Intro
Welcome to Spotlight, your gateway to the UX/ Content Design world, through a distinctive series of interviews that spotlight the industry's leading voices. Our succinct, direct-to-the-point approach poses ±10 sharp questions to veterans and rising stars, gathering insights and perspectives shaping the UX scene.
Meet our guest ⸻ Dr. Kate Agena, PhD, Head of Content Design & Strategy at McAfee
Few figures in UX, content, and design shine as brightly as Dr. Kate Agena, PhD / PMP®.
Kate is a seasoned content design and strategy expert with over 18 years of experience in the software industry. Her current role at McAfee involves leading content design and strategy for various consumer products, including mobile, web, and desktop applications. Their products provide comprehensive online protection, covering identity safety, privacy, and device security. Her expertise and leadership are pivotal in shaping the content direction for these consumer-centric cybersecurity solutions.
Kate has built her career on a foundation of continuous learning and a passion for words. She demonstrates a versatile leadership style with over 12 years of experience in remote leadership and team management.
Kate is skilled at collaboration and strategy as an organizational leader. She values transparency and supportiveness in people management and is committed to creating cohesive, brand-centric, and user-focused content as a specialist. Her strengths lie in fostering thought partnerships, developing top talent, and advocating for the strategic role of content and design in business. She also ensures content quality through innovative systems and technologies.
Her advocacy for integrating content-led design into software development dates back to her 2006 doctoral dissertation, highlighting her long-standing commitment to this approach.
Today, we're fortunate to gain insights directly from Kate. Through 10 carefully crafted questions, we seek to explore the core of her career journey and her content design methodology. Our focus is on understanding how she integrates research, transparency, and genuine interdisciplinary collaboration, particularly emphasizing the early involvement of content designers in her work process.
Without further ado, let's get to the Q&A:
10 Questions with Kate Agena
You lead content design and strategy at McAfee. What does your day-to-day look like?
My day-to-day managing the content design practice at McAfee varies depending on company priorities and product needs.
Currently, my focus is on implementing GenAI technology to enhance the quality and consistency of customer-facing content. I introduced the Writer platform to McAfee, trained it on our style guide, and am driving its adoption across the company. Additionally, I collaborate with teams training LLMs for new product features to ensure they benefit from our content expertise and align with McAfee style/voice.
I work closely with our UX research leader to understand how to build trust with customers and develop educational content that aligns with their existing mental model and knowledge.
While we’ve made progress by building out content in the design system, we are still working on establishing content patterns and components.
And of course, I manage the team by balancing workloads, addressing roadblocks, and supporting skill and career development.
What are the tools you use in your workday? Are you more of a synchronous or asynchronous person? And what do you prefer more?
We use Slack for most communication, Outlook when an email is necessary, Teams for meetings, and a lot of collaboration happens via Figma or FigJam. In my experience working remote for over 12 years, a combination of synchronous and asynchronous is best — you have time to connect and do real-time collaboration, but you also get some freedom for your own heads-down work time.
Does your role involve writing content? If so, what tools do you use for that? And how does content hand off work to other UXers?
I collaborate with our content designers as a coach, guide, and sometimes editor. My team writes directly in Figma, using Writer as a grammar and style checker. We use Ditto for string management. A lot of brainstorming and design thinking happens in FigJam. Since the UXers are all working together in Figma, there’s no real hand-off within the larger design team.
As the leader of content design and strategy, what profiles do you constantly work with (UX Designers, Devs, Content Designers, PMs, etc.)?
In content design, it’s always important to be proactive and not wait for others to come to you. I’m typically working with almost everyone in the design org, but I purposely connect regularly with leaders from product management, product marketing, support, and localization. I also try to align with marketing in terms of overall narrative and as an advocate for the craft of writing across the e2e experience.
As McAfee is a global company, how do you oversee content worldwide? Is localization part of your responsibilities? Can you elaborate on how it works, from validating the copy and ensuring the localization matches the region (e.g. Canada "French/ Quebec") to pushing it to code? And what tools do you use for that?
At McAfee, we have an amazing localization team that handles translation/transcreation. My involvement is limited to helping define terminology and having my team make a unique version of the content for a specific geo when necessary. Before Ditto, localization had to wait for engineering to code our content before they could start translation. Ditto allows that we can export a JSON file directly from Figma to be picked up by engineering and localization at the same time, which is a gamechanger for translation schedules.
As a product team with the responsibility to provide online protection to users under McAfee's umbrella suite of products. How often do you collaborate with legal teams? What process do you follow to collaborate with them? Do you have an internal legal team or consult an external law firm?
