How to Maximize the Impact of Content Design
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
-
•
Failing to provide clear 'how' and 'why' in content design can cause product backlash despite technical success.
-
•
Spreading content designers thinly across many unrelated teams leads to poor focus and missed context.
-
•
Amy Tibido coined 'dusting the content' to describe superficial content fixes without addressing deeper UX problems.
-
•
Most content design teams working with multiple teams mirror outdated and unsustainable 'move fast and break things' culture.
-
•
Content designers working on a single dedicated team gain focus, context, trust, and influence equal to product designers.
-
•
Not all product teams need content design equally; prioritization using business impact, team openness, and logistics is essential.
-
•
Canceling office hours helps content designers maintain accountability and focus rather than scattering effort.
-
•
Treating content design as full stack design involves engaging in strategy, concept design, UX, and product outcomes, not just writing.
-
•
Equal pay for content designers and product designers at Intercom aligned compensation with shared accountability and impact.
-
•
Content design’s underpayment contributes significantly to gender pay gaps given the field is 74% women.
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 the words on the surface without solving the underlying problem."
"In the absence of clear message or strong value prop, people assumed Facebook was always listening to all their conversations."
"Working this way is unsustainable at best and set up for failure at worst."
"Content designers should work on just one team at a time and no longer run office hours."
"We defined full stack content design where content designers are accountable not just for user experience, but for overall product success."
"Content designers now have the same pay bands, equity grants, benefits as product designers – equal pay for equal results."
"Most content design teams aren’t healthy; their output is overly constrained and management cannot do anything about it."
"Content designers are almost always paid less than their peers, which contributes to the gender pay gap in design and tech."
"The oldest lesson is that failure is a far better teacher than success, but this year I found resilience in something stronger: hope."
Or choose a question:
More Videos
"Some of the most important decisions for service design happen on whiteboards among engineers, often without service design representation."
John CutlerOxbows, Rivers, and Estuaries: How to navigate the currents of change (without burning out)
December 3, 2024
"We’re all capable of creating and perpetuating toxic work relationships."
Darian DavisLessons from a Toxic Work Relationship
January 8, 2024
"Kristen wrote the book Design of Orgs for Design Orgs and her experience partly informed this canvas."
Dave GrayGroup Activity: Making Sense of DesignOps
November 7, 2017
"These aren't linear; every circle or box has multiple lines into it—our work does not fit neatly into trees or pyramids."
John CutlerThe Alignment Trap
November 29, 2023
"Diagrams provide transparency in the face of uncertainty by showing what there is to know, even if the news is not good."
Abby CovertStuck? Diagrams Help
October 27, 2022
"Up to 90% of time in work streams is delay or waiting time, not active work."
Mark InterranteCollaboration Flows in Product Development
June 9, 2017
"Too often, futures imaginaries want to erase or align difference rather than reckon with it."
Devon PowersImagining Better Futures
March 9, 2022
"There is overlap between design and research when it comes to different types of research; it’s not a strict divide."
Prayag NarulaHow to Empower Your Designers to Do Good Research – And Why You Want To
June 10, 2022
"If you build for the next model, even if it can hardly do something now, it will probably do it well in the future."
Peter Van DijckHands on AI #3: Claude Code for UX people
October 22, 2025
