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 — Roxanna Font (Aliaga),
Head of UX Writing for Apple Services.
Like many others in the UX Writing field, Roxanna has started her career in a different industry. With a background in theater, publishing, and poetry, she began her career as a book and magazine editor years before becoming a UX writer. Her work as an editor and freelance writer has appeared in publications like O, The Oprah Magazine, Parents, and New York Press.
The career switch happened when she joined Ancestry, a platform with more than 3 million subscribers that helps people access a vast collection of genealogical records, tools, and resources to help users build their family trees and discover their ancestry and family history. Roxanna served as a Senior UX Writer responsible for content strategy and development for web, mobile, and app experiences. She maintained editorial standards and UX writing for core UI, guidance, landing pages, emails, and more.
Starting at Dropbox as the lone UX Writer for Paper (Dropbox's equivalent of Docs), she saw the team grow over several years and eventually became the Head of Content Design.
After Dropbox, she embarked on a journey with Cruise, a self-driving technology company. She founded and led the content design team and was instrumental in establishing a community of content creators at the company.
Her responsibilities spanned a wide range, including the development of resources, tooling, and systems, as well as orchestrating UX content across various platforms and channels involving a strategic approach to crafting narratives that enhance user experiences in the complex domain of self-driving technology.
Roxanna advocates the real added value of content designers and how they can be more than just word-smiths. She is a firm believer that content designers can help spot opportunities for alignment that build product cohesion and take user experience to the next level.
She also values collaboration and communication with everyone working on the product, as well as listening to users as a tool to gain different perspectives and a source of inspiration for improving the product and user experience.
One of Roxanna's tips for better UX Writing is balancing scannability with a conversational tone. She advises keeping in mind how search engines prioritize results by headings and keywords. Also, make your copy feel like you're talking to your users (human to human).
Her background as a book and magazine editor equipped her with many skills that facilitated her transition toward UX Writing; here is Roxanna's list of skills that she believes can be applied to UX:
Letting the story shine through
Relying on style resources
Knowing the power of perspective
Finding a voice in the words
Collaborating with designers
Rewriting until it's right
Putting on a marketing hat
Keeping competition in mind
Having an eagle eye
Shipping on time
🔗 Read her article "10 Reasons Why Editors Make Great UX Writers"
Before we discuss Roxanna's valuable insights, we would like to 🎉 congratulate her on joining the Apple team as the Head of UX Writing for Apple Services.
Without further ado, let's get to the Q&A:
10 Questions with Roxanna Font
With your experience leading content design teams at Dropbox and Cruise and soon to be heading the UX Writing team at Apple, which has a vast global reach, could you share what your content design team’s daily routine looks like?
Every content design team is different, and ideally the way a team operates is aligned with what the company needs. While I was at Dropbox the team grew from 4 to 19 at one point; as we scaled we had to adjust the ways we worked, which inevitably impacted our daily routines. At both Dropbox and Cruise we were organized in a hybrid fashion—centralized as a function, and embedded with our various design teams. While we were connecting regularly as a content design team on matters of craft, each content designer was also working directly with multiple cross-functional partners in their day-to-day.
Which key tools or platforms do you consider essential for fostering collaboration and effective communication within your team, particularly in a remote or hybrid work setting? Can you name these tools and any you would like to use but are restricted by company policies?
Beyond the regular suspects like Zoom and Google Hangouts (or some other video conferencing platform) and a real-time communication platform like Slack, for creative collaboration we used FigJam a lot. I’ve also been an advocate for Writer, particularly for multi-disciplinary writing teams. It’s a platform that fosters alignment on standards across content formats while also leveraging generative-AI capabilities.
It looks like you had a pretty good background in book and magazine editing. How has your editorial experience shaped your approach to content strategy in the digital world? Which aspects of traditional publishing do you find transferrable and valuable in UX writing and content design?
I’m grateful that I spent many years in books and magazines. When I transitioned into tech from publishing I found a number of my skills mapped to my work as a UX writer and it inspired me to write about it, in part to demystify tech for those outside the industry. A novel to me is the quintessential end-to-end experience. Editing requires the ability to look at the overall narrative arc, chapters that take a reader on the journey, as well as every sentence and word—all at once. At its core, UX writing is about evaluating all those altitudes too. How are you going to take a user from point A to point B? My “non-tech” background helps me keep UX grounded at a practical level. At the end of the day, I believe content design is rooted in the what/where/why basics of good communication.
