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 ⸻ Laurah Mwirichia, Staff UX Strategist at Squarespace
Laurah Mwirichia is a distinguished name among the top female professionals in UX, content, and design.
Starting her career far from UX, Laurah Mwirichia, now a distinguished Staff UX Strategist at Squarespace, initially worked as a social worker while living in Iowa and spent that time assisting youth with mental health issues in achieving their educational and employment goals. Her path led her to New York, transitioning into freelance and full-time writing roles within the vibrant startup scene. Her experience as a content marketing specialist at Aircall, where she developed marketing materials like newsletters and landing pages, piqued her interest in "Product writing" (what she prefers to call UX writing), a field she prefers over traditional copywriting. What started as curiosity became a passion.
Laurah loves bringing the UX world together. She advocates for the writing-design collaboration from the early stages of the design process and how UX Writers can adopt the project management mindset to deliver better content and make collaboration smoother with the other product teams.
Laurah is actively speaking at talks, conferences, and interviews about content design/strategy, UX writing, design thinking, and career switching into UX. She is also a contributing writer to UX Design Collective, Prototypr, The Writing Cooperative, and Square Design Blog.
Without further ado, let's get to the Q&A:
13 Questions with Laurah Mwirichia
Given that there is no standard background for UX writing, and considering the diverse range of backgrounds of those in the UX writing and content design field, how can this variety of skills and experiences benefit the product team?
Diverse skill sets are absolutely vital to any product team. Not only does it bring in new ideas, but it also allows the team to think differently about how they solve problems. For example, someone who has a background in social work may have a totally different way to go about problem solving than someone who has a background in, say, industrial design. This adds a lot of richness to the solutions that product teams eventually reach.
How can content/UX Writing help products thrive and meet business goals?
I've always believed that content is often (but not always!) the most human part of the user interaction. Some of the most memorable products are those that when we interact with, we feel understood. That can be done by having a simple and intuitive layout, a user flow that is natural, and content that is accessible, understandable, and easy to digest. All this adds up to create a good user experience, which at the end of the day helps businesses acquire and keep their customers.
How does putting content on the back burner harm the UX and undermine the success of a product? And how do you overcome that, both towards the users and towards your team, to keep them motivated?
Putting content on the back burner is unfortunately a very common practice that is ultimately harmful to teams. I've always compared it to 'tech debt' which is a more familiar concept to some. It's where we favor fast and scrappy solutions over more organized and detailed processes and inevitably end up working slower and less efficiently than we otherwise would. The tough part is that it's really time consuming and difficult to create working processes. Additionally, it's much easier (and sometimes more practical) to favor the creation of new things--including new content--instead of going back and making sure the existing stuff works. I'm not sure content debt can ever be overcome 100%, but I do believe the best way to motivate teams to tackle the issue is to build it into your process and make sure to approach it in small steps.
With the opportunity to work remotely and flexibly at Squarespace, how did you ensure you stayed in sync with your team, preserving the quality and efficiency of your collaboration? What were the key tools, strategies, and daily practices you adopted? We'd love to hear about your everyday experience, especially how you navigated the challenges and benefits of working across various time zones.
I'm very thankful to Squarespace for allowing me to relocate to Dublin and work remotely with my team! I have to say, it has taken some calendar gymnastics to ensure that our collaboration is as smooth as possible and that's been rather successful. I also got lucky that most of my team is located in the east coast of the United States which means we get about 4-5 hours of overlapping work hours. My biggest thing is keeping my calendar very available to my teammates (you can always see my meeting details), and putting a hard block on my Do Not Scheudule time for when I'm out. I also build in a little more flexibility by having a few 'late days' where I stay an extra hour or two at the end of my day to allow for more meeting times with west coast folks and balance that out at the end of the week by working strictly within my work hours. This has seemed to work really well over the last 2 years.
We heard that Grammarly is your superhero against active/passive voice writing. What other tools do you use to help you with writing better content?
Grammarly is great to help catch issues with your writing for sure. I also love using Hemingway app editor to simplify my writing and get to a more accessible reading level. The other thing I do (it isn't really a tool, but more of a technique) is that when I open up my Google Docs to start writing, I change the color of the font to gray and I change the typeface to something rounder and less serious. This helps me get out of my own head and not feel like the document is final. It's really more of a 'writing hack' for myself, but it does help me get unstuck.
How do you manage working on multiple products at a time? And how do you prevent yourself from being a victim of context-switching?
Time blocking is huge for me. It's the best way I've found to make sure I'm only focused on one thing at a time. At the start of my week, I'll look at my to-do list and estimate the amount of time certain tasks take. Then I update my calendar with specific blocks of time to focus on certain tracks of work (for example: Monday 2-3pm, read through UX research notes). Instead of saying something vague like 'focus time' I'll actually put down what the focus is on, along with any notes or links that are relevant, so I'm not wasting my focus time hunting down important information.
How can a content audit help you learn more about and improve the product? What is your process for content audit? What profiles are involved in the audit? And When is the best time/phase to audit?
Content audits are great for learning the product--I suggest doing it when you're new to a team. It will help you understand how the product works, but also coming into an audit with fresh eyes can be helpful for existing team members to see gaps that they maybe have overlooked or have stopped paying attention to. Content audits can involve as many people as you'd like, but should at least involve the Project Manager since they're a key stakeholder. Design and Engineering are also important disciplines to include since their output will be affected by any sweeping changes in the content.
UX Designers often focus solely on crafting a user-friendly experience, frequently neglecting SEO until the final stages, which can result in poor search engine performance and reduced product visibility. As a UX writer, how can you assist UX Designers in integrating SEO effectively to ensure that the user-friendly product they create is engaging and easily discoverable by users?
