Summary
Research helps us understand the customer's needs, behaviors, and attitudes, design meets those needs through interaction and visual expertise, and content helps make sure the entire experience is expressed in the customer's language. It seems simple, right? So where does it go wrong? Hear from Compass leaders about how misunderstanding these roles leads to poor collaboration and how we can change the way we work together to deliver incredible customer experiences. Hear from leaders in design, content, and research about the most common ways their role is misunderstood and the impact this has on the customer experience. Learn ways design, content, and research can communicate and collaborate better to collectively create better experiences that scale. Get a better understanding of the unique role design, content, and research play in our customer's lives and how to use each other's secret powers to deliver better customer outcomes.
Key Insights
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User research often fails when treated only as a late-stage validation function rather than an early, integrated practice.
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Close partnerships between user researchers, product managers, and designers at all levels enhance understanding and improve product outcomes.
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Assuming user needs without early research risks building the wrong product, as illustrated by the ice cream vs. cookies analogy.
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Content design is commonly seen as a last-minute task, which leads to constrained fixes and less effective user communication.
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Co-designing content with designers from the start prevents being ‘designed into a corner’ and produces better user flows.
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Starting wireframes with real content rather than lorem ipsum leads to more authentic and user-friendly designs.
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A recommended content designer to product designer ratio is roughly 1:3, allowing for deeper, strategic involvement.
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If trying repeatedly to fix wording fails, it often signals UI/interaction design issues rather than purely wording problems.
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Building leadership champions and starting small help teams transition towards integrated user research and content practices.
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Style guides and content systems are critical to scaling quality content and avoiding bottlenecks as teams grow.
Notable Quotes
"User research is a validation function is a pitfall — it should uncover meaningful nuggets and evangelize for users throughout."
"If you hand user research a finished design and say validate this, you miss out on real insights and risk wrong assumptions."
"If users live in Siberia, they don’t want ice cream, they want hot cookies out of the oven."
"We get designed into a corner when content designers are brought in only at the end to fix words."
"Start with content and placeholder UI, no lorem ipsum — words aren't decoration, they shape the interaction."
"The ideal ratio is one content designer to three product designers, no more."
"If you keep spinning on making the words work, you likely have an interaction problem, not a word problem."
"Building a champion at leadership level and starting with small wins helps change team adoption."
"Collaboration without ego is essential to elevate the work and build the right product."
"Style guides and content systems help scale quality content without bottlenecks from single gatekeepers."
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