Leading Cruise’s Content Design team, how did you navigate the unique challenges of crafting content design for self-driving technology, with its hardware, infrastructure, and software complexities? How is this experience different from working with entirely digital subscription businesses like Dropbox and Ancestry?
Cruise was a design challenge like none other. We were crafting experiences that had no real predecessors. It was a dream to design the content for it— multi-modal requiring UI for screens and mobile, as well as messages for audio and in-cabin stickers. So much of designing for a frontier technology is about building trust with people, and UX writers are well positioned on the informational and clarity front as well as the humanizing aspects of design. The orchestration of all of these things was at the heart of the work we did. Dropbox and Ancestry held their own fascinating challenges with unique product goals, but Cruise was my first foray into exploring how to design content for an immersive experience across such a broad scope of channels.
A long one here: While at Cruise, what strategies did you use to ensure the content design team was integrated into all phases of the user journey across various project touchpoints rather than only being involved at the end when words were needed? Are there specific methodologies or frameworks you used to ensure a seamless adoption within other teams, particularly with engineering and PMs? Despite the challenges and stress in Software/Tech companies, how did you overcome these hurdles, and how was your work perceived across the board?
Part of the draw of coming to Cruise was establishing the content design function from the very beginning and building an infrastructure for content creation that supported coordination across teams without sacrificing our speed of development. That meant establishing relationships with everyone touching content at Cruise—various functions under product as well as marketing and support teams. Socializing the impact of content designers (and how to maximize it) was a part of all of those conversations. To help scale the understanding, we launched a monthly Content Design 101 session, including the rundown of our hi-lo-no engagement model, which allowed us to dedicate efforts more deeply on select projects. The reality is there is no sure-fire way to get everyone to integrate content designers all the time and as a discipline I think we will continue to face frustrations in this respect. I also believe that part of our job is acknowledging that reality and finding ways to consistently show up and build the understanding of our craft one team at a time.
Given your vast experience, how do you anticipate the role of content design will evolve in the broader tech industry? What trends do you foresee driving the future of UX writing and content design?
I’m continuing to stay open and curious to seeing how things evolve myself! Certainly AI-generated content is something to monitor and there are already so many talented content designers going deep into the best ways to leverage this new technology to expedite and augment the work we do.
As the Head of Content Design, could you describe the interplay between content and design in your team's process? How are both elements integrated into your workflow? Additionally, within the content-design dynamic, which takes precedence or sets the direction—is it content leading design, or vice versa
I think all of this largely depends on the product you're working on and the problem you’re trying to solve. At Cruise I hired content designers who could work Figma-first because we needed to move quickly with our product design counterparts. But I think there are some experiences—particularly those around education—that benefit from being content-led. Sometimes what needs to be communicated in the UX is fundamental to shaping the sequencing, interactions, and visual design.
What distinct value do content designers provide to organizations, particularly given the historical roles of copywriters and content strategists in managing content? Do you think a tech company can still survive without content designers or UX writers today? If yes, how? If no, why?
Content designers are expert bridge builders. Words—and communication more broadly—is the great common denominator in…well, pretty much everything. And when you’re talking about user-facing product experiences, content designers have a purview that allows them to connect dots across an organization in ways that other functions don’t have so readily. For example, we can provide feature benefits for marketers, function insights for support writers, and context for localization teams. And because content designers often work across orgs (in part because our teams tend to be smaller) we are often the first to spot opportunities for alignment that build product cohesion. Our value goes well beyond our specific craft, empowered by the diversity of skills required to handle language in a nuanced manner. While tech companies might be able to survive without content designers, is simply surviving the goal? I think most companies want to go beyond that; content designers and UX writers can help take product experiences to the next level and drive engagement, retention, and overall growth.
Content designers are typically involved at the very end. They are provided with a high-fidelity UI prototype and asked to write or improve the copy with little context, if any. How does this process cause problems and difficulties?
Content designers are the obvious yin to a product designer’s yang. We think about all the UX concerns of our counterparts, just with a primary lens of language. Many years ago, I was working on a sunset flow and was brought in late. In a room with engineers and a designer I uncovered several edge cases that needed error messages, so we had to backtrack. It’s not uncommon for content designers to raise issues like this if they’re brought in late, which causes frustration and thrash for everyone. The ability of content practitioners to think along communication lines means we tend to pull threads through that otherwise get missed. All disciplines have something to contribute in product development and leveraging that diversity supports efficiency and better design.