All of our product content must be approved by our internal legal team. This process is owned by content designers. We have an internal tool where the content designer enters a ticket for legal follow-up. There might be a walk-through of the Figma file depending on complexity.
It is common for UX teams to skip the research phase to save time waiting for UX researchers to prepare and deliver their results in a presentable format that they can reuse. What's your take on this?
I’d like to say that we’ve got it all sorted out and that content is always present and contributing from the beginning of the design process, but it still varies a lot. Right now, we are doing content-led design for onboarding and for AI products. For most product features, a designer takes the lead with close collaboration from content and research. Unfortunately, there are definitely still times when the content designer isn’t included from the start. Occasionally, we agree to do only a final edit for some lower-priority projects that don’t have full content support, but obviously this isn’t ideal for delivering a great product.
Even with a ratio of 1 content designer to every 4 designers, which is considered good, it’s often impossible for content designers to be present throughout the whole process. So, I try to intentionally distribute focus to projects where content has the most potential.
How do misunderstandings from leadership about UX writing and content design potentially undermine the success of a product or service? And how do you overcome that, both towards them and towards your team, to keep them motivated?
We talk so much about advocacy in UX content design — and UX design in general — because so many companies don’t understand the importance of experience in the success of a product or service. Or maybe they just don’t understand how to enable a design org to get the experience they know they need. If the culture of a company doesn’t include space for design to lead in decisions about the products, there’s a lot that needs to happen before design can deliver its real value.
There's definitely a constant effort to change the culture, change the language used when talking about the product development process and how outcomes are measured, and to develop maturity in how the company works together as a whole.
My team is currently developing a Content Ops Playbook that defines what we do and how to work with us. This is one tool that can help content designers navigate these challenges, but I don’t expect these issues to disappear soon.
At Punkt, we are revolutionizing the industry by building a Content-First UX platform where Content Designers and UX Writers lead the product design process. What do you think about that? And how close is that to an ideal world for content teams?
I’m positive there are many cases where the best person to lead the product design process is a content designer — the interaction the user has with content (and I don’t mean only the copy) needs to be right before anything else can be. For me, I think the ideal world is where everyone working to create a product is able to fully contribute based on their strengths, no matter their specific title. And for that to happen, we need to find better ways of working together.
Finally— What advice would you give someone looking to become a Content Designer/Content Strategist?
Put care into your craft as a writer, understand UX interaction design and research, find ways GenAI can make you more creative/consistent/efficient, and constantly ask questions.
👋 Don't forget to follow Kate
LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/kate-agena
☺︎ ADPList https://adplist.org/mentors/kate-agena
Intro
Welcome to Spotlight, your gateway to the UX/ Content Design world, through a distinctive series of interviews that spotlight the industry's leading voices. Our succinct, direct-to-the-point approach poses ±10 sharp questions to veterans and rising stars, gathering insights and perspectives shaping the UX scene.
Meet our guest ⸻ Dr. Kate Agena, PhD, Head of Content Design & Strategy at McAfee
Few figures in UX, content, and design shine as brightly as Dr. Kate Agena, PhD / PMP®.
Kate is a seasoned content design and strategy expert with over 18 years of experience in the software industry. Her current role at McAfee involves leading content design and strategy for various consumer products, including mobile, web, and desktop applications. Their products provide comprehensive online protection, covering identity safety, privacy, and device security. Her expertise and leadership are pivotal in shaping the content direction for these consumer-centric cybersecurity solutions.
Kate has built her career on a foundation of continuous learning and a passion for words. She demonstrates a versatile leadership style with over 12 years of experience in remote leadership and team management.
Kate is skilled at collaboration and strategy as an organizational leader. She values transparency and supportiveness in people management and is committed to creating cohesive, brand-centric, and user-focused content as a specialist. Her strengths lie in fostering thought partnerships, developing top talent, and advocating for the strategic role of content and design in business. She also ensures content quality through innovative systems and technologies.
Her advocacy for integrating content-led design into software development dates back to her 2006 doctoral dissertation, highlighting her long-standing commitment to this approach.
Today, we're fortunate to gain insights directly from Kate. Through 10 carefully crafted questions, we seek to explore the core of her career journey and her content design methodology. Our focus is on understanding how she integrates research, transparency, and genuine interdisciplinary collaboration, particularly emphasizing the early involvement of content designers in her work process.
