POSTED December 7, 2020
About our guest
Melissa Antonelli is a Principal UX Content Strategist at Zillow, where she supports their Closing Services team and ITX team, and helps Zillow build new products from the ground up.
She spoke with Tim Yeadon, Principal & Creative Director of Clyde Golden.
Mel and Tim Talked About
What it means to be a Principal UX Content Strategist at Zillow [1:05]
Finding where improvements need to be made, and what metrics to watch in a customer journey [5:13]
Zillow’s business model, how the company makes money [6:45]
Key differences between the roles of a marketing copywriter, a UX copywriter, and a content strategist [7:49]
The path Mel took to becoming a UX Content Strategist [13:26]
What is exciting about UX writing [22:44]
Advice for people who want to be a UX copywriter [25:10]
The value of cross team critiques, and getting exposure to multiple projects as a UX copywriter [29:42]
Advice for designers and product managers who are new to working with a content strategist [31:19]
Creating new job titles as a marketing tool [34:24]
Key takeaways from the UX writing class Mel taught at Seattle’s School of Visual Concepts [36:51]
Defining voice and tone, and what’s the difference anyways [39:15]
The future role of AI in the world of copywriters and content strategists, and how it may impact or change a marketer’s role [41:12]
Refferences
Quote by Ernest Hemingway from minute 3:20
“If a writer of prose knows enough about what he is writing about, he may omit things that he knows and the reader, if the writer is writing truly enough, will have a feeling of those things as strongly as though the writer had stated them. The dignity of movement of an iceberg is due to only one-eighth of it being above water”
The magazine Mel worked at in NYC: Travel and Leisure
The online question and answer forum Mel worked at: pearl.com, now JustAnswer
The School of Visual Concepts, SVC is a Seattle based school that “helps people already in the business of marketing, branding, design, UX, and content creation fill in the gaps in their knowledge through public workshops and custom corporate workshops.”
“Human language is the new UI layer, bots are like new applications, and digital assistants are meta apps. Intelligence is infused into all of your interactions..” - Satya Nadella (Microsoft CEO)
Podcast Transcript
Tim Yeadon: (00:13)
Wish me luck, and I'm going to read the intro. Mel Antonelli is a Principal UX Content Strategist here at Zillow in Seattle, where she's currently in the group mortgages team. There, she owns messaging for all Zillow and Trulia mortgage products on desktop, mobile web, and mobile apps.
Melissa Antonelli: (00:28)
Can I...
Tim: (00:28)
Working along... Yeah, lets -
Mel: (00:30)
Sorry, but that's actually outdated and I'm not on the mortgages team.
Tim: (00:34)
Let's edit this.
Mel: (00:35)
Okay. (laughs)
Tim: (00:36)
Okay. Help me, UX writer. What is the correct intro for you?
Mel: (00:40)
So, I am a Principal UX Content Strategist. I was in the mortgages team for five years, but now I support the Zillow closing services team and ITX team. Helping Zillow build new products from the ground up, which is really exciting.
Tim: (00:55)
Awesome. I was curious primarily about that title of yours and how to define it and break it down.
Mel: (01:05)
Sure. You and my mother. She has no idea what I do.
Tim: (01:05)
Well, we talked earlier and she has a few questions for you that she passed along to me. At Zillow, what does that mean to be a ‘principal UX content strategist’?
Mel: (01:20)
In the world of content strategy, you can talk to seven different content strategists and they all do something different, but the UX is there to denote that I do UX writing. So I'm on a product team. I'm working with UX designers. I'm helping build the product. So we're doing writing for doing, not reading, right? We're helping users accomplish tasks and helping the business meet goals.
Tim: (01:42)
Writing for doing and not reading. What does that mean?
Mel: (01:46)
It's actually a definition of UX writing that I have in the CX writing class that I taught this year. It means... People aren't coming to Zillow and using their products to read great content, they're there to accomplish a task. So with UX writing, you have two inches of space to explain something very complicated. And so writing for doing, not reading. You're writing to help people move forward in whatever task that they're trying to do or whatever flow they're in. You're not writing big, long paragraphs. You're not being descriptive and all these fun, flowery things you can do as a writer. But it's really helping people do things.
Tim: (02:34)
Well then how do you balance the brand with moving people forward?
Mel: (02:40)
I mean, that comes down to voice and tone. So the brand has a brand voice and has personality attributes, and you're putting those in there. And tone, thinking about where your user is. Thinking about what's their emotional state? What are they wanting to do? What are they not wanting to do? Having that deep user empathy to understand what they need. So it's a really fun way of writing because it's like this iceberg, where you can see just the top 10th of it and the rest of it, you don't know it's there, but it is and that's what adds to the dignity of it. It's like that Hemingway quote about the dignity of an iceberg. So it's like all of the work and understanding that you need to put into your work, and then the amount that that user is actually seeing, is quite different.