Finally, at Punkt, we are transforming the UX industry by developing a Content-First UX Platform where Content Designers and UX Writers co-lead product UX and design decisions from the outset. We believe this approach will address many common issues faced by product teams. Do you think the Content Team could eventually be part of the leading team guiding the entire UX process? Or is it too soon for them to take a front seat with other teams?
It’s exciting to hear about a content-first UX platform that can help teams discover the power of this approach. Language is fundamental to how we connect as humans so no matter the flow at hand, taking a content-first approach gives heart to our UX—and I don’t mean that in just a touchy-feely way! At the end of the day, great UX helps people do the things they want to do. The way they move through an experience is an exchange akin to conversation. And while a conversation isn’t always about the words, it is always about what we’re communicating. Especially as we move more and more into frontier technologies, content teams have a strong role to play in keeping product experiences relatable and compelling.
👋 Don't forget to follow Roxanna
LinkedIn linkedin.com/in/roxanna-aliaga
Website roxannafont.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 — Roxanna Font (Aliaga),
Head of UX Writing for Apple Services.
Like many others in the UX Writing field, Roxanna has started her career in a different industry. With a background in theater, publishing, and poetry, she began her career as a book and magazine editor years before becoming a UX writer. Her work as an editor and freelance writer has appeared in publications like O, The Oprah Magazine, Parents, and New York Press.
The career switch happened when she joined Ancestry, a platform with more than 3 million subscribers that helps people access a vast collection of genealogical records, tools, and resources to help users build their family trees and discover their ancestry and family history. Roxanna served as a Senior UX Writer responsible for content strategy and development for web, mobile, and app experiences. She maintained editorial standards and UX writing for core UI, guidance, landing pages, emails, and more.
Starting at Dropbox as the lone UX Writer for Paper (Dropbox's equivalent of Docs), she saw the team grow over several years and eventually became the Head of Content Design.
After Dropbox, she embarked on a journey with Cruise, a self-driving technology company. She founded and led the content design team and was instrumental in establishing a community of content creators at the company.
Her responsibilities spanned a wide range, including the development of resources, tooling, and systems, as well as orchestrating UX content across various platforms and channels involving a strategic approach to crafting narratives that enhance user experiences in the complex domain of self-driving technology.
Roxanna advocates the real added value of content designers and how they can be more than just word-smiths. She is a firm believer that content designers can help spot opportunities for alignment that build product cohesion and take user experience to the next level.
She also values collaboration and communication with everyone working on the product, as well as listening to users as a tool to gain different perspectives and a source of inspiration for improving the product and user experience.
One of Roxanna's tips for better UX Writing is balancing scannability with a conversational tone. She advises keeping in mind how search engines prioritize results by headings and keywords. Also, make your copy feel like you're talking to your users (human to human).
Her background as a book and magazine editor equipped her with many skills that facilitated her transition toward UX Writing; here is Roxanna's list of skills that she believes can be applied to UX:
Letting the story shine through
Relying on style resources
Knowing the power of perspective
Finding a voice in the words
Collaborating with designers
Rewriting until it's right
Putting on a marketing hat
Keeping competition in mind
Having an eagle eye
Shipping on time
🔗 Read her article "10 Reasons Why Editors Make Great UX Writers"
Before we discuss Roxanna's valuable insights, we would like to 🎉 congratulate her on joining the Apple team as the Head of UX Writing for Apple Services.
Without further ado, let's get to the Q&A:
10 Questions with Roxanna Font
With your experience leading content design teams at Dropbox and Cruise and soon to be heading the UX Writing team at Apple, which has a vast global reach, could you share what your content design team’s daily routine looks like?
Every content design team is different, and ideally the way a team operates is aligned with what the company needs. While I was at Dropbox the team grew from 4 to 19 at one point; as we scaled we had to adjust the ways we worked, which inevitably impacted our daily routines. At both Dropbox and Cruise we were organized in a hybrid fashion—centralized as a function, and embedded with our various design teams. While we were connecting regularly as a content design team on matters of craft, each content designer was also working directly with multiple cross-functional partners in their day-to-day.