I agree, it can be easy to let SEO go missed. However, when you put content front and center, these things can be caught really early. A lot of UX writers and content designers may not have a lot of experience with SEO, since that's more marketing-focused. However, a good experience doesn't really mean much if people can't find it and engage with it to begin with. If possible, a key thing to do would be to reach out to partners on the marketing end and see if you can work collaboratively on the content.
As the Staff UX Strategist, how can you describe the relationship between content and design? How is each of them present in your team's workflow? Who leads and who follows in the content-design relationship?
I've always viewed the relationship between content and design to be one and the same. Good content with bad design vs good design with bad content...both are a lose-lose. So, my engagement model is usually to figure out what everyone's strengths and interests are and capitalize on that. For example, if someone loves prototyping and iterating on designs, but isn't really interested in wireframing or playing around with copy variations, then find a way to split that work so everyone can get to work on more of what they want in the product. Content designers and product designers have a lot of overlapping skills and we really should all take the lead in the areas we are strongest in.
We all know Squarespace 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., English🇺🇸/ Spanish🇪🇸) to pushing it to code? And what tools do you use for that?
While localization is not part of my work, I'm a firm believer in following best practices to ensure the product can easily be localized. We have a separate localization team at Squarespace that supports product teams to get new features out quickly and efficiently. I think it's extremely important that internationalization is baked-into the design process. If that means adding it to your product roadmap as a checklist item, or making sure to meet with localization folks before something launches, whatever works for you. As long as localization is a consideration.
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 haven't had this happen to me personally, so I don't think I have a take on it other than maybe being more realistic with timelines? Of course there's the urge to jump right in, but UX without research the output will essentially just be an artistic interpretation of digital boxes and words. If there are tight deadlines, you can either start the research earlier, shorten the research time period, change the type of research, or push the deadline back to make it more achievable.
Content designers are typically involved at the very end. They are provided with a hi-fi prototype and asked to improve the copy. What kind of problems and difficulties does this process make? How do you think them early in the design process can help them to write clear and useful copy? And how can Content Designers/UX Writers help UX Designers design better?
This is a super-classic content design problem. Because content designers and UX writers are often spread out on many teams, it can be hard to prioritize work, and it's easy to end up doing surface-level edits on hi-fidelity prototypes. But there's no way for a single content designer to pull out all the design stops from discovery onwards on every single project--especially when they are juggling several. So, I'd say make space to understand exactly what kind of projects need surface-level polish, and what kind of projects can really be owned by content design. Those are the projects to dive into early on, own the work, and make a big impact.
Finally— at Punkt, we are revolutionizing the UX industry by building the Content-First UX Platform where Content Designers and UX Writers co-lead the product UX/Design decisions. We believe a holistic context, Content-First UX approach will fix too many daily issues most product teams deal with. What’s your take on this?
Absolutely. I've been on many teams before both inside and outside of Squarespace where design projects were led and owned by content design. This shouldn't be as unusual as it is. I don't think every single project needs to be content led, but I also don't think every single project needs to be led by visual design either. It doesn't make sense. I think teams should look at a project or product and ask themselves what the most important considerations are for it. If content will make or break the experience then content should lead (for example, a really complex banking experience). If visual design is what is key (for example, a refresh on the visuals of a product), then by all means lead with that. It doesn't mean that both shouldn't work together. In fact, both sides of the discipline can have their own 'shining moments' in the work. But being honest with what the work entails and then giving it to the appropriate discipline to spearhead will get us a long way.
👋 Don't forget to follow Laurah
LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/laurah-mwirichia/
Website laurahmwirichia.com
Medium laurahmwirichia.medium.com
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 ⸻ Laurah Mwirichia, Staff UX Strategist at Squarespace
Laurah Mwirichia is a distinguished name among the top female professionals in UX, content, and design.
Starting her career far from UX, Laurah Mwirichia, now a distinguished Staff UX Strategist at Squarespace, initially worked as a social worker while living in Iowa and spent that time assisting youth with mental health issues in achieving their educational and employment goals. Her path led her to New York, transitioning into freelance and full-time writing roles within the vibrant startup scene. Her experience as a content marketing specialist at Aircall, where she developed marketing materials like newsletters and landing pages, piqued her interest in "Product writing" (what she prefers to call UX writing), a field she prefers over traditional copywriting. What started as curiosity became a passion.
Laurah loves bringing the UX world together. She advocates for the writing-design collaboration from the early stages of the design process and how UX Writers can adopt the project management mindset to deliver better content and make collaboration smoother with the other product teams.
Laurah is actively speaking at talks, conferences, and interviews about content design/strategy, UX writing, design thinking, and career switching into UX. She is also a contributing writer to UX Design Collective, Prototypr, The Writing Cooperative, and Square Design Blog.
Without further ado, let's get to the Q&A:
13 Questions with Laurah Mwirichia
Given that there is no standard background for UX writing, and considering the diverse range of backgrounds of those in the UX writing and content design field, how can this variety of skills and experiences benefit the product team?
Diverse skill sets are absolutely vital to any product team. Not only does it bring in new ideas, but it also allows the team to think differently about how they solve problems. For example, someone who has a background in social work may have a totally different way to go about problem solving than someone who has a background in, say, industrial design. This adds a lot of richness to the solutions that product teams eventually reach.
How can content/UX Writing help products thrive and meet business goals?
I've always believed that content is often (but not always!) the most human part of the user interaction. Some of the most memorable products are those that when we interact with, we feel understood. That can be done by having a simple and intuitive layout, a user flow that is natural, and content that is accessible, understandable, and easy to digest. All this adds up to create a good user experience, which at the end of the day helps businesses acquire and keep their customers.
How does putting content on the back burner harm the UX and undermine the success of a product? And how do you overcome that, both towards the users and towards your team, to keep them motivated?
