Summary
Most content design leaders stretch their teams to cover many products at once, or sometimes 5-10 or more. This unintentionally causes the team to constantly switch context, drive less product impact, lag in their career development, earn less pay, and ultimately burn out and leave, only to repeat the cycle elsewhere. This as normal… but it shouldn’t be. I’ll show you how we redesigned content design to increase people’s focus and depth of work, multiply their product and business impact, and even accelerate their growth and compensation… all by working on just one product at a time.
Key Insights
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Content designers working across multiple teams face severe context switching that limits their impact and leads to burnout.
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Amy Tibido highlighted that merely tidying content without addressing underlying product problems is just dusting, not real content design.
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Lack of clear communication about how a feature works and its value proposition can cause user mistrust, as seen in the Facebook audio recognition failure.
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Most content design teams work inefficiently by spreading members too thin, a norm that is unsustainable and prone to failure.
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Assigning content designers to a single team increases focus, trust, and visibility, allowing them to deeply understand problems and influence product strategy.
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Content designers at Intercom were empowered to practice 'full stack content design' — working across strategy, concept, and execution like product designers.
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Equal competency frameworks and accountability standards for product and content designers promote shared values, collaboration, and mutual respect.
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Intercom established equal pay for content and product designers based on identical expectations and outcomes, addressing systemic gender pay gaps in design.
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Canceling office hours removed distractions and reinforced content designers’ accountability to one team, improving quality over quantity of output.
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The COVID-19 pandemic caused layoffs disrupting content design progress, but the systems created provide a hopeful foundation for future rebuilding.
Notable Quotes
"Just because you can solve a hard technical problem doesn’t mean you’re solving a real problem for real people."
"Amy Tibido used to call what I was doing dusting the content — tidying words without solving the underlying problem."
"People assumed Facebook was always listening to their conversations because we didn’t clearly explain how and why the feature worked."
"Working across multiple teams all the time is normal for content designers, but that doesn’t mean it’s the best or the only way."
"If content designers have deep focus, context, and trust, they can work on problems deeply from the beginning, having far more impact."
"We trashed our old content design competencies because content designers should hold themselves to the same standards as product designers."
"Equal pay for equal results — content designers and product designers at Intercom have the same compensation bands and equity."
"Canceling office hours optimizes for focus and accountability rather than shortcuts and unclear responsibilities."
"The biggest drain on motivation is unfulfilled potential combined with being blocked from living up to it."
"Where there’s life, there’s hope — failure teaches us, but resilience and rebuilding are even more meaningful."
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