Which key tools or platforms do you consider essential for fostering collaboration and effective communication within your team, particularly in a remote or hybrid work setting? Can you name these tools and any you would like to use but are restricted by company policies?
Beyond the regular suspects like Zoom and Google Hangouts (or some other video conferencing platform) and a real-time communication platform like Slack, for creative collaboration we used FigJam a lot. I’ve also been an advocate for Writer, particularly for multi-disciplinary writing teams. It’s a platform that fosters alignment on standards across content formats while also leveraging generative-AI capabilities.
It looks like you had a pretty good background in book and magazine editing. How has your editorial experience shaped your approach to content strategy in the digital world? Which aspects of traditional publishing do you find transferrable and valuable in UX writing and content design?
I’m grateful that I spent many years in books and magazines. When I transitioned into tech from publishing I found a number of my skills mapped to my work as a UX writer and it inspired me to write about it, in part to demystify tech for those outside the industry. A novel to me is the quintessential end-to-end experience. Editing requires the ability to look at the overall narrative arc, chapters that take a reader on the journey, as well as every sentence and word—all at once. At its core, UX writing is about evaluating all those altitudes too. How are you going to take a user from point A to point B? My “non-tech” background helps me keep UX grounded at a practical level. At the end of the day, I believe content design is rooted in the what/where/why basics of good communication.
Leading Cruise’s Content Design team, how did you navigate the unique challenges of crafting content design for self-driving technology, with its hardware, infrastructure, and software complexities? How is this experience different from working with entirely digital subscription businesses like Dropbox and Ancestry?
Cruise was a design challenge like none other. We were crafting experiences that had no real predecessors. It was a dream to design the content for it— multi-modal requiring UI for screens and mobile, as well as messages for audio and in-cabin stickers. So much of designing for a frontier technology is about building trust with people, and UX writers are well positioned on the informational and clarity front as well as the humanizing aspects of design. The orchestration of all of these things was at the heart of the work we did. Dropbox and Ancestry held their own fascinating challenges with unique product goals, but Cruise was my first foray into exploring how to design content for an immersive experience across such a broad scope of channels.
A long one here: While at Cruise, what strategies did you use to ensure the content design team was integrated into all phases of the user journey across various project touchpoints rather than only being involved at the end when words were needed? Are there specific methodologies or frameworks you used to ensure a seamless adoption within other teams, particularly with engineering and PMs? Despite the challenges and stress in Software/Tech companies, how did you overcome these hurdles, and how was your work perceived across the board?
Part of the draw of coming to Cruise was establishing the content design function from the very beginning and building an infrastructure for content creation that supported coordination across teams without sacrificing our speed of development. That meant establishing relationships with everyone touching content at Cruise—various functions under product as well as marketing and support teams. Socializing the impact of content designers (and how to maximize it) was a part of all of those conversations. To help scale the understanding, we launched a monthly Content Design 101 session, including the rundown of our hi-lo-no engagement model, which allowed us to dedicate efforts more deeply on select projects. The reality is there is no sure-fire way to get everyone to integrate content designers all the time and as a discipline I think we will continue to face frustrations in this respect. I also believe that part of our job is acknowledging that reality and finding ways to consistently show up and build the understanding of our craft one team at a time.
Given your vast experience, how do you anticipate the role of content design will evolve in the broader tech industry? What trends do you foresee driving the future of UX writing and content design?
I’m continuing to stay open and curious to seeing how things evolve myself! Certainly AI-generated content is something to monitor and there are already so many talented content designers going deep into the best ways to leverage this new technology to expedite and augment the work we do.
As the Head of Content Design, could you describe the interplay between content and design in your team's process? How are both elements integrated into your workflow? Additionally, within the content-design dynamic, which takes precedence or sets the direction—is it content leading design, or vice versa
I think all of this largely depends on the product you're working on and the problem you’re trying to solve. At Cruise I hired content designers who could work Figma-first because we needed to move quickly with our product design counterparts. But I think there are some experiences—particularly those around education—that benefit from being content-led. Sometimes what needs to be communicated in the UX is fundamental to shaping the sequencing, interactions, and visual design.
What distinct value do content designers provide to organizations, particularly given the historical roles of copywriters and content strategists in managing content? Do you think a tech company can still survive without content designers or UX writers today? If yes, how? If no, why?
