content strategy podcast)
- Don’t look for shortcuts. Build up your skills and knowledge over time.
- Fill your social feeds with content people and designers. Even if you don’t contribute yet, it’s helpful to read what they’re talking about. (UX + Content Strategy Slack group, The Dash newsletter).