Without further ado, let's get to the Q&A:
10 Questions with Kate Agena
You lead content design and strategy at McAfee. What does your day-to-day look like?
My day-to-day managing the content design practice at McAfee varies depending on company priorities and product needs.
Currently, my focus is on implementing GenAI technology to enhance the quality and consistency of customer-facing content. I introduced the Writer platform to McAfee, trained it on our style guide, and am driving its adoption across the company. Additionally, I collaborate with teams training LLMs for new product features to ensure they benefit from our content expertise and align with McAfee style/voice.
I work closely with our UX research leader to understand how to build trust with customers and develop educational content that aligns with their existing mental model and knowledge.
While we’ve made progress by building out content in the design system, we are still working on establishing content patterns and components.
And of course, I manage the team by balancing workloads, addressing roadblocks, and supporting skill and career development.
What are the tools you use in your workday? Are you more of a synchronous or asynchronous person? And what do you prefer more?
We use Slack for most communication, Outlook when an email is necessary, Teams for meetings, and a lot of collaboration happens via Figma or FigJam. In my experience working remote for over 12 years, a combination of synchronous and asynchronous is best — you have time to connect and do real-time collaboration, but you also get some freedom for your own heads-down work time.
Does your role involve writing content? If so, what tools do you use for that? And how does content hand off work to other UXers?
I collaborate with our content designers as a coach, guide, and sometimes editor. My team writes directly in Figma, using Writer as a grammar and style checker. We use Ditto for string management. A lot of brainstorming and design thinking happens in FigJam. Since the UXers are all working together in Figma, there’s no real hand-off within the larger design team.
As the leader of content design and strategy, what profiles do you constantly work with (UX Designers, Devs, Content Designers, PMs, etc.)?
In content design, it’s always important to be proactive and not wait for others to come to you. I’m typically working with almost everyone in the design org, but I purposely connect regularly with leaders from product management, product marketing, support, and localization. I also try to align with marketing in terms of overall narrative and as an advocate for the craft of writing across the e2e experience.
As McAfee is a global company, how do you oversee content worldwide? Is localization part of your responsibilities? Can you elaborate on how it works, from validating the copy and ensuring the localization matches the region (e.g. Canada "French/ Quebec") to pushing it to code? And what tools do you use for that?
At McAfee, we have an amazing localization team that handles translation/transcreation. My involvement is limited to helping define terminology and having my team make a unique version of the content for a specific geo when necessary. Before Ditto, localization had to wait for engineering to code our content before they could start translation. Ditto allows that we can export a JSON file directly from Figma to be picked up by engineering and localization at the same time, which is a gamechanger for translation schedules.
As a product team with the responsibility to provide online protection to users under McAfee's umbrella suite of products. How often do you collaborate with legal teams? What process do you follow to collaborate with them? Do you have an internal legal team or consult an external law firm?
All of our product content must be approved by our internal legal team. This process is owned by content designers. We have an internal tool where the content designer enters a ticket for legal follow-up. There might be a walk-through of the Figma file depending on complexity.
It is common for UX teams to skip the research phase to save time waiting for UX researchers to prepare and deliver their results in a presentable format that they can reuse. What's your take on this?
I’d like to say that we’ve got it all sorted out and that content is always present and contributing from the beginning of the design process, but it still varies a lot. Right now, we are doing content-led design for onboarding and for AI products. For most product features, a designer takes the lead with close collaboration from content and research. Unfortunately, there are definitely still times when the content designer isn’t included from the start. Occasionally, we agree to do only a final edit for some lower-priority projects that don’t have full content support, but obviously this isn’t ideal for delivering a great product.
Even with a ratio of 1 content designer to every 4 designers, which is considered good, it’s often impossible for content designers to be present throughout the whole process. So, I try to intentionally distribute focus to projects where content has the most potential.
How do misunderstandings from leadership about UX writing and content design potentially undermine the success of a product or service? And how do you overcome that, both towards them and towards your team, to keep them motivated?
We talk so much about advocacy in UX content design — and UX design in general — because so many companies don’t understand the importance of experience in the success of a product or service. Or maybe they just don’t understand how to enable a design org to get the experience they know they need. If the culture of a company doesn’t include space for design to lead in decisions about the products, there’s a lot that needs to happen before design can deliver its real value.
There's definitely a constant effort to change the culture, change the language used when talking about the product development process and how outcomes are measured, and to develop maturity in how the company works together as a whole.
My team is currently developing a Content Ops Playbook that defines what we do and how to work with us. This is one tool that can help content designers navigate these challenges, but I don’t expect these issues to disappear soon.