Tim: (03:39)
We didn't have UX copywriters when I first started off, this is about 15 years ago.
Mel: (03:45)
Oh yeah we didn't exist.
Tim: (03:45)
We were just copywriters. When did the UX copywriter become a discipline that was necessary?
Mel: (03:53)
You know, I'd say within the last 10 years. My first job as a UX writer was in 2012, beginning of 2012. And I wasn't even called a UX writer, I was just called a senior copywriter.
Tim: (04:07)
Right
Mel: (04:07)
But I was recruited to this team and I was on a product team. So I was, you know, I was on a product team with developers and a PM and a UX designer. And I was there to write the content. And it was something I didn't even know I was getting myself into. And then I got there and was like, "wow, I'm really good at this, and my mind works really well this way, and I love seeing metrics and data and A/B testing and seeing what really works with users. Because usually there's no right or wrong when you're writing because there's 20 ways to say the same thing. But if you have metrics and data and you're seeing results that the thing you wrote on the page is increasing revenue or helping users move forward in a place that they used to drop off. It's really powerful to see your impact.
Tim: (04:55)
So I have a similar arc in that I've done a lot of marketing, copywriting. But then I've done a lot of UX type writing as well. But it's not performance marketing. It's slightly different than that. Where I'm doing an email or a push notification. It's rather I'm trying to move somebody from one moment in time onto the next.
Mel: (05:13)
Yeah.
Tim: (05:13)
How do you test for that?
Mel: (05:17)
You're looking at what behavior you want to move forward, right? If you have a page that you know has drop off on it and in order to move forward, the user has to give you an email address and they don't want to give you an email address. So you're looking to see how many email addresses you're actually getting. So it's really about isolating what you're looking for. Cause you could change 20 things on a page and you don't know what it is, but if you isolate one variable and it's very clear to see what's happening,
Tim: (05:41)
I always find if they'll just give me the rules of the game, it's the most joyful game of all time. Let's see if I can beat the old number, can I beat the champion.
Mel: (05:48)
Yep.
Tim: (05:48)
So on average at Zillow, what types of metrics are you trying to improve?
Mel: (05:57)
I mean, depends on the team and the product and the project itself. When I was in the mortgage team, it was all about conversions, right? We were connecting would-be home buyers to mortgage lenders. And so did we make a connection or not? I don't work on the HDP...
Tim: (06:21)
What is HDP?
Mel: (06:23)
Home Details Page. That's an insider term. I will repeat myself and say, the page where you look at the pretty houses on Zillow.
Tim: (06:29)
Hey, thank you!
Mel: (06:29)
So something you might want to do there is get, get home shoppers to connect to an agent. You know, so it's, it's really about the end goal of the business and the user. So for the user to buy that house, they have to talk to this agent, so let's connect them, let's give them what they want.
Tim: (06:45)
How does Zillow make money? It would be driving leads to agents and then selling ads around media, in essence?
Mel: (06:53)
Yes, that's what they had done for a decade. But now is a really exciting time to be at this company because they're getting deeper into the transaction. So they're buying and selling homes, they are into the mortgage business. So they don't just sell leads to lenders. They actually are a lender themselves with Zillow home loans. And so you know, they say "we're trying to reimagine real estate right now." And it's actually a really exciting time to be there. So yeah, the revenue model there is completely changing.
Tim: (07:21)
It felt like it needed to, I suppose.
Mel: (07:24)
Yeah. I mean, I think Zillow has always been innovative and we were doing the same thing for a long time and we're still doing that business. That still is a very healthy business for Zillow, but you know, times have changed and people change and you know, people want to buy houses quicker and they want to eliminate the hassle of moving and showings and all of that. And so that's what Zillow is helping facilitate through this buying and selling of homes.
Tim: (07:49)
I think we've done this, but I knew that when I chatted with you, I wanted to, for myself and for listeners to find the difference between a marketing copywriter and a UX copywriter and a content strategist.
Mel: (08:01)
OK
Tim: (08:01)
According to you, how would you divide those up? Because you've been all three. You are all three.
Mel: (08:09)
Yeah I have been and I spent many years as a consultant and that's one of the things I love the most is like being a consultant and working on multiple different things. I think UX writing is definitely my biggest strength and the thing I enjoy most. But yeah, I certainly can do them all and I have in my career, which has been awesome. UX writing is really writing UI strings in a product and in a user experience. Content strategy is interesting.