Putting content on the back burner is unfortunately a very common practice that is ultimately harmful to teams. I've always compared it to 'tech debt' which is a more familiar concept to some. It's where we favor fast and scrappy solutions over more organized and detailed processes and inevitably end up working slower and less efficiently than we otherwise would. The tough part is that it's really time consuming and difficult to create working processes. Additionally, it's much easier (and sometimes more practical) to favor the creation of new things--including new content--instead of going back and making sure the existing stuff works. I'm not sure content debt can ever be overcome 100%, but I do believe the best way to motivate teams to tackle the issue is to build it into your process and make sure to approach it in small steps.
With the opportunity to work remotely and flexibly at Squarespace, how did you ensure you stayed in sync with your team, preserving the quality and efficiency of your collaboration? What were the key tools, strategies, and daily practices you adopted? We'd love to hear about your everyday experience, especially how you navigated the challenges and benefits of working across various time zones.
I'm very thankful to Squarespace for allowing me to relocate to Dublin and work remotely with my team! I have to say, it has taken some calendar gymnastics to ensure that our collaboration is as smooth as possible and that's been rather successful. I also got lucky that most of my team is located in the east coast of the United States which means we get about 4-5 hours of overlapping work hours. My biggest thing is keeping my calendar very available to my teammates (you can always see my meeting details), and putting a hard block on my Do Not Scheudule time for when I'm out. I also build in a little more flexibility by having a few 'late days' where I stay an extra hour or two at the end of my day to allow for more meeting times with west coast folks and balance that out at the end of the week by working strictly within my work hours. This has seemed to work really well over the last 2 years.
We heard that Grammarly is your superhero against active/passive voice writing. What other tools do you use to help you with writing better content?
Grammarly is great to help catch issues with your writing for sure. I also love using Hemingway app editor to simplify my writing and get to a more accessible reading level. The other thing I do (it isn't really a tool, but more of a technique) is that when I open up my Google Docs to start writing, I change the color of the font to gray and I change the typeface to something rounder and less serious. This helps me get out of my own head and not feel like the document is final. It's really more of a 'writing hack' for myself, but it does help me get unstuck.
How do you manage working on multiple products at a time? And how do you prevent yourself from being a victim of context-switching?
Time blocking is huge for me. It's the best way I've found to make sure I'm only focused on one thing at a time. At the start of my week, I'll look at my to-do list and estimate the amount of time certain tasks take. Then I update my calendar with specific blocks of time to focus on certain tracks of work (for example: Monday 2-3pm, read through UX research notes). Instead of saying something vague like 'focus time' I'll actually put down what the focus is on, along with any notes or links that are relevant, so I'm not wasting my focus time hunting down important information.
How can a content audit help you learn more about and improve the product? What is your process for content audit? What profiles are involved in the audit? And When is the best time/phase to audit?
Content audits are great for learning the product--I suggest doing it when you're new to a team. It will help you understand how the product works, but also coming into an audit with fresh eyes can be helpful for existing team members to see gaps that they maybe have overlooked or have stopped paying attention to. Content audits can involve as many people as you'd like, but should at least involve the Project Manager since they're a key stakeholder. Design and Engineering are also important disciplines to include since their output will be affected by any sweeping changes in the content.
UX Designers often focus solely on crafting a user-friendly experience, frequently neglecting SEO until the final stages, which can result in poor search engine performance and reduced product visibility. As a UX writer, how can you assist UX Designers in integrating SEO effectively to ensure that the user-friendly product they create is engaging and easily discoverable by users?
I agree, it can be easy to let SEO go missed. However, when you put content front and center, these things can be caught really early. A lot of UX writers and content designers may not have a lot of experience with SEO, since that's more marketing-focused. However, a good experience doesn't really mean much if people can't find it and engage with it to begin with. If possible, a key thing to do would be to reach out to partners on the marketing end and see if you can work collaboratively on the content.
As the Staff UX Strategist, how can you describe the relationship between content and design? How is each of them present in your team's workflow? Who leads and who follows in the content-design relationship?
I've always viewed the relationship between content and design to be one and the same. Good content with bad design vs good design with bad content...both are a lose-lose. So, my engagement model is usually to figure out what everyone's strengths and interests are and capitalize on that. For example, if someone loves prototyping and iterating on designs, but isn't really interested in wireframing or playing around with copy variations, then find a way to split that work so everyone can get to work on more of what they want in the product. Content designers and product designers have a lot of overlapping skills and we really should all take the lead in the areas we are strongest in.
We all know Squarespace 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., English🇺🇸/ Spanish🇪🇸) to pushing it to code? And what tools do you use for that?
While localization is not part of my work, I'm a firm believer in following best practices to ensure the product can easily be localized. We have a separate localization team at Squarespace that supports product teams to get new features out quickly and efficiently. I think it's extremely important that internationalization is baked-into the design process. If that means adding it to your product roadmap as a checklist item, or making sure to meet with localization folks before something launches, whatever works for you. As long as localization is a consideration.
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 haven't had this happen to me personally, so I don't think I have a take on it other than maybe being more realistic with timelines? Of course there's the urge to jump right in, but UX without research the output will essentially just be an artistic interpretation of digital boxes and words. If there are tight deadlines, you can either start the research earlier, shorten the research time period, change the type of research, or push the deadline back to make it more achievable.
Content designers are typically involved at the very end. They are provided with a hi-fi prototype and asked to improve the copy. What kind of problems and difficulties does this process make? How do you think them early in the design process can help them to write clear and useful copy? And how can Content Designers/UX Writers help UX Designers design better?
This is a super-classic content design problem. Because content designers and UX writers are often spread out on many teams, it can be hard to prioritize work, and it's easy to end up doing surface-level edits on hi-fidelity prototypes. But there's no way for a single content designer to pull out all the design stops from discovery onwards on every single project--especially when they are juggling several. So, I'd say make space to understand exactly what kind of projects need surface-level polish, and what kind of projects can really be owned by content design. Those are the projects to dive into early on, own the work, and make a big impact.