At Punkt, we are revolutionizing the industry by building a Content-First UX platform where Content Designers and UX Writers lead the product design process. What do you think about that? And how close is that to an ideal world for content teams?
I’m positive there are many cases where the best person to lead the product design process is a content designer — the interaction the user has with content (and I don’t mean only the copy) needs to be right before anything else can be. For me, I think the ideal world is where everyone working to create a product is able to fully contribute based on their strengths, no matter their specific title. And for that to happen, we need to find better ways of working together.
Finally— What advice would you give someone looking to become a Content Designer/Content Strategist?
Put care into your craft as a writer, understand UX interaction design and research, find ways GenAI can make you more creative/consistent/efficient, and constantly ask questions.
👋 Don't forget to follow Kate
LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/kate-agena
☺︎ ADPList https://adplist.org/mentors/kate-agena
Intro
Welcome to Spotlight, your gateway to the UX/ Content Design world, through a distinctive series of interviews that spotlight the industry's leading voices. Our succinct, direct-to-the-point approach poses ±10 sharp questions to veterans and rising stars, gathering insights and perspectives shaping the UX scene.
Meet our guest ⸻ Dr. Kate Agena, PhD, Head of Content Design & Strategy at McAfee
Few figures in UX, content, and design shine as brightly as Dr. Kate Agena, PhD / PMP®.
Kate is a seasoned content design and strategy expert with over 18 years of experience in the software industry. Her current role at McAfee involves leading content design and strategy for various consumer products, including mobile, web, and desktop applications. Their products provide comprehensive online protection, covering identity safety, privacy, and device security. Her expertise and leadership are pivotal in shaping the content direction for these consumer-centric cybersecurity solutions.
Kate has built her career on a foundation of continuous learning and a passion for words. She demonstrates a versatile leadership style with over 12 years of experience in remote leadership and team management.
Kate is skilled at collaboration and strategy as an organizational leader. She values transparency and supportiveness in people management and is committed to creating cohesive, brand-centric, and user-focused content as a specialist. Her strengths lie in fostering thought partnerships, developing top talent, and advocating for the strategic role of content and design in business. She also ensures content quality through innovative systems and technologies.
Her advocacy for integrating content-led design into software development dates back to her 2006 doctoral dissertation, highlighting her long-standing commitment to this approach.
Today, we're fortunate to gain insights directly from Kate. Through 10 carefully crafted questions, we seek to explore the core of her career journey and her content design methodology. Our focus is on understanding how she integrates research, transparency, and genuine interdisciplinary collaboration, particularly emphasizing the early involvement of content designers in her work process.
Without further ado, let's get to the Q&A:
10 Questions with Kate Agena
You lead content design and strategy at McAfee. What does your day-to-day look like?
My day-to-day managing the content design practice at McAfee varies depending on company priorities and product needs.
Currently, my focus is on implementing GenAI technology to enhance the quality and consistency of customer-facing content. I introduced the Writer platform to McAfee, trained it on our style guide, and am driving its adoption across the company. Additionally, I collaborate with teams training LLMs for new product features to ensure they benefit from our content expertise and align with McAfee style/voice.
I work closely with our UX research leader to understand how to build trust with customers and develop educational content that aligns with their existing mental model and knowledge.
While we’ve made progress by building out content in the design system, we are still working on establishing content patterns and components.
And of course, I manage the team by balancing workloads, addressing roadblocks, and supporting skill and career development.
What are the tools you use in your workday? Are you more of a synchronous or asynchronous person? And what do you prefer more?
We use Slack for most communication, Outlook when an email is necessary, Teams for meetings, and a lot of collaboration happens via Figma or FigJam. In my experience working remote for over 12 years, a combination of synchronous and asynchronous is best — you have time to connect and do real-time collaboration, but you also get some freedom for your own heads-down work time.
Does your role involve writing content? If so, what tools do you use for that? And how does content hand off work to other UXers?
I collaborate with our content designers as a coach, guide, and sometimes editor. My team writes directly in Figma, using Writer as a grammar and style checker. We use Ditto for string management. A lot of brainstorming and design thinking happens in FigJam. Since the UXers are all working together in Figma, there’s no real hand-off within the larger design team.
As the leader of content design and strategy, what profiles do you constantly work with (UX Designers, Devs, Content Designers, PMs, etc.)?