So like five years ago I was at a content strategy conference. And the reason why earlier I said, you could talk to seven people and they all do something different. I was talking to six people at this... it was in New Orleans and we're at this bar on Bourbon Street, overlooking all the people with beads and stuff. And I'm talking to six people, there's seven of us. Each of us had content strategy in our title and each of us did something different.
So in a world where you have this new kind of industry happening with UX writing, now UX writers are called content strategists, but not all content strategists are UX writers. At Facebook, they have 300 content strategists, but most of them are UX writers. So, and then now there's a new trend of calling us content designers. And I think that's a way to help them understand we're shaping the design through content, not just the words. So the words are an equal compositional elements to line, shape, and form in design. It's just we are an individual who just does the words.
So with content strategy at Zillow, we do the UX writing but we also have content strategists who do other things. So it's again, complicated. But yeah, I would say the part of our job as content strategist is the, not the writing of the UI strings, but the part about developing product content standards and ensuring consistency across all lines of business, across - if you go on the home page of Zillow and you're trying to look at homes or if you're trying to get a mortgage or you're trying to rent a house, are you going to see the same language? Are you going to have the same voice? Are you going to feel like this is at the same company? And so that's kind of part of the things of what we do as content strategists.
And then I guess I haven't gotten into marketing writing. Marketing is... It's selling a product, right? So you're trying to get - I feel like marketing is up funnel, and UX writing is as down funnel as you can get. Right? So marketing is like, come see this great thing. And then UX writing is like, here's that great thing that we told you about. And now you're in it.
Tim: (10:57)
I find that UX writing is just a series of small riddles. Little pathways that I'm trying to open up for people.
Mel: (11:05)
Yeah!
Tim: (11:05)
And the marketing piece often is this... I suppose that's interesting, it's top of the funnel. It's drawing people in. Though they walk shoulder and shoulder the entire way along the customer journey because there's engagement, there's win-back, there's "we screwed up" sorts of notes, you know? Do you find any tension between the two groups?
Mel: (11:29)
I wouldn't quite call it tension, but there is kind of gray areas, as you were saying. What's in the realm of marketing? What's in the realm of UX writing? We have product marketing managers that work at Zillow who, they're working with marketing copywriters and they're working with UX writers because they're the ones who are establishing those reasons to believe and that value prop. So you do want to work closely with a marketing team and I would say if you're at a company and you're UX writing and you don't talk to the marketing team, you're probably not writing the best content that you can, because the messaging needs to be consistent from the top of the funnel to the very end. And at the very end marketing comes back in and does the remarketing trying to bring people back in.
With the UX writing, I can't tell you how many times I've written upsell. I'm like writing this upsell, right? I'm trying to upsell someone into a product which is technically marketing, but it's part of the experience. So I own it, but you know, when I was on the mortgages team, I used to tell people it was my job to get people to eat their vegetables. Because people came to Zillow to look at houses and dream, and it's so fun. And when it comes to the mortgage and seeing user research it's so overwhelming, it's so hard, it's this huge financial transaction, it's cumbersome, it's overwhelming. And they're just like, okay, I'll sign on the line I don't want to think about it.
And so that's why they want a lender that can trust, who can walk them through the process. But I was on the mortgage team and I was like, "here, come get a mortgage. Come learn about mortgages." And nobody wanted to learn about mortgages, they wanted to look at pretty houses. So that's why I was like, "my job is to get them to eat their vegetables." You don't want them, they're not as fun as the cake, but you need them. They're good for you.
Tim: (13:13)
To your user it's all just Zillow to them. Whether it's marketing or UX.
Mel: (13:17)
Yeah, exactly. It's one experience to the user, and that's why it's really important for marketing and UX to really be aligned,
Tim: (13:26)
I'd like to hear about how you got into copywriting. I was looking at your LinkedIn, your master's is in journalism.
Mel: (13:31)
Yep.
Tim: (13:31)
And you don't need a master’s to be a copywriter.
Mel: (13:34)
No.
Tim: (13:34)
I think, to become a copywriter, technically you look in the mirror and you declare “I am a copywriter.”
Mel: (13:40)
Yeah.
Tim: (13:40)
And then you are a copywriter.
Mel: (13:44)
Well you also have to be good at it because people will stop hiring you if you're not good.
Tim: (13:48)
Fine. So I'd like to hear about your arc and why you didn't pursue a journalism career. And instead you went into product or marketing.