Content designers are expert bridge builders. Words—and communication more broadly—is the great common denominator in…well, pretty much everything. And when you’re talking about user-facing product experiences, content designers have a purview that allows them to connect dots across an organization in ways that other functions don’t have so readily. For example, we can provide feature benefits for marketers, function insights for support writers, and context for localization teams. And because content designers often work across orgs (in part because our teams tend to be smaller) we are often the first to spot opportunities for alignment that build product cohesion. Our value goes well beyond our specific craft, empowered by the diversity of skills required to handle language in a nuanced manner. While tech companies might be able to survive without content designers, is simply surviving the goal? I think most companies want to go beyond that; content designers and UX writers can help take product experiences to the next level and drive engagement, retention, and overall growth.
Content designers are typically involved at the very end. They are provided with a high-fidelity UI prototype and asked to write or improve the copy with little context, if any. How does this process cause problems and difficulties?
Content designers are the obvious yin to a product designer’s yang. We think about all the UX concerns of our counterparts, just with a primary lens of language. Many years ago, I was working on a sunset flow and was brought in late. In a room with engineers and a designer I uncovered several edge cases that needed error messages, so we had to backtrack. It’s not uncommon for content designers to raise issues like this if they’re brought in late, which causes frustration and thrash for everyone. The ability of content practitioners to think along communication lines means we tend to pull threads through that otherwise get missed. All disciplines have something to contribute in product development and leveraging that diversity supports efficiency and better design.
Finally, at Punkt, we are transforming the UX industry by developing a Content-First UX Platform where Content Designers and UX Writers co-lead product UX and design decisions from the outset. We believe this approach will address many common issues faced by product teams. Do you think the Content Team could eventually be part of the leading team guiding the entire UX process? Or is it too soon for them to take a front seat with other teams?
It’s exciting to hear about a content-first UX platform that can help teams discover the power of this approach. Language is fundamental to how we connect as humans so no matter the flow at hand, taking a content-first approach gives heart to our UX—and I don’t mean that in just a touchy-feely way! At the end of the day, great UX helps people do the things they want to do. The way they move through an experience is an exchange akin to conversation. And while a conversation isn’t always about the words, it is always about what we’re communicating. Especially as we move more and more into frontier technologies, content teams have a strong role to play in keeping product experiences relatable and compelling.
👋 Don't forget to follow Roxanna
LinkedIn linkedin.com/in/roxanna-aliaga
Website roxannafont.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 — Roxanna Font (Aliaga),
Head of UX Writing for Apple Services.
Like many others in the UX Writing field, Roxanna has started her career in a different industry. With a background in theater, publishing, and poetry, she began her career as a book and magazine editor years before becoming a UX writer. Her work as an editor and freelance writer has appeared in publications like O, The Oprah Magazine, Parents, and New York Press.
The career switch happened when she joined Ancestry, a platform with more than 3 million subscribers that helps people access a vast collection of genealogical records, tools, and resources to help users build their family trees and discover their ancestry and family history. Roxanna served as a Senior UX Writer responsible for content strategy and development for web, mobile, and app experiences. She maintained editorial standards and UX writing for core UI, guidance, landing pages, emails, and more.
Starting at Dropbox as the lone UX Writer for Paper (Dropbox's equivalent of Docs), she saw the team grow over several years and eventually became the Head of Content Design.
After Dropbox, she embarked on a journey with Cruise, a self-driving technology company. She founded and led the content design team and was instrumental in establishing a community of content creators at the company.
Her responsibilities spanned a wide range, including the development of resources, tooling, and systems, as well as orchestrating UX content across various platforms and channels involving a strategic approach to crafting narratives that enhance user experiences in the complex domain of self-driving technology.
Roxanna advocates the real added value of content designers and how they can be more than just word-smiths. She is a firm believer that content designers can help spot opportunities for alignment that build product cohesion and take user experience to the next level.
She also values collaboration and communication with everyone working on the product, as well as listening to users as a tool to gain different perspectives and a source of inspiration for improving the product and user experience.
One of Roxanna's tips for better UX Writing is balancing scannability with a conversational tone. She advises keeping in mind how search engines prioritize results by headings and keywords. Also, make your copy feel like you're talking to your users (human to human).