In content design, it’s always important to be proactive and not wait for others to come to you. I’m typically working with almost everyone in the design org, but I purposely connect regularly with leaders from product management, product marketing, support, and localization. I also try to align with marketing in terms of overall narrative and as an advocate for the craft of writing across the e2e experience.
As McAfee is a global company, how do you oversee content worldwide? Is localization part of your responsibilities? Can you elaborate on how it works, from validating the copy and ensuring the localization matches the region (e.g. Canada "French/ Quebec") to pushing it to code? And what tools do you use for that?
At McAfee, we have an amazing localization team that handles translation/transcreation. My involvement is limited to helping define terminology and having my team make a unique version of the content for a specific geo when necessary. Before Ditto, localization had to wait for engineering to code our content before they could start translation. Ditto allows that we can export a JSON file directly from Figma to be picked up by engineering and localization at the same time, which is a gamechanger for translation schedules.
As a product team with the responsibility to provide online protection to users under McAfee's umbrella suite of products. How often do you collaborate with legal teams? What process do you follow to collaborate with them? Do you have an internal legal team or consult an external law firm?
All of our product content must be approved by our internal legal team. This process is owned by content designers. We have an internal tool where the content designer enters a ticket for legal follow-up. There might be a walk-through of the Figma file depending on complexity.
It is common for UX teams to skip the research phase to save time waiting for UX researchers to prepare and deliver their results in a presentable format that they can reuse. What's your take on this?
I’d like to say that we’ve got it all sorted out and that content is always present and contributing from the beginning of the design process, but it still varies a lot. Right now, we are doing content-led design for onboarding and for AI products. For most product features, a designer takes the lead with close collaboration from content and research. Unfortunately, there are definitely still times when the content designer isn’t included from the start. Occasionally, we agree to do only a final edit for some lower-priority projects that don’t have full content support, but obviously this isn’t ideal for delivering a great product.
Even with a ratio of 1 content designer to every 4 designers, which is considered good, it’s often impossible for content designers to be present throughout the whole process. So, I try to intentionally distribute focus to projects where content has the most potential.
How do misunderstandings from leadership about UX writing and content design potentially undermine the success of a product or service? And how do you overcome that, both towards them and towards your team, to keep them motivated?
We talk so much about advocacy in UX content design — and UX design in general — because so many companies don’t understand the importance of experience in the success of a product or service. Or maybe they just don’t understand how to enable a design org to get the experience they know they need. If the culture of a company doesn’t include space for design to lead in decisions about the products, there’s a lot that needs to happen before design can deliver its real value.
There's definitely a constant effort to change the culture, change the language used when talking about the product development process and how outcomes are measured, and to develop maturity in how the company works together as a whole.
My team is currently developing a Content Ops Playbook that defines what we do and how to work with us. This is one tool that can help content designers navigate these challenges, but I don’t expect these issues to disappear soon.
At Punkt, we are revolutionizing the industry by building a Content-First UX platform where Content Designers and UX Writers lead the product design process. What do you think about that? And how close is that to an ideal world for content teams?
I’m positive there are many cases where the best person to lead the product design process is a content designer — the interaction the user has with content (and I don’t mean only the copy) needs to be right before anything else can be. For me, I think the ideal world is where everyone working to create a product is able to fully contribute based on their strengths, no matter their specific title. And for that to happen, we need to find better ways of working together.
Finally— What advice would you give someone looking to become a Content Designer/Content Strategist?
Put care into your craft as a writer, understand UX interaction design and research, find ways GenAI can make you more creative/consistent/efficient, and constantly ask questions.
👋 Don't forget to follow Kate
LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/kate-agena
☺︎ ADPList https://adplist.org/mentors/kate-agena
Intro
Welcome to Spotlight, your gateway to the UX/ Content Design world, through a distinctive series of interviews that spotlight the industry's leading voices. Our succinct, direct-to-the-point approach poses ±10 sharp questions to veterans and rising stars, gathering insights and perspectives shaping the UX scene.
Meet our guest ⸻ Dr. Kate Agena, PhD, Head of Content Design & Strategy at McAfee
Few figures in UX, content, and design shine as brightly as Dr. Kate Agena, PhD / PMP®.
Kate is a seasoned content design and strategy expert with over 18 years of experience in the software industry. Her current role at McAfee involves leading content design and strategy for various consumer products, including mobile, web, and desktop applications. Their products provide comprehensive online protection, covering identity safety, privacy, and device security. Her expertise and leadership are pivotal in shaping the content direction for these consumer-centric cybersecurity solutions.
Kate has built her career on a foundation of continuous learning and a passion for words. She demonstrates a versatile leadership style with over 12 years of experience in remote leadership and team management.
Kate is skilled at collaboration and strategy as an organizational leader. She values transparency and supportiveness in people management and is committed to creating cohesive, brand-centric, and user-focused content as a specialist. Her strengths lie in fostering thought partnerships, developing top talent, and advocating for the strategic role of content and design in business. She also ensures content quality through innovative systems and technologies.
Her advocacy for integrating content-led design into software development dates back to her 2006 doctoral dissertation, highlighting her long-standing commitment to this approach.
Today, we're fortunate to gain insights directly from Kate. Through 10 carefully crafted questions, we seek to explore the core of her career journey and her content design methodology. Our focus is on understanding how she integrates research, transparency, and genuine interdisciplinary collaboration, particularly emphasizing the early involvement of content designers in her work process.
Without further ado, let's get to the Q&A:
10 Questions with Kate Agena
You lead content design and strategy at McAfee. What does your day-to-day look like?
My day-to-day managing the content design practice at McAfee varies depending on company priorities and product needs.
Currently, my focus is on implementing GenAI technology to enhance the quality and consistency of customer-facing content. I introduced the Writer platform to McAfee, trained it on our style guide, and am driving its adoption across the company. Additionally, I collaborate with teams training LLMs for new product features to ensure they benefit from our content expertise and align with McAfee style/voice.
I work closely with our UX research leader to understand how to build trust with customers and develop educational content that aligns with their existing mental model and knowledge.
While we’ve made progress by building out content in the design system, we are still working on establishing content patterns and components.
And of course, I manage the team by balancing workloads, addressing roadblocks, and supporting skill and career development.
What are the tools you use in your workday? Are you more of a synchronous or asynchronous person? And what do you prefer more?
We use Slack for most communication, Outlook when an email is necessary, Teams for meetings, and a lot of collaboration happens via Figma or FigJam. In my experience working remote for over 12 years, a combination of synchronous and asynchronous is best — you have time to connect and do real-time collaboration, but you also get some freedom for your own heads-down work time.
Does your role involve writing content? If so, what tools do you use for that? And how does content hand off work to other UXers?
I collaborate with our content designers as a coach, guide, and sometimes editor. My team writes directly in Figma, using Writer as a grammar and style checker. We use Ditto for string management. A lot of brainstorming and design thinking happens in FigJam. Since the UXers are all working together in Figma, there’s no real hand-off within the larger design team.
As the leader of content design and strategy, what profiles do you constantly work with (UX Designers, Devs, Content Designers, PMs, etc.)?
In content design, it’s always important to be proactive and not wait for others to come to you. I’m typically working with almost everyone in the design org, but I purposely connect regularly with leaders from product management, product marketing, support, and localization. I also try to align with marketing in terms of overall narrative and as an advocate for the craft of writing across the e2e experience.
As McAfee is a global company, how do you oversee content worldwide? Is localization part of your responsibilities? Can you elaborate on how it works, from validating the copy and ensuring the localization matches the region (e.g. Canada "French/ Quebec") to pushing it to code? And what tools do you use for that?
At McAfee, we have an amazing localization team that handles translation/transcreation. My involvement is limited to helping define terminology and having my team make a unique version of the content for a specific geo when necessary. Before Ditto, localization had to wait for engineering to code our content before they could start translation. Ditto allows that we can export a JSON file directly from Figma to be picked up by engineering and localization at the same time, which is a gamechanger for translation schedules.
As a product team with the responsibility to provide online protection to users under McAfee's umbrella suite of products. How often do you collaborate with legal teams? What process do you follow to collaborate with them? Do you have an internal legal team or consult an external law firm?
All of our product content must be approved by our internal legal team. This process is owned by content designers. We have an internal tool where the content designer enters a ticket for legal follow-up. There might be a walk-through of the Figma file depending on complexity.
It is common for UX teams to skip the research phase to save time waiting for UX researchers to prepare and deliver their results in a presentable format that they can reuse. What's your take on this?
I’d like to say that we’ve got it all sorted out and that content is always present and contributing from the beginning of the design process, but it still varies a lot. Right now, we are doing content-led design for onboarding and for AI products. For most product features, a designer takes the lead with close collaboration from content and research. Unfortunately, there are definitely still times when the content designer isn’t included from the start. Occasionally, we agree to do only a final edit for some lower-priority projects that don’t have full content support, but obviously this isn’t ideal for delivering a great product.
Even with a ratio of 1 content designer to every 4 designers, which is considered good, it’s often impossible for content designers to be present throughout the whole process. So, I try to intentionally distribute focus to projects where content has the most potential.
How do misunderstandings from leadership about UX writing and content design potentially undermine the success of a product or service? And how do you overcome that, both towards them and towards your team, to keep them motivated?
We talk so much about advocacy in UX content design — and UX design in general — because so many companies don’t understand the importance of experience in the success of a product or service. Or maybe they just don’t understand how to enable a design org to get the experience they know they need. If the culture of a company doesn’t include space for design to lead in decisions about the products, there’s a lot that needs to happen before design can deliver its real value.
There's definitely a constant effort to change the culture, change the language used when talking about the product development process and how outcomes are measured, and to develop maturity in how the company works together as a whole.
My team is currently developing a Content Ops Playbook that defines what we do and how to work with us. This is one tool that can help content designers navigate these challenges, but I don’t expect these issues to disappear soon.
At Punkt, we are revolutionizing the industry by building a Content-First UX platform where Content Designers and UX Writers lead the product design process. What do you think about that? And how close is that to an ideal world for content teams?
I’m positive there are many cases where the best person to lead the product design process is a content designer — the interaction the user has with content (and I don’t mean only the copy) needs to be right before anything else can be. For me, I think the ideal world is where everyone working to create a product is able to fully contribute based on their strengths, no matter their specific title. And for that to happen, we need to find better ways of working together.
Finally— What advice would you give someone looking to become a Content Designer/Content Strategist?
Put care into your craft as a writer, understand UX interaction design and research, find ways GenAI can make you more creative/consistent/efficient, and constantly ask questions.
👋 Don't forget to follow Kate
LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/kate-agena
☺︎ ADPList https://adplist.org/mentors/kate-agena
Intro
Welcome to Spotlight, your gateway to the UX/ Content Design world, through a distinctive series of interviews that spotlight the industry's leading voices. Our succinct, direct-to-the-point approach poses ±10 sharp questions to veterans and rising stars, gathering insights and perspectives shaping the UX scene.
Meet our guest ⸻ Dr. Kate Agena, PhD, Head of Content Design & Strategy at McAfee
Few figures in UX, content, and design shine as brightly as Dr. Kate Agena, PhD / PMP®.
Kate is a seasoned content design and strategy expert with over 18 years of experience in the software industry. Her current role at McAfee involves leading content design and strategy for various consumer products, including mobile, web, and desktop applications. Their products provide comprehensive online protection, covering identity safety, privacy, and device security. Her expertise and leadership are pivotal in shaping the content direction for these consumer-centric cybersecurity solutions.
Kate has built her career on a foundation of continuous learning and a passion for words. She demonstrates a versatile leadership style with over 12 years of experience in remote leadership and team management.
Kate is skilled at collaboration and strategy as an organizational leader. She values transparency and supportiveness in people management and is committed to creating cohesive, brand-centric, and user-focused content as a specialist. Her strengths lie in fostering thought partnerships, developing top talent, and advocating for the strategic role of content and design in business. She also ensures content quality through innovative systems and technologies.
Her advocacy for integrating content-led design into software development dates back to her 2006 doctoral dissertation, highlighting her long-standing commitment to this approach.
Today, we're fortunate to gain insights directly from Kate. Through 10 carefully crafted questions, we seek to explore the core of her career journey and her content design methodology. Our focus is on understanding how she integrates research, transparency, and genuine interdisciplinary collaboration, particularly emphasizing the early involvement of content designers in her work process.
Without further ado, let's get to the Q&A:
10 Questions with Kate Agena
You lead content design and strategy at McAfee. What does your day-to-day look like?
My day-to-day managing the content design practice at McAfee varies depending on company priorities and product needs.
Currently, my focus is on implementing GenAI technology to enhance the quality and consistency of customer-facing content. I introduced the Writer platform to McAfee, trained it on our style guide, and am driving its adoption across the company. Additionally, I collaborate with teams training LLMs for new product features to ensure they benefit from our content expertise and align with McAfee style/voice.
I work closely with our UX research leader to understand how to build trust with customers and develop educational content that aligns with their existing mental model and knowledge.
While we’ve made progress by building out content in the design system, we are still working on establishing content patterns and components.
And of course, I manage the team by balancing workloads, addressing roadblocks, and supporting skill and career development.
What are the tools you use in your workday? Are you more of a synchronous or asynchronous person? And what do you prefer more?