Mel: (13:57)
Yeah. It's actually a very fun story. I like the way that my life has turned out. And it wasn't an intentional choice to get into UX, although it's what I love to do, and I'm really good at it and I wouldn't change it. I got a Master's in Journalism from NYU. So living in New York and I was working at a travel magazine. Travel and Leisure, their family edition. And I was recording stories from a desk, you know, I was a researcher and I was doing research for other people's stories. I wasn't even out in Chicago or Belarus or wherever. I was sitting at a desk in Midtown Manhattan. And I gotta be honest, I don't like Midtown. I don't like to go above 14th Street. (laughs)
Tim: (14:45)
Right.
Mel: (14:45)
So I'm doing the commute from Brooklyn all the way up there. And I just wasn't happy, and I finished my masters and I wanted to have an adventure. So I put all my stuff in storage and I got a working holiday visa, and I went to New Zealand, all by myself. And I'm like, what am I doing? This is crazy. So while I was in New Zealand- So this is 2007 - and while I was in New Zealand, that was when the big financial crisis happened and I had been freelancing. So I'd been writing articles and being paid very well as a freelancer. And my plan was to freelance and travel around New Zealand, and have this adventurous life. And then one by one, all my contacts in the magazine and newspaper world were like, "we lost our freelance budget."
So I was like, huh. Interesting. And so I'm living in New Zealand having this crazy adventure. I sang with cover bands, and I was a body paint model, so I got painted and did events and stuff. And I worked at a sheep farm and I just hopped around, the visa had allowed me to do temporary work. And so I was having this amazing life and my friends who are working in journalism were all getting laid off. And my friends working at The New York Times were getting laid off. And I was like, "wow, okay. I'm just going to be happy over here in New Zealand for a minute and I'll come back later." And when I came back I just didn't want to be in the Northeast anymore. And I drove out to California and landed in San Francisco. And I was like, "wow, I love it here."
And it reminded me of a very big Wellington. And I spent half my time in New Zealand in Wellington. And so I felt at home there. I ended up getting a job at a startup in Mountain View. And I was a copywriter. So the way that I got it's funny, the way that I got that job was the woman who hired me also went to the same master's program as me. And they found me, I didn't even find them. She found me and she said, I needed someone who was a really good writer and I'm a really good writer and I went to the NYU journalism program. And she literally looked for someone who went to the NYU journalism program, and that's how I ended up there.
So I worked at this company, this startup, and I was there for a year and they did a reorg and they laid me off and they're like, "we don't have a position for you anymore. We don't have a full-time position, but we have these two things you did really, really well. And can we pay you to just do those things?" And I'm like, "wait, so I don't have to commute to Mountain View from San Francisco and you basically want to pay me more to do these things. Okay, I'll do this."
And that's actually what launched me into a three year consultancy. They were my first client and I got more clients all through word of mouth. And I just loved it. I worked with small businesses, I optimized their websites. I created websites from scratch. I did SEO. I did pretty much everything. Even a little bit of UX, but I didn't know it was UX at the time.
So yeah, it was great. And I lived in San Francisco. I had a place in Tahoe, so I would literally spend two weeks in each. In the winter I would just take a lunch break and go snowboard because I had two ski lifts in my neighborhood in Tahoe. It was really great. And I was like, I'm never working in an office again. And you know, you never say never. So on a Wednesday or Thursday, I got a call from a recruiter about this job. Talked to the recruiter, talked to the hiring manager, went in on Monday for an interview and by Tuesday, I signed a contract and so that was my first job in UX.
Tim: (18:36)
And where were you at?
Mel: (18:36)
That was at, the company was called pearl.com, but JustAnswer is the name now we kind of went back and forth between names.
Tim: (18:42)
It's called JustAnswer?
Mel: (18:42)
JustAnswer. Yeah. It's an online question and answer form where you can pay to ask questions to doctors, lawyers, vets, whatever. So I ended up at this job and that's the one I was talking about earlier where I just was like, "Oh I'm on the product team, what is this? What is agile? What's happening? What are developers?" You know? So it was my first- Well I knew what, developers where we always had them at my job in Mountain View. But I hadn't been on a team with them. And so, yeah, that was my first UX writing job, and I loved it. That's been my career ever since. So it was that one call from that recruiter who brought me in.
Tim: (19:28)
It's a random... it's who you know, or there's some connection that draws you in and you don't even know it's coming.
Mel: (19:32)
Yeah. I have no idea, and like I said, I was not looking to join a team in a building. I wanted to write from Tahoe. And I sublet my place in San Francisco. And I worked in Italy for six weeks. I love this freelance lifestyle, but then as it turns out, I liked the UX writing more.
Tim: (19:52)
So you went from Pearl, then you were at Amazon for several years.
Mel: (19:56)
I moved to Seattle for my now husband. Leaving my job at Pearl, JustAnswer, was actually really hard because I loved it so much. But I wanted to take a chance on this person who I now have children with and love and have an amazing life and relationship. So great move. But I ended up getting a job at Amazon and moving up to Seattle.
Tim: (20:19)
How did you feel about the role of messaging at Amazon?
Mel: (20:21)
It was... uh. Grueling.
Tim: (20:28)
Grueling!
Mel: (20:28)
(laughs) is the word. Amazon's... You know, it's a tough place. I mean, I think things have changed there, but you're really pushed to your limits in terms of workflow and amount of work that you have. And it was a hard two years, but I learned a lot and people ask me, "what did I get out of working at Amazon?" And I would say, "I got really fast."
Tim: (20:56)
Yeah.
Mel: (20:56)
I got really fast because you have so much to do, and you can work a 12 hour day, or you can work a nine hour day. If you work really efficiently and make quick decisions and make good decisions and don't make mistakes. If you make a mistake then you have to fix it. So it really drove it into me to like operate at my fullest capacity, which is actually a skill. And I'm really glad that I learned that at Amazon.
Tim: (21:21)
I found that I worked in news rooms for about six years, and the speed there of, talk to somebody, assimilate quickly, knock something out. It's coherent, it's clean, it's to length.
Mel: (21:33)
You know, no errors in it and-
Tim: (21:36)
Made it past the sensors. I'm still pretty quick, and I think that for me copywriting was the one thing that- All of those steps, and the speed necessary, and the succinctness that was needed felt right. But you're right that versus journalism, copywriting allowed me to pay my rent on time and maybe even save a couple of dollars and it was still really interesting to go and learn a company's business. To get to go in and for it not to be- versus I show up as a reporter, and I have a few questions and it's tension, cause there's no promise of what I'm gonna write. Versus I'm going to come in and I'm going to learn your business and I'm going to try to create something relevant for you that attracts customers. Equally difficult, different part of the brain. But preferable let's put it that way.
Mel: (22:23)
Yeah. Yeah.
Tim: (22:25)
So it's been... You have been doing this 15 years-ish?
Mel: (22:30)
Or more. I started freelance writing when I was in college. Writing articles and getting paid for it. Like, "what you're going to- really?" Like, it was surprising to me. I loved it.
Tim: (22:44)
What still keeps you excited about this? Or are there moments that you felt like you have written? Cause I have moments like that where I think I'm a copywriter who has written. Like let's just do some art direction for a month or two.
Mel: (22:59)
Yeah. When I was at Amazon, I was just exhausted all the time. And you kind of take the joy out of writing for me, cause it was just go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go all the time. And I lost some of my creativity and that drive. And I thought, I don't want to be a copywriter anymore. I want to be a product manager. Because I'm an ideas person. I love having ideas. And I think that is why I like UX writing is because there's always AB testing and hypothesis about what the data's saying and have an idea of how you can make things better for the user and then you test it and you're right. And you're like, "yeah!" It's so exciting. Like that is so awesome. I love having an impact.
But I thought, "Oh God, I don't think I want to do this anymore. I think I want to be a product manager." So I actually, the great thing is that Amazon had a product manager training program. And so they were like, "we can hire these PMs from other companies and train them to do the things the Amazon way, or we can build from the inside." So I applied to this program and I got into it and there was a moment, like I remember the exact moment that I realized I wanted to be a writer, and that I am a writer. I was working on this feature and I had my PM trainer and I was working with a UX designer and getting the designs right. And I said, "okay, now I just want to optimize this copy." My PM looked at me and he said, "no, no, no, we don't write." And I looked at him and I'm like, "I do." (laughs)
Tim: (24:35)
Yeah. (laughs)
Mel: (24:35)
I just realized that's the thing that I'm passionate about. It's what I'm good at. It's something that if I were just copywriting or marketing writing I would lose the drive. But I think where the UX writing it has that impact that I love to see. And it has this kind of like seven dimensional type of thinking where you're putting yourself in a user's shoes and thinking about what they may be feeling. And I'm a very empathic person. So it just really suits me and the way that I operate in a way that I like to think in the way that I like to make an impact.
Tim: (25:10)
I would imagine there are times that people come to you and they say, I want to be a copywriter. Do you have any advice for me?
