Scope: Redesign end-to-end content for three loan products while transitioning to a new development platform

Goal: Streamline applications, increase security, improve Upload Docs experience, meet a11y standards

Stakeholders: Product Owner, Business Line, Dev, Risk & Compliance, UX Community of Practice, Marketing, Research, A11y

Process: Serving more than 50,000 companies per year with $600 million in funds annually, U.S. Bank's Quick Loans suite is a hugely important lifeline to small businesses weathering the ups and downs of a global pandemic. As the sole UX content strategist on the Digital Business Banking team, I worked closely with a visual designer and a UX architect, collaborating with an array of other stakeholders in the business line, dev, risk and compliance, marketing, research and a11y. Adding further complexity, U.S. Bank had recently begun leveraging shared, reusable content, which required awareness of how my changes could impact other teams' products (and vice versa). It was a tough balancing act to try to advocate for the user while contending with shared content modules, complex business needs, highly regulated legal requirements, and some serious dev limitations. However, armed with robust user research on previous releases, I was able to make improvements in a number of areas (for highlights, see Results).

Results:

• Condensed questions and reduced the number of screens from 43 to 34

• Replaced complex, insecure login with simple OTP

• Improved Upload Docs experience via adding a checklist, creating helper text for uncommon financial documents, and translating oddly formatted document names into standard English

• Greater accessibility thanks to more/improved screen-reader text, progress indicators, calculators, buttons and other elements.

More: Business loans at US Bank

Scope: Redesign content model, edit existing content, create better labels and user flows

Goal: Meet l10n standards, decrease abandonment rates, increase writer production speed in advance of official product launch

Stakeholders: Travel PM, Search, l10n

Process: As the project lead, I worked closely with the Travel PM. Aside from the main goals mentioned above, they wanted to help users better answer the question, "When should I book my vacation to X?" After an initial content audit, I designed and conducted usability tests that led to improved discoverability of the When to Visit page. The test subjects also defined the key aspects that were important to trip planners: peak travel, overall climate, storm seasons, monthly temperature, monthly precipitation, busy times, and major holidays. Then I performed a few quick rounds of writing and testing, reviewing each iteration with the Travel PM. Once finalized and approved, I updated the writing guidelines and created templates for the freelance writers. I was also able to provide the writers with proprietary weather data I sourced from the Search team. After QA of the content, I passed it along to the publishing pipeline and l10n.

Results:

• Localized for 6 languages

• Decreased abandonment rates

• Increased production speed more than 2x

• App received Fast Company Innovation By Design Award honorable mention

More: The Verge

Scope: Create microcopy and long-form descriptions of city, region, and country destinations

Goal: Assist users planning trips, boost hotel and flight bookings

Stakeholders: Search, Travel, engineering, legal, l10n

Process: Previously, when someone googled “Barcelona flights,” “Barcelona sights” or any other travel-related query, they’d get the same search results as everyone else. This would include the first few unhelpful lines from a generic Wikipedia entry in Google’s Knowledge Graph. Not very inspiring to someone thinking about booking a flight. And not very aligned with Search’s core mission to provide useful information. I was part of a small team that collaborated closely with Travel to iteratively design a content model that would capture each location's distinct character and top POIs. Destinations launched as an immersive experience in Search consisting of three components that worked separately or together: a 40-character, 100-character, and 50-word overview. This content appeared in Search, Google's core product, as well as in the Google Trips app and elsewhere. Ultimately, I helped create writing guidelines, templates, a glossary, and QA standards for the group of freelance writers who wrote the vast majority of the long tail.

Results: Although I wasn’t privy to the user engagement metrics, the product was successful enough that, after testing, we were tasked with creating 5,000+ destinations

More: Search Engine Land

Scope: Curate core experience and create all content

Goal: Make a fun, immersive app quickly and cheaply

Stakeholders: VR PM, engineering, marketing

Process: Cardboard, Google's answer to Facebook's Oculus headset, didn't have much content at first. In keeping with their scrappy origins, the goal was to scale up quickly and on a limited budget. I led a small team that leveraged Google's existing Street View imagery to transport users to destinations all over the world. Surprisingly, a major roadblock was the lack of images that were Google-owned, high quality, and easily discoverable without help from Maps or engineering teams. Despite that challenge, I was able to quickly identify exceptional places and images and sort them into site tours (Taj Mahal), themed categories (Beatles Landmarks), and narratives (The Iditarod). UX writing involved creating category labels, image captions, and VR-based user flows, which was new to me at the time. This is still my kids’ favorite app.

Results:

• Created all content in 6 weeks

• Second-most downloaded Google VR app in year of release

More: Daydream VR walk-through on YouTube

Scope: Design scalable microcopy models, build lexicon, create writing guidelines, QC content, audit aging content

Goal: Help users convert to a local business via Maps instead of third-party apps or sites

Stakeholders: Geo VP, Maps, Search, engineering, legal, l1on

Process: A massive, years-long undertaking, Place Summaries replaced algorithm-generated POI descriptions (unhelpful at best, unintelligible at worst) with human-crafted versions in Maps. The goal was to help users make smarter decisions about where to go. Working with Maps, Search, and other stakeholders, I was part of the team that designed a content model that scaled to millions of POIs across the globe and could be applied to disparate verticals (restaurants, shops, hotels, theme parks, museums, performance venues, even statues, beaches, and other public landmarks). The challenge was formidable: Create accurate, helpful descriptions in the Google voice for a global audience that were evergreen, l10n-friendly, and lawsuit-proof — that captured each place's unique personality — all in 40 characters or less. I learned that I love grappling with extreme constraints. Additionally, I helped build a lexicon, content standards, and training materials for hundreds of writers in dozens of countries. Ongoing, I QCed new content and audited old content. Because of my previous CMS experience at Zagat, I was chosen to collaborate with engineering teams to create a custom CMS and assist with machine learning.

Results: Although I wasn’t privy to user engagement metrics, the product was successful enough that, after testing, we were tasked with creating millions of destinations in dozens of languages

Scope: Perform content audit, review workflows, create content strategy plan

Goal: Speed up production, improve editorial content and UX

Stakeholders: CEO, CTO, CCO

Process: Chimani is a travel guide app specializing in US national parks. They hired me to deliver a comprehensive content strategy with the goals of improving the quality of their content and scaling it exponentially. After reviewing their content structure and production workflow, and conducting a usability study, I recommended opportunities to refine their UX (better information architecture, user flows, titles, labels, list ordering), streamline editorial models (evergreen, l1on, tiered lengths), and accelerate content creation (hiring process, content standards, training materials, tools, templates).

Results: Chimani quickly ramped up from 59 national parks to more than 1,500 national parks, national forests, wildlife refuges, and state parks