We use Slack for most communication, Outlook when an email is necessary, Teams for meetings, and a lot of collaboration happens via Figma or FigJam. In my experience working remote for over 12 years, a combination of synchronous and asynchronous is best — you have time to connect and do real-time collaboration, but you also get some freedom for your own heads-down work time.
Does your role involve writing content? If so, what tools do you use for that? And how does content hand off work to other UXers?
I collaborate with our content designers as a coach, guide, and sometimes editor. My team writes directly in Figma, using Writer as a grammar and style checker. We use Ditto for string management. A lot of brainstorming and design thinking happens in FigJam. Since the UXers are all working together in Figma, there’s no real hand-off within the larger design team.
As the leader of content design and strategy, what profiles do you constantly work with (UX Designers, Devs, Content Designers, PMs, etc.)?
In content design, it’s always important to be proactive and not wait for others to come to you. I’m typically working with almost everyone in the design org, but I purposely connect regularly with leaders from product management, product marketing, support, and localization. I also try to align with marketing in terms of overall narrative and as an advocate for the craft of writing across the e2e experience.
As McAfee is a global company, how do you oversee content worldwide? Is localization part of your responsibilities? Can you elaborate on how it works, from validating the copy and ensuring the localization matches the region (e.g. Canada "French/ Quebec") to pushing it to code? And what tools do you use for that?
At McAfee, we have an amazing localization team that handles translation/transcreation. My involvement is limited to helping define terminology and having my team make a unique version of the content for a specific geo when necessary. Before Ditto, localization had to wait for engineering to code our content before they could start translation. Ditto allows that we can export a JSON file directly from Figma to be picked up by engineering and localization at the same time, which is a gamechanger for translation schedules.
As a product team with the responsibility to provide online protection to users under McAfee's umbrella suite of products. How often do you collaborate with legal teams? What process do you follow to collaborate with them? Do you have an internal legal team or consult an external law firm?
All of our product content must be approved by our internal legal team. This process is owned by content designers. We have an internal tool where the content designer enters a ticket for legal follow-up. There might be a walk-through of the Figma file depending on complexity.
It is common for UX teams to skip the research phase to save time waiting for UX researchers to prepare and deliver their results in a presentable format that they can reuse. What's your take on this?
I’d like to say that we’ve got it all sorted out and that content is always present and contributing from the beginning of the design process, but it still varies a lot. Right now, we are doing content-led design for onboarding and for AI products. For most product features, a designer takes the lead with close collaboration from content and research. Unfortunately, there are definitely still times when the content designer isn’t included from the start. Occasionally, we agree to do only a final edit for some lower-priority projects that don’t have full content support, but obviously this isn’t ideal for delivering a great product.
Even with a ratio of 1 content designer to every 4 designers, which is considered good, it’s often impossible for content designers to be present throughout the whole process. So, I try to intentionally distribute focus to projects where content has the most potential.
How do misunderstandings from leadership about UX writing and content design potentially undermine the success of a product or service? And how do you overcome that, both towards them and towards your team, to keep them motivated?
We talk so much about advocacy in UX content design — and UX design in general — because so many companies don’t understand the importance of experience in the success of a product or service. Or maybe they just don’t understand how to enable a design org to get the experience they know they need. If the culture of a company doesn’t include space for design to lead in decisions about the products, there’s a lot that needs to happen before design can deliver its real value.
There's definitely a constant effort to change the culture, change the language used when talking about the product development process and how outcomes are measured, and to develop maturity in how the company works together as a whole.
My team is currently developing a Content Ops Playbook that defines what we do and how to work with us. This is one tool that can help content designers navigate these challenges, but I don’t expect these issues to disappear soon.
At Punkt, we are revolutionizing the industry by building a Content-First UX platform where Content Designers and UX Writers lead the product design process. What do you think about that? And how close is that to an ideal world for content teams?
I’m positive there are many cases where the best person to lead the product design process is a content designer — the interaction the user has with content (and I don’t mean only the copy) needs to be right before anything else can be. For me, I think the ideal world is where everyone working to create a product is able to fully contribute based on their strengths, no matter their specific title. And for that to happen, we need to find better ways of working together.
Finally— What advice would you give someone looking to become a Content Designer/Content Strategist?
Put care into your craft as a writer, understand UX interaction design and research, find ways GenAI can make you more creative/consistent/efficient, and constantly ask questions.
👋 Don't forget to follow Kate
LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/kate-agena
☺︎ ADPList https://adplist.org/mentors/kate-agena