Mel: (25:14)
Oh, I get people reaching out to me on LinkedIn all the time. Like young copywriters who are trying to get into UX writing. I've had at least five people that I've talked to over the years that reach out to me and they're like so appreciative of my time, but I find it very flattering and I find it very empowering in a way. Because I wish that I had someone to talk to, but there wasn't anyone to talk to cause it wasn't a thing when I started doing it. It helps me feel like I get to do the thing that I wish that I had. So it makes me feel good. But they reach out to me and they're like, how do I get into this industry? Cause companies really want UX writers, but they want UX writers with experience. So how do you get experience to get this job?
Tim: (25:58)
Well, what do you tell them?
Mel: (26:03)
I tell them to focus on data. So if they're creating a portfolio of their copywriting, if they can show the results of what they're doing, if they can walk the hiring manager through the process of how they're thinking about problems, about how they're solving problems through content, that's really what you want to do as a UX writer is you want to solve problems through the content you're writing. It's about showing the thinking behind your work so that the hiring manager can take that and see if there's transferable skills. Because if you're a fantastic writer, it doesn't mean you're going to be a fantastic UX writer.
Tim: (26:40)
Right. I like to see with a designer- Sometimes I don't mind seeing a sketch or some process and I want to see transparency, and you may have brought me something amazing, but what was your actual role in this? And what was your feeling, or your understanding, of the bigger picture and how did you impact the team as a whole?
Mel: (26:58)
Yeah, because as a UX writer, you're not working with other writers. You're working with designers and product managers and developers and the legal team and everybody. I think that's really important too. And when it comes to hiring a UX writer, you want to see samples of their work. I've actually told people, "if you don't have anything in your portfolio that could be seen as transferable, literally go to a website, improve it and put that in your portfolio." I know it's creating extra work for yourself, but prove that you can do the thing that they want to hire you to do.
Tim: (27:37)
I always look for- if they don't have any experience in a specific field, if they've been out hustling and they always seem to scrape up some gig and they always seem to write something. You know, they always seem to be the person that the writing goes to in the end, you can see that. In that writers are gonna write. And no matter whether they have a marketing job or not, one way or another they are going to be editing something- one way or another they'll end up picking up a website, whether they made 50 bucks or not off the thing. And that's all I'm ever looking for is that a little bit of fire, that it's like one way or another I'm a writer and this is how it turns out. Do you see anything inherent in copywriters? Or is there something that just can't be taught?
Mel: (28:22)
I think, I don't know if I can answer that question. Funny thing is, is like I am a writer and I don't know that many writers. In my career I've often been the only writer on the team that I'm on. So I can think of all the great writers that I know, and I feel like they're also individual and unique that I can't really pinpoint one specific thing. I guess if I had to choose, I would say someone who understands people. So it's that kind of deep user empathy that I talked about, where it's like, you understand your audience and you can speak to them. And so you have to be kind of a sensitive empathic person to understand, "well, like, okay, I'm trying to get someone to do X and they want to do Y but what do they need to hear in order to remove that barrier or that resistance to doing the thing that I want them to do." So you have to understand people and understand your audience.
Tim: (29:25)
Well, the empathy part is spot on. I mean, narcissists don't make for good copywriters.
Mel: (29:30)
(laughs) No way.
Tim: (29:34)
Narcissists don't make for good anything, from what I can tell.
Mel: (29:37)
Maybe president? Just kidding. (laughs).
Tim: (29:42)
(laughs) It's interesting that you don't know a lot of writers, and I can say that often you don't put two writers in the same room because there's just too many problems to be solved. I can't have two writers on the same problem. I'm going to put them in different rooms and solve a bunch of problems.
Mel: (29:57)
Yeah!
Tim: (29:57)
And I think an advantage that a writer has in marketing or in UX, is that often there's one writer for every five, six, seven, eight designers. And we tend to see every single project and they see one or two projects all the way through.
Mel: (30:14)
Yeah.
Tim: (30:15)
I feel like that gave me a nice tour through the process, through personalities, different types of projects. In that I'd see everything and I'd say, "well, you know, such-and-such solved it like this over there. We should go take a look at that."
Mel: (30:28)
Yeah.
Tim: (30:28)
It was almost an unfair advantage that I had.
Mel: (30:30)
Yeah. Yeah. And I've seen that, but I also feel like at least that Zillow, the team is so good about sharing and having cross team critiques and things like that. And they know especially since we're getting deeper into the home buying and selling transaction, every designer might be working on different projects, but they may be working with the same user. And so we're having these cognitive walkthroughs to see - they get from here and all the way to here. And so then walk through two or three designer's projects to see what the entire experience looks like. So I'd say yes, I hear you what you're saying, but if your company is thinking well about it, if the team at large is thinking about it, then there are ways to help the designer see everything.
Tim: (31:19)
For a designer or a product manager who has never worked with a content strategist. What guidance do you have for them? Or what advice do you have for them?
Mel: (31:32)
See your content strategist or UX writer as a partner and see them as part of the design process. At Zillow, I was the only content strategist for a number of years. I had PMs who had never worked with content before. And they were used to bringing in someone at the very end to polish the words. And that's not what a UX writer does, they're there for the entire experience. And so I had to kind of fight my way into the room to be there for the white boarding sessions and the brainstormings and all of this. And I had to, in a way, prove my worth and so they could see, "Oh, Mel worked on this thing and had this idea and fixed this copy, and now we've increased our revenue or we've increased conversions or whatever." So I had to kind of prove my worth.
I didn't have a greater content strategy team to lean on for support or encouragement. It was, it was a little isolating and a little lonely. But eventually I was seen as a very valuable part of the team and ended up loving this particular product manager. These days, it's more common to have a writer on the team. The team that I just joined at Zillow. So I switched teams and I'm on this amazing team. And I love everybody on the team and I work really well with them,. They needed content strategy support and they were asking for it, and asking for it. And when I finally got there, they knew the value I was going to bring, they knew that they needed content support, and they were so grateful to have me there. And I was like, "I never felt this way before. thank you so much!" It felt really good to just be instantly valued and understood for the value that I can bring.
But a lot of times - and I talked to a UX writer recently from LinkedIn, who's looking for career advice and she's like, "how do you get in the room earlier? Cause they want to bring me on at the end." I feel like that's the biggest mistake to make with a content person. They need to really understand all of the context to be able to write effectively and to do their job the best that they can.
Tim: (33:46)
Yeah words and music need to come together to make the song.
Mel: (33:51)
Yeah! And I always say, "words can shape the design as much as design can shape the words."
Tim: (33:56)
Oh, absolutely. Yeah. The idea that a writer's going to come in and fill buckets at the end is very insulting.
Mel: (34:04)
Wasn't it like in the eighties that the ad agencies learned that if you take the writers on the third floor, and move them to the designers on the second floor, that you have better end result?
Tim: (34:15)
The idea is better. People are working in concert as you go through. It's quicker.
Mel: (34:24)
Yeah.
Tim: (34:24)
So in listening to you, it occurred to me that perhaps the term UX writer was invented by UX writers as a marketing piece so people understood what you would do.
Mel: (34:39)
(laughs) Yeah.
Tim: (34:39)
So UX writing. That's simply a marketing term that we use for copywriters.
Mel: (34:45)
And the new marketing term is content designer. And who knows what comes after that.
Tim: (34:49)
Yeah. And you know, I've interviewed lots of people over time for positions. UX designer, there was a moment where there were designers with 25, 30 years of experience who had been solving extremely difficult problems. And certain people are just built that way, that the riddles go to that person. And now they're called UX designers. At my agency, I don't specifically have UX vs. Visual or not. We just solve riddles and we work together as a team. There are times that I really need a specific person. I think we'll get to a size where bandwidth wise, I'm going to need to have a specific UX designer, have a specific visual designer. I'm probably the closest thing we have to a UX writer. But sometimes our designers are just as good a writer as I am. I find.
Mel: (35:46)
Yeah.
Tim: (35:46)
You just gotta be open to that.
Mel: (35:49)
Up until just a few years ago, UX designers had to be UX writers. That was a part of their job. And so I taught this UX Writing class at the School of Visual Concepts this year. And the class was created by these two amazing UX writer content strategists, who I've seen speak at conferences and stuff. And they're awesome. And they created this class. They actually went to the director of the school and said, "okay, so you have a UX design certificate where people come and learn how to be UX designers, but you don't teach them how to write and as a UX designer, especially if you're not working for the Amazons or the Googles or the Zillow's, you're writing your own content or the PM's writing the content or the developers are writing content." And so they were like, "look, you need to teach these designers how to write." And that's how the class was created. And I was invited to teach it this year and I absolutely loved it. But yeah, a lot of times designers have to be the writer.
Tim: (36:51)
What are the key things that people would learn in the SVC class that you taught?
Mel: (36:56)
So it was a five week course and each course had a different topic. And so one course was about you know, basic UX writing principles. There was a course on voice and tone. There was a course on the “Happy Path.” So learning how to keep users on the Happy Path and doing user flows and things like that. And then we had a course, a whole three hour class just on error strings. You know, it was like what happens when I get off the Happy Path? And then throughout the course, we had them create a portfolio piece. So we gave them a website that needed a lot of help and had them basically rewrite a user journey in a user flow in this website. And so the final class was portfolio presentations.
Tim: (37:40)
So could you give me a point or two from each one of those that would be worth as a takeaway?
Mel: (37:48)
Yes, I could. Okay. So the UX principles, be concise, be purposeful and be conversational and human are the the three principles. For the 'golden path' and for the 'getting off the golden path', it's about having a conversation with your user, and considering the digital experience an extension of the in-real-life experience. So if you're going to go to the Nordstrom website, how can you make the website feel like the sales associate from the store?
The falling off the golden path course. I mean, it's all about error strings. And I have a lot of feelings about error strings, which is that you never blame the user. It's never their fault. It's always the business's fault. Even if the user made a mistake, it's because your design, your experience didn't make sense to them. So it's always our fault. And when something happens, that's not expected. It's a very sensitive moment for the user like, "Oh, something happened" and the text is in red and maybe you did an exclamation point, which you should never use in an error string because it looks like you're yelling. So yeah, it's like a very sensitive moment that you have to tread carefully and be kind and always show the path forward. Don't just say something went wrong, tell them what they can do to fix it.
Tim: (39:15)
And then how do you define voice and tone?
Mel: (39:18)
Voice is the human that your brand would be. Tone is the emotion that you're having in any given moment. So the example that I put into the classes is I had a picture of this really angry Mickey Mouse, and then have a picture of really happy Mickey Mouse. And I was like, this is Mickey. The angry Mickey is the one who found out how much we charge per ticket at Disney world. He's so mad. But then he sees the kids come in and the happy Mickey mouse is like children, you know? And so I say, the voice is Mickey Mouse. He's Mickey Mouse whether he's mad or unhappy, but his tone is either angry or excited. So tone is circumstantial and voice is fixed.
Tim: (40:04)
Sometimes I think of the two as your voice is the sum of your tones. All the tones in which I express over time, you in your mind, they'll leave some sort of residual impact. That's my brand, that's my voice, voice and brand are fairly synonymous to me. And then tone is - I mean, you are a sum of your actions and that's how you see me as. So tone is just all the little moments along the time. And I got to get it just right according to who you are and what the situation is.
Mel: (40:35)
Yeah. That's a really interesting way to think about it. I like that.
Tim: (40:37)
It took me a long time to figure out, and I've made a lot of definitions on that one.
Mel: (40:45)
I think I had like four slides of just definitions of voice and tone. Cause you got to drive it through and people are always like, "Oh, it's the voice and tone". They put it together because they don't know how to separate the two they're like, "Oh, it's voice and tone. I don't know which is which", but yeah, I tried to really break it down.
Tim: (41:01)
Do you think visual designers cringe when we say “look and feel”?
Mel: (41:06)
I don't think so.
Tim: (41:06)
I don't know, nobody's ever asked them, we should ask them.
Mel: (41:10)
No because I hear visual designers talk about look and feel.
Tim: (41:12)
Yeah well, precision matters. Maybe we should think that one through just a little bit. Going forward as a copywriter, as a content strategist, do you think that we'll be replaced by AI?
Mel: (41:27)
I don't think so. I've actually read that as a writer, our job is one of the ones that's not able to be automated and therefore very safe. I remember a couple of years ago seeing ratings of which jobs were meant to be automated. And developers who are the most kind of valued employees at tech companies. Cause they're really building the things. Even their jobs are more liable to be automated than a writer cause that creativity, that human voice. And there's a quote from the CEO of Microsoft. He says like "human language is the new UI layer," So it's this human language that computers can't figure out.
Tim: (42:15)
We did some work over the past few years with a FinTech company over in Bellevue who had a platform, they were selling insurance, and it was an AI platform. And the platform was endlessly testing to figure out when was the human needed in the process. As in, when was empathy required, therefore let's get a human on the phone and talk to these people. Because there are just certain things that automation couldn't cover. There's a certain complexity or just, you're working through a difficult situation. Say it's a home loan and I have questions about what does it mean to buy a point? And you can describe it to me a handful of different ways, but there might just be a moment to truly finish the sale. I need to speak to a human. My feeling is that that's what we will need to be able to do for our clients, is help them identify when a human is needed and then provide that.
Mel: (43:10)
Yeah.
Tim: (43:10)
And even so, the machine can still serve up a script to the human talking, I just need the human voice.
Mel: (43:14)
But, who is writing the script? It's the UX writer. Because I write scripts for humans.
Tim: (43:21)
Absolutely.
Mel: (43:22)
The computer's not going to do that one.
Tim: (43:24)
One of my all time favorite gigs. Well, thank you very much for joining me today.
Mel: (43:29)
Yeah! This has been really fun. Thank you for having me.
Tim: (43:31)
I really appreciated it. Have a great day.