Finally— at Punkt, we are revolutionizing the UX industry by building the Content-First UX Platform where Content Designers and UX Writers co-lead the product UX/Design decisions. We believe a holistic context, Content-First UX approach will fix too many daily issues most product teams deal with. What’s your take on this?
Absolutely. I've been on many teams before both inside and outside of Squarespace where design projects were led and owned by content design. This shouldn't be as unusual as it is. I don't think every single project needs to be content led, but I also don't think every single project needs to be led by visual design either. It doesn't make sense. I think teams should look at a project or product and ask themselves what the most important considerations are for it. If content will make or break the experience then content should lead (for example, a really complex banking experience). If visual design is what is key (for example, a refresh on the visuals of a product), then by all means lead with that. It doesn't mean that both shouldn't work together. In fact, both sides of the discipline can have their own 'shining moments' in the work. But being honest with what the work entails and then giving it to the appropriate discipline to spearhead will get us a long way.
👋 Don't forget to follow Laurah
LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/laurah-mwirichia/
Website laurahmwirichia.com
Medium laurahmwirichia.medium.com
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 ⸻ Laurah Mwirichia, Staff UX Strategist at Squarespace
Laurah Mwirichia is a distinguished name among the top female professionals in UX, content, and design.
Starting her career far from UX, Laurah Mwirichia, now a distinguished Staff UX Strategist at Squarespace, initially worked as a social worker while living in Iowa and spent that time assisting youth with mental health issues in achieving their educational and employment goals. Her path led her to New York, transitioning into freelance and full-time writing roles within the vibrant startup scene. Her experience as a content marketing specialist at Aircall, where she developed marketing materials like newsletters and landing pages, piqued her interest in "Product writing" (what she prefers to call UX writing), a field she prefers over traditional copywriting. What started as curiosity became a passion.
Laurah loves bringing the UX world together. She advocates for the writing-design collaboration from the early stages of the design process and how UX Writers can adopt the project management mindset to deliver better content and make collaboration smoother with the other product teams.
Laurah is actively speaking at talks, conferences, and interviews about content design/strategy, UX writing, design thinking, and career switching into UX. She is also a contributing writer to UX Design Collective, Prototypr, The Writing Cooperative, and Square Design Blog.
Without further ado, let's get to the Q&A:
13 Questions with Laurah Mwirichia
Given that there is no standard background for UX writing, and considering the diverse range of backgrounds of those in the UX writing and content design field, how can this variety of skills and experiences benefit the product team?
Diverse skill sets are absolutely vital to any product team. Not only does it bring in new ideas, but it also allows the team to think differently about how they solve problems. For example, someone who has a background in social work may have a totally different way to go about problem solving than someone who has a background in, say, industrial design. This adds a lot of richness to the solutions that product teams eventually reach.
How can content/UX Writing help products thrive and meet business goals?
I've always believed that content is often (but not always!) the most human part of the user interaction. Some of the most memorable products are those that when we interact with, we feel understood. That can be done by having a simple and intuitive layout, a user flow that is natural, and content that is accessible, understandable, and easy to digest. All this adds up to create a good user experience, which at the end of the day helps businesses acquire and keep their customers.
How does putting content on the back burner harm the UX and undermine the success of a product? And how do you overcome that, both towards the users and towards your team, to keep them motivated?
Putting content on the back burner is unfortunately a very common practice that is ultimately harmful to teams. I've always compared it to 'tech debt' which is a more familiar concept to some. It's where we favor fast and scrappy solutions over more organized and detailed processes and inevitably end up working slower and less efficiently than we otherwise would. The tough part is that it's really time consuming and difficult to create working processes. Additionally, it's much easier (and sometimes more practical) to favor the creation of new things--including new content--instead of going back and making sure the existing stuff works. I'm not sure content debt can ever be overcome 100%, but I do believe the best way to motivate teams to tackle the issue is to build it into your process and make sure to approach it in small steps.
With the opportunity to work remotely and flexibly at Squarespace, how did you ensure you stayed in sync with your team, preserving the quality and efficiency of your collaboration? What were the key tools, strategies, and daily practices you adopted? We'd love to hear about your everyday experience, especially how you navigated the challenges and benefits of working across various time zones.
I'm very thankful to Squarespace for allowing me to relocate to Dublin and work remotely with my team! I have to say, it has taken some calendar gymnastics to ensure that our collaboration is as smooth as possible and that's been rather successful. I also got lucky that most of my team is located in the east coast of the United States which means we get about 4-5 hours of overlapping work hours. My biggest thing is keeping my calendar very available to my teammates (you can always see my meeting details), and putting a hard block on my Do Not Scheudule time for when I'm out. I also build in a little more flexibility by having a few 'late days' where I stay an extra hour or two at the end of my day to allow for more meeting times with west coast folks and balance that out at the end of the week by working strictly within my work hours. This has seemed to work really well over the last 2 years.
We heard that Grammarly is your superhero against active/passive voice writing. What other tools do you use to help you with writing better content?
Grammarly is great to help catch issues with your writing for sure. I also love using Hemingway app editor to simplify my writing and get to a more accessible reading level. The other thing I do (it isn't really a tool, but more of a technique) is that when I open up my Google Docs to start writing, I change the color of the font to gray and I change the typeface to something rounder and less serious. This helps me get out of my own head and not feel like the document is final. It's really more of a 'writing hack' for myself, but it does help me get unstuck.
How do you manage working on multiple products at a time? And how do you prevent yourself from being a victim of context-switching?
Time blocking is huge for me. It's the best way I've found to make sure I'm only focused on one thing at a time. At the start of my week, I'll look at my to-do list and estimate the amount of time certain tasks take. Then I update my calendar with specific blocks of time to focus on certain tracks of work (for example: Monday 2-3pm, read through UX research notes). Instead of saying something vague like 'focus time' I'll actually put down what the focus is on, along with any notes or links that are relevant, so I'm not wasting my focus time hunting down important information.
How can a content audit help you learn more about and improve the product? What is your process for content audit? What profiles are involved in the audit? And When is the best time/phase to audit?
Content audits are great for learning the product--I suggest doing it when you're new to a team. It will help you understand how the product works, but also coming into an audit with fresh eyes can be helpful for existing team members to see gaps that they maybe have overlooked or have stopped paying attention to. Content audits can involve as many people as you'd like, but should at least involve the Project Manager since they're a key stakeholder. Design and Engineering are also important disciplines to include since their output will be affected by any sweeping changes in the content.
UX Designers often focus solely on crafting a user-friendly experience, frequently neglecting SEO until the final stages, which can result in poor search engine performance and reduced product visibility. As a UX writer, how can you assist UX Designers in integrating SEO effectively to ensure that the user-friendly product they create is engaging and easily discoverable by users?
I agree, it can be easy to let SEO go missed. However, when you put content front and center, these things can be caught really early. A lot of UX writers and content designers may not have a lot of experience with SEO, since that's more marketing-focused. However, a good experience doesn't really mean much if people can't find it and engage with it to begin with. If possible, a key thing to do would be to reach out to partners on the marketing end and see if you can work collaboratively on the content.
As the Staff UX Strategist, how can you describe the relationship between content and design? How is each of them present in your team's workflow? Who leads and who follows in the content-design relationship?
I've always viewed the relationship between content and design to be one and the same. Good content with bad design vs good design with bad content...both are a lose-lose. So, my engagement model is usually to figure out what everyone's strengths and interests are and capitalize on that. For example, if someone loves prototyping and iterating on designs, but isn't really interested in wireframing or playing around with copy variations, then find a way to split that work so everyone can get to work on more of what they want in the product. Content designers and product designers have a lot of overlapping skills and we really should all take the lead in the areas we are strongest in.
We all know Squarespace 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., English🇺🇸/ Spanish🇪🇸) to pushing it to code? And what tools do you use for that?
While localization is not part of my work, I'm a firm believer in following best practices to ensure the product can easily be localized. We have a separate localization team at Squarespace that supports product teams to get new features out quickly and efficiently. I think it's extremely important that internationalization is baked-into the design process. If that means adding it to your product roadmap as a checklist item, or making sure to meet with localization folks before something launches, whatever works for you. As long as localization is a consideration.
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 haven't had this happen to me personally, so I don't think I have a take on it other than maybe being more realistic with timelines? Of course there's the urge to jump right in, but UX without research the output will essentially just be an artistic interpretation of digital boxes and words. If there are tight deadlines, you can either start the research earlier, shorten the research time period, change the type of research, or push the deadline back to make it more achievable.
Content designers are typically involved at the very end. They are provided with a hi-fi prototype and asked to improve the copy. What kind of problems and difficulties does this process make? How do you think them early in the design process can help them to write clear and useful copy? And how can Content Designers/UX Writers help UX Designers design better?
This is a super-classic content design problem. Because content designers and UX writers are often spread out on many teams, it can be hard to prioritize work, and it's easy to end up doing surface-level edits on hi-fidelity prototypes. But there's no way for a single content designer to pull out all the design stops from discovery onwards on every single project--especially when they are juggling several. So, I'd say make space to understand exactly what kind of projects need surface-level polish, and what kind of projects can really be owned by content design. Those are the projects to dive into early on, own the work, and make a big impact.
Finally— at Punkt, we are revolutionizing the UX industry by building the Content-First UX Platform where Content Designers and UX Writers co-lead the product UX/Design decisions. We believe a holistic context, Content-First UX approach will fix too many daily issues most product teams deal with. What’s your take on this?
Absolutely. I've been on many teams before both inside and outside of Squarespace where design projects were led and owned by content design. This shouldn't be as unusual as it is. I don't think every single project needs to be content led, but I also don't think every single project needs to be led by visual design either. It doesn't make sense. I think teams should look at a project or product and ask themselves what the most important considerations are for it. If content will make or break the experience then content should lead (for example, a really complex banking experience). If visual design is what is key (for example, a refresh on the visuals of a product), then by all means lead with that. It doesn't mean that both shouldn't work together. In fact, both sides of the discipline can have their own 'shining moments' in the work. But being honest with what the work entails and then giving it to the appropriate discipline to spearhead will get us a long way.
👋 Don't forget to follow Laurah
LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/laurah-mwirichia/
Website laurahmwirichia.com
Medium laurahmwirichia.medium.com
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 ⸻ Laurah Mwirichia, Staff UX Strategist at Squarespace
Laurah Mwirichia is a distinguished name among the top female professionals in UX, content, and design.
Starting her career far from UX, Laurah Mwirichia, now a distinguished Staff UX Strategist at Squarespace, initially worked as a social worker while living in Iowa and spent that time assisting youth with mental health issues in achieving their educational and employment goals. Her path led her to New York, transitioning into freelance and full-time writing roles within the vibrant startup scene. Her experience as a content marketing specialist at Aircall, where she developed marketing materials like newsletters and landing pages, piqued her interest in "Product writing" (what she prefers to call UX writing), a field she prefers over traditional copywriting. What started as curiosity became a passion.
Laurah loves bringing the UX world together. She advocates for the writing-design collaboration from the early stages of the design process and how UX Writers can adopt the project management mindset to deliver better content and make collaboration smoother with the other product teams.
Laurah is actively speaking at talks, conferences, and interviews about content design/strategy, UX writing, design thinking, and career switching into UX. She is also a contributing writer to UX Design Collective, Prototypr, The Writing Cooperative, and Square Design Blog.
Without further ado, let's get to the Q&A:
13 Questions with Laurah Mwirichia
Given that there is no standard background for UX writing, and considering the diverse range of backgrounds of those in the UX writing and content design field, how can this variety of skills and experiences benefit the product team?
Diverse skill sets are absolutely vital to any product team. Not only does it bring in new ideas, but it also allows the team to think differently about how they solve problems. For example, someone who has a background in social work may have a totally different way to go about problem solving than someone who has a background in, say, industrial design. This adds a lot of richness to the solutions that product teams eventually reach.
How can content/UX Writing help products thrive and meet business goals?
I've always believed that content is often (but not always!) the most human part of the user interaction. Some of the most memorable products are those that when we interact with, we feel understood. That can be done by having a simple and intuitive layout, a user flow that is natural, and content that is accessible, understandable, and easy to digest. All this adds up to create a good user experience, which at the end of the day helps businesses acquire and keep their customers.
How does putting content on the back burner harm the UX and undermine the success of a product? And how do you overcome that, both towards the users and towards your team, to keep them motivated?
Putting content on the back burner is unfortunately a very common practice that is ultimately harmful to teams. I've always compared it to 'tech debt' which is a more familiar concept to some. It's where we favor fast and scrappy solutions over more organized and detailed processes and inevitably end up working slower and less efficiently than we otherwise would. The tough part is that it's really time consuming and difficult to create working processes. Additionally, it's much easier (and sometimes more practical) to favor the creation of new things--including new content--instead of going back and making sure the existing stuff works. I'm not sure content debt can ever be overcome 100%, but I do believe the best way to motivate teams to tackle the issue is to build it into your process and make sure to approach it in small steps.
With the opportunity to work remotely and flexibly at Squarespace, how did you ensure you stayed in sync with your team, preserving the quality and efficiency of your collaboration? What were the key tools, strategies, and daily practices you adopted? We'd love to hear about your everyday experience, especially how you navigated the challenges and benefits of working across various time zones.
I'm very thankful to Squarespace for allowing me to relocate to Dublin and work remotely with my team! I have to say, it has taken some calendar gymnastics to ensure that our collaboration is as smooth as possible and that's been rather successful. I also got lucky that most of my team is located in the east coast of the United States which means we get about 4-5 hours of overlapping work hours. My biggest thing is keeping my calendar very available to my teammates (you can always see my meeting details), and putting a hard block on my Do Not Scheudule time for when I'm out. I also build in a little more flexibility by having a few 'late days' where I stay an extra hour or two at the end of my day to allow for more meeting times with west coast folks and balance that out at the end of the week by working strictly within my work hours. This has seemed to work really well over the last 2 years.
We heard that Grammarly is your superhero against active/passive voice writing. What other tools do you use to help you with writing better content?
Grammarly is great to help catch issues with your writing for sure. I also love using Hemingway app editor to simplify my writing and get to a more accessible reading level. The other thing I do (it isn't really a tool, but more of a technique) is that when I open up my Google Docs to start writing, I change the color of the font to gray and I change the typeface to something rounder and less serious. This helps me get out of my own head and not feel like the document is final. It's really more of a 'writing hack' for myself, but it does help me get unstuck.
How do you manage working on multiple products at a time? And how do you prevent yourself from being a victim of context-switching?
Time blocking is huge for me. It's the best way I've found to make sure I'm only focused on one thing at a time. At the start of my week, I'll look at my to-do list and estimate the amount of time certain tasks take. Then I update my calendar with specific blocks of time to focus on certain tracks of work (for example: Monday 2-3pm, read through UX research notes). Instead of saying something vague like 'focus time' I'll actually put down what the focus is on, along with any notes or links that are relevant, so I'm not wasting my focus time hunting down important information.
How can a content audit help you learn more about and improve the product? What is your process for content audit? What profiles are involved in the audit? And When is the best time/phase to audit?
Content audits are great for learning the product--I suggest doing it when you're new to a team. It will help you understand how the product works, but also coming into an audit with fresh eyes can be helpful for existing team members to see gaps that they maybe have overlooked or have stopped paying attention to. Content audits can involve as many people as you'd like, but should at least involve the Project Manager since they're a key stakeholder. Design and Engineering are also important disciplines to include since their output will be affected by any sweeping changes in the content.
UX Designers often focus solely on crafting a user-friendly experience, frequently neglecting SEO until the final stages, which can result in poor search engine performance and reduced product visibility. As a UX writer, how can you assist UX Designers in integrating SEO effectively to ensure that the user-friendly product they create is engaging and easily discoverable by users?
I agree, it can be easy to let SEO go missed. However, when you put content front and center, these things can be caught really early. A lot of UX writers and content designers may not have a lot of experience with SEO, since that's more marketing-focused. However, a good experience doesn't really mean much if people can't find it and engage with it to begin with. If possible, a key thing to do would be to reach out to partners on the marketing end and see if you can work collaboratively on the content.
As the Staff UX Strategist, how can you describe the relationship between content and design? How is each of them present in your team's workflow? Who leads and who follows in the content-design relationship?
I've always viewed the relationship between content and design to be one and the same. Good content with bad design vs good design with bad content...both are a lose-lose. So, my engagement model is usually to figure out what everyone's strengths and interests are and capitalize on that. For example, if someone loves prototyping and iterating on designs, but isn't really interested in wireframing or playing around with copy variations, then find a way to split that work so everyone can get to work on more of what they want in the product. Content designers and product designers have a lot of overlapping skills and we really should all take the lead in the areas we are strongest in.
We all know Squarespace 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., English🇺🇸/ Spanish🇪🇸) to pushing it to code? And what tools do you use for that?
While localization is not part of my work, I'm a firm believer in following best practices to ensure the product can easily be localized. We have a separate localization team at Squarespace that supports product teams to get new features out quickly and efficiently. I think it's extremely important that internationalization is baked-into the design process. If that means adding it to your product roadmap as a checklist item, or making sure to meet with localization folks before something launches, whatever works for you. As long as localization is a consideration.
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 haven't had this happen to me personally, so I don't think I have a take on it other than maybe being more realistic with timelines? Of course there's the urge to jump right in, but UX without research the output will essentially just be an artistic interpretation of digital boxes and words. If there are tight deadlines, you can either start the research earlier, shorten the research time period, change the type of research, or push the deadline back to make it more achievable.
Content designers are typically involved at the very end. They are provided with a hi-fi prototype and asked to improve the copy. What kind of problems and difficulties does this process make? How do you think them early in the design process can help them to write clear and useful copy? And how can Content Designers/UX Writers help UX Designers design better?
This is a super-classic content design problem. Because content designers and UX writers are often spread out on many teams, it can be hard to prioritize work, and it's easy to end up doing surface-level edits on hi-fidelity prototypes. But there's no way for a single content designer to pull out all the design stops from discovery onwards on every single project--especially when they are juggling several. So, I'd say make space to understand exactly what kind of projects need surface-level polish, and what kind of projects can really be owned by content design. Those are the projects to dive into early on, own the work, and make a big impact.
Finally— at Punkt, we are revolutionizing the UX industry by building the Content-First UX Platform where Content Designers and UX Writers co-lead the product UX/Design decisions. We believe a holistic context, Content-First UX approach will fix too many daily issues most product teams deal with. What’s your take on this?
Absolutely. I've been on many teams before both inside and outside of Squarespace where design projects were led and owned by content design. This shouldn't be as unusual as it is. I don't think every single project needs to be content led, but I also don't think every single project needs to be led by visual design either. It doesn't make sense. I think teams should look at a project or product and ask themselves what the most important considerations are for it. If content will make or break the experience then content should lead (for example, a really complex banking experience). If visual design is what is key (for example, a refresh on the visuals of a product), then by all means lead with that. It doesn't mean that both shouldn't work together. In fact, both sides of the discipline can have their own 'shining moments' in the work. But being honest with what the work entails and then giving it to the appropriate discipline to spearhead will get us a long way.
👋 Don't forget to follow Laurah
LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/laurah-mwirichia/
Website laurahmwirichia.com
Medium laurahmwirichia.medium.com
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 ⸻ Laurah Mwirichia, Staff UX Strategist at Squarespace
Laurah Mwirichia is a distinguished name among the top female professionals in UX, content, and design.
Starting her career far from UX, Laurah Mwirichia, now a distinguished Staff UX Strategist at Squarespace, initially worked as a social worker while living in Iowa and spent that time assisting youth with mental health issues in achieving their educational and employment goals. Her path led her to New York, transitioning into freelance and full-time writing roles within the vibrant startup scene. Her experience as a content marketing specialist at Aircall, where she developed marketing materials like newsletters and landing pages, piqued her interest in "Product writing" (what she prefers to call UX writing), a field she prefers over traditional copywriting. What started as curiosity became a passion.
Laurah loves bringing the UX world together. She advocates for the writing-design collaboration from the early stages of the design process and how UX Writers can adopt the project management mindset to deliver better content and make collaboration smoother with the other product teams.
Laurah is actively speaking at talks, conferences, and interviews about content design/strategy, UX writing, design thinking, and career switching into UX. She is also a contributing writer to UX Design Collective, Prototypr, The Writing Cooperative, and Square Design Blog.
Without further ado, let's get to the Q&A:
13 Questions with Laurah Mwirichia
Given that there is no standard background for UX writing, and considering the diverse range of backgrounds of those in the UX writing and content design field, how can this variety of skills and experiences benefit the product team?
Diverse skill sets are absolutely vital to any product team. Not only does it bring in new ideas, but it also allows the team to think differently about how they solve problems. For example, someone who has a background in social work may have a totally different way to go about problem solving than someone who has a background in, say, industrial design. This adds a lot of richness to the solutions that product teams eventually reach.
How can content/UX Writing help products thrive and meet business goals?
I've always believed that content is often (but not always!) the most human part of the user interaction. Some of the most memorable products are those that when we interact with, we feel understood. That can be done by having a simple and intuitive layout, a user flow that is natural, and content that is accessible, understandable, and easy to digest. All this adds up to create a good user experience, which at the end of the day helps businesses acquire and keep their customers.
How does putting content on the back burner harm the UX and undermine the success of a product? And how do you overcome that, both towards the users and towards your team, to keep them motivated?
Putting content on the back burner is unfortunately a very common practice that is ultimately harmful to teams. I've always compared it to 'tech debt' which is a more familiar concept to some. It's where we favor fast and scrappy solutions over more organized and detailed processes and inevitably end up working slower and less efficiently than we otherwise would. The tough part is that it's really time consuming and difficult to create working processes. Additionally, it's much easier (and sometimes more practical) to favor the creation of new things--including new content--instead of going back and making sure the existing stuff works. I'm not sure content debt can ever be overcome 100%, but I do believe the best way to motivate teams to tackle the issue is to build it into your process and make sure to approach it in small steps.
With the opportunity to work remotely and flexibly at Squarespace, how did you ensure you stayed in sync with your team, preserving the quality and efficiency of your collaboration? What were the key tools, strategies, and daily practices you adopted? We'd love to hear about your everyday experience, especially how you navigated the challenges and benefits of working across various time zones.
I'm very thankful to Squarespace for allowing me to relocate to Dublin and work remotely with my team! I have to say, it has taken some calendar gymnastics to ensure that our collaboration is as smooth as possible and that's been rather successful. I also got lucky that most of my team is located in the east coast of the United States which means we get about 4-5 hours of overlapping work hours. My biggest thing is keeping my calendar very available to my teammates (you can always see my meeting details), and putting a hard block on my Do Not Scheudule time for when I'm out. I also build in a little more flexibility by having a few 'late days' where I stay an extra hour or two at the end of my day to allow for more meeting times with west coast folks and balance that out at the end of the week by working strictly within my work hours. This has seemed to work really well over the last 2 years.
We heard that Grammarly is your superhero against active/passive voice writing. What other tools do you use to help you with writing better content?
Grammarly is great to help catch issues with your writing for sure. I also love using Hemingway app editor to simplify my writing and get to a more accessible reading level. The other thing I do (it isn't really a tool, but more of a technique) is that when I open up my Google Docs to start writing, I change the color of the font to gray and I change the typeface to something rounder and less serious. This helps me get out of my own head and not feel like the document is final. It's really more of a 'writing hack' for myself, but it does help me get unstuck.
How do you manage working on multiple products at a time? And how do you prevent yourself from being a victim of context-switching?
Time blocking is huge for me. It's the best way I've found to make sure I'm only focused on one thing at a time. At the start of my week, I'll look at my to-do list and estimate the amount of time certain tasks take. Then I update my calendar with specific blocks of time to focus on certain tracks of work (for example: Monday 2-3pm, read through UX research notes). Instead of saying something vague like 'focus time' I'll actually put down what the focus is on, along with any notes or links that are relevant, so I'm not wasting my focus time hunting down important information.
How can a content audit help you learn more about and improve the product? What is your process for content audit? What profiles are involved in the audit? And When is the best time/phase to audit?
Content audits are great for learning the product--I suggest doing it when you're new to a team. It will help you understand how the product works, but also coming into an audit with fresh eyes can be helpful for existing team members to see gaps that they maybe have overlooked or have stopped paying attention to. Content audits can involve as many people as you'd like, but should at least involve the Project Manager since they're a key stakeholder. Design and Engineering are also important disciplines to include since their output will be affected by any sweeping changes in the content.
UX Designers often focus solely on crafting a user-friendly experience, frequently neglecting SEO until the final stages, which can result in poor search engine performance and reduced product visibility. As a UX writer, how can you assist UX Designers in integrating SEO effectively to ensure that the user-friendly product they create is engaging and easily discoverable by users?
I agree, it can be easy to let SEO go missed. However, when you put content front and center, these things can be caught really early. A lot of UX writers and content designers may not have a lot of experience with SEO, since that's more marketing-focused. However, a good experience doesn't really mean much if people can't find it and engage with it to begin with. If possible, a key thing to do would be to reach out to partners on the marketing end and see if you can work collaboratively on the content.
As the Staff UX Strategist, how can you describe the relationship between content and design? How is each of them present in your team's workflow? Who leads and who follows in the content-design relationship?
I've always viewed the relationship between content and design to be one and the same. Good content with bad design vs good design with bad content...both are a lose-lose. So, my engagement model is usually to figure out what everyone's strengths and interests are and capitalize on that. For example, if someone loves prototyping and iterating on designs, but isn't really interested in wireframing or playing around with copy variations, then find a way to split that work so everyone can get to work on more of what they want in the product. Content designers and product designers have a lot of overlapping skills and we really should all take the lead in the areas we are strongest in.
We all know Squarespace 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., English🇺🇸/ Spanish🇪🇸) to pushing it to code? And what tools do you use for that?
While localization is not part of my work, I'm a firm believer in following best practices to ensure the product can easily be localized. We have a separate localization team at Squarespace that supports product teams to get new features out quickly and efficiently. I think it's extremely important that internationalization is baked-into the design process. If that means adding it to your product roadmap as a checklist item, or making sure to meet with localization folks before something launches, whatever works for you. As long as localization is a consideration.
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 haven't had this happen to me personally, so I don't think I have a take on it other than maybe being more realistic with timelines? Of course there's the urge to jump right in, but UX without research the output will essentially just be an artistic interpretation of digital boxes and words. If there are tight deadlines, you can either start the research earlier, shorten the research time period, change the type of research, or push the deadline back to make it more achievable.
Content designers are typically involved at the very end. They are provided with a hi-fi prototype and asked to improve the copy. What kind of problems and difficulties does this process make? How do you think them early in the design process can help them to write clear and useful copy? And how can Content Designers/UX Writers help UX Designers design better?
This is a super-classic content design problem. Because content designers and UX writers are often spread out on many teams, it can be hard to prioritize work, and it's easy to end up doing surface-level edits on hi-fidelity prototypes. But there's no way for a single content designer to pull out all the design stops from discovery onwards on every single project--especially when they are juggling several. So, I'd say make space to understand exactly what kind of projects need surface-level polish, and what kind of projects can really be owned by content design. Those are the projects to dive into early on, own the work, and make a big impact.
Finally— at Punkt, we are revolutionizing the UX industry by building the Content-First UX Platform where Content Designers and UX Writers co-lead the product UX/Design decisions. We believe a holistic context, Content-First UX approach will fix too many daily issues most product teams deal with. What’s your take on this?
Absolutely. I've been on many teams before both inside and outside of Squarespace where design projects were led and owned by content design. This shouldn't be as unusual as it is. I don't think every single project needs to be content led, but I also don't think every single project needs to be led by visual design either. It doesn't make sense. I think teams should look at a project or product and ask themselves what the most important considerations are for it. If content will make or break the experience then content should lead (for example, a really complex banking experience). If visual design is what is key (for example, a refresh on the visuals of a product), then by all means lead with that. It doesn't mean that both shouldn't work together. In fact, both sides of the discipline can have their own 'shining moments' in the work. But being honest with what the work entails and then giving it to the appropriate discipline to spearhead will get us a long way.
👋 Don't forget to follow Laurah
LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/laurah-mwirichia/
Website laurahmwirichia.com
Medium laurahmwirichia.medium.com