Her background as a book and magazine editor equipped her with many skills that facilitated her transition toward UX Writing; here is Roxanna's list of skills that she believes can be applied to UX:
Letting the story shine through
Relying on style resources
Knowing the power of perspective
Finding a voice in the words
Collaborating with designers
Rewriting until it's right
Putting on a marketing hat
Keeping competition in mind
Having an eagle eye
Shipping on time
🔗 Read her article "10 Reasons Why Editors Make Great UX Writers"
Before we discuss Roxanna's valuable insights, we would like to 🎉 congratulate her on joining the Apple team as the Head of UX Writing for Apple Services.
Without further ado, let's get to the Q&A:
10 Questions with Roxanna Font
With your experience leading content design teams at Dropbox and Cruise and soon to be heading the UX Writing team at Apple, which has a vast global reach, could you share what your content design team’s daily routine looks like?
Every content design team is different, and ideally the way a team operates is aligned with what the company needs. While I was at Dropbox the team grew from 4 to 19 at one point; as we scaled we had to adjust the ways we worked, which inevitably impacted our daily routines. At both Dropbox and Cruise we were organized in a hybrid fashion—centralized as a function, and embedded with our various design teams. While we were connecting regularly as a content design team on matters of craft, each content designer was also working directly with multiple cross-functional partners in their day-to-day.
Which key tools or platforms do you consider essential for fostering collaboration and effective communication within your team, particularly in a remote or hybrid work setting? Can you name these tools and any you would like to use but are restricted by company policies?
Beyond the regular suspects like Zoom and Google Hangouts (or some other video conferencing platform) and a real-time communication platform like Slack, for creative collaboration we used FigJam a lot. I’ve also been an advocate for Writer, particularly for multi-disciplinary writing teams. It’s a platform that fosters alignment on standards across content formats while also leveraging generative-AI capabilities.
It looks like you had a pretty good background in book and magazine editing. How has your editorial experience shaped your approach to content strategy in the digital world? Which aspects of traditional publishing do you find transferrable and valuable in UX writing and content design?
I’m grateful that I spent many years in books and magazines. When I transitioned into tech from publishing I found a number of my skills mapped to my work as a UX writer and it inspired me to write about it, in part to demystify tech for those outside the industry. A novel to me is the quintessential end-to-end experience. Editing requires the ability to look at the overall narrative arc, chapters that take a reader on the journey, as well as every sentence and word—all at once. At its core, UX writing is about evaluating all those altitudes too. How are you going to take a user from point A to point B? My “non-tech” background helps me keep UX grounded at a practical level. At the end of the day, I believe content design is rooted in the what/where/why basics of good communication.
Leading Cruise’s Content Design team, how did you navigate the unique challenges of crafting content design for self-driving technology, with its hardware, infrastructure, and software complexities? How is this experience different from working with entirely digital subscription businesses like Dropbox and Ancestry?
Cruise was a design challenge like none other. We were crafting experiences that had no real predecessors. It was a dream to design the content for it— multi-modal requiring UI for screens and mobile, as well as messages for audio and in-cabin stickers. So much of designing for a frontier technology is about building trust with people, and UX writers are well positioned on the informational and clarity front as well as the humanizing aspects of design. The orchestration of all of these things was at the heart of the work we did. Dropbox and Ancestry held their own fascinating challenges with unique product goals, but Cruise was my first foray into exploring how to design content for an immersive experience across such a broad scope of channels.
A long one here: While at Cruise, what strategies did you use to ensure the content design team was integrated into all phases of the user journey across various project touchpoints rather than only being involved at the end when words were needed? Are there specific methodologies or frameworks you used to ensure a seamless adoption within other teams, particularly with engineering and PMs? Despite the challenges and stress in Software/Tech companies, how did you overcome these hurdles, and how was your work perceived across the board?
Part of the draw of coming to Cruise was establishing the content design function from the very beginning and building an infrastructure for content creation that supported coordination across teams without sacrificing our speed of development. That meant establishing relationships with everyone touching content at Cruise—various functions under product as well as marketing and support teams. Socializing the impact of content designers (and how to maximize it) was a part of all of those conversations. To help scale the understanding, we launched a monthly Content Design 101 session, including the rundown of our hi-lo-no engagement model, which allowed us to dedicate efforts more deeply on select projects. The reality is there is no sure-fire way to get everyone to integrate content designers all the time and as a discipline I think we will continue to face frustrations in this respect. I also believe that part of our job is acknowledging that reality and finding ways to consistently show up and build the understanding of our craft one team at a time.
Given your vast experience, how do you anticipate the role of content design will evolve in the broader tech industry? What trends do you foresee driving the future of UX writing and content design?
I’m continuing to stay open and curious to seeing how things evolve myself! Certainly AI-generated content is something to monitor and there are already so many talented content designers going deep into the best ways to leverage this new technology to expedite and augment the work we do.
As the Head of Content Design, could you describe the interplay between content and design in your team's process? How are both elements integrated into your workflow? Additionally, within the content-design dynamic, which takes precedence or sets the direction—is it content leading design, or vice versa
I think all of this largely depends on the product you're working on and the problem you’re trying to solve. At Cruise I hired content designers who could work Figma-first because we needed to move quickly with our product design counterparts. But I think there are some experiences—particularly those around education—that benefit from being content-led. Sometimes what needs to be communicated in the UX is fundamental to shaping the sequencing, interactions, and visual design.
What distinct value do content designers provide to organizations, particularly given the historical roles of copywriters and content strategists in managing content? Do you think a tech company can still survive without content designers or UX writers today? If yes, how? If no, why?
Content designers are expert bridge builders. Words—and communication more broadly—is the great common denominator in…well, pretty much everything. And when you’re talking about user-facing product experiences, content designers have a purview that allows them to connect dots across an organization in ways that other functions don’t have so readily. For example, we can provide feature benefits for marketers, function insights for support writers, and context for localization teams. And because content designers often work across orgs (in part because our teams tend to be smaller) we are often the first to spot opportunities for alignment that build product cohesion. Our value goes well beyond our specific craft, empowered by the diversity of skills required to handle language in a nuanced manner. While tech companies might be able to survive without content designers, is simply surviving the goal? I think most companies want to go beyond that; content designers and UX writers can help take product experiences to the next level and drive engagement, retention, and overall growth.
Content designers are typically involved at the very end. They are provided with a high-fidelity UI prototype and asked to write or improve the copy with little context, if any. How does this process cause problems and difficulties?
Content designers are the obvious yin to a product designer’s yang. We think about all the UX concerns of our counterparts, just with a primary lens of language. Many years ago, I was working on a sunset flow and was brought in late. In a room with engineers and a designer I uncovered several edge cases that needed error messages, so we had to backtrack. It’s not uncommon for content designers to raise issues like this if they’re brought in late, which causes frustration and thrash for everyone. The ability of content practitioners to think along communication lines means we tend to pull threads through that otherwise get missed. All disciplines have something to contribute in product development and leveraging that diversity supports efficiency and better design.
Finally, at Punkt, we are transforming the UX industry by developing a Content-First UX Platform where Content Designers and UX Writers co-lead product UX and design decisions from the outset. We believe this approach will address many common issues faced by product teams. Do you think the Content Team could eventually be part of the leading team guiding the entire UX process? Or is it too soon for them to take a front seat with other teams?
It’s exciting to hear about a content-first UX platform that can help teams discover the power of this approach. Language is fundamental to how we connect as humans so no matter the flow at hand, taking a content-first approach gives heart to our UX—and I don’t mean that in just a touchy-feely way! At the end of the day, great UX helps people do the things they want to do. The way they move through an experience is an exchange akin to conversation. And while a conversation isn’t always about the words, it is always about what we’re communicating. Especially as we move more and more into frontier technologies, content teams have a strong role to play in keeping product experiences relatable and compelling.
👋 Don't forget to follow Roxanna
LinkedIn linkedin.com/in/roxanna-aliaga
Website roxannafont.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 — Roxanna Font (Aliaga),
Head of UX Writing for Apple Services.
Like many others in the UX Writing field, Roxanna has started her career in a different industry. With a background in theater, publishing, and poetry, she began her career as a book and magazine editor years before becoming a UX writer. Her work as an editor and freelance writer has appeared in publications like O, The Oprah Magazine, Parents, and New York Press.
The career switch happened when she joined Ancestry, a platform with more than 3 million subscribers that helps people access a vast collection of genealogical records, tools, and resources to help users build their family trees and discover their ancestry and family history. Roxanna served as a Senior UX Writer responsible for content strategy and development for web, mobile, and app experiences. She maintained editorial standards and UX writing for core UI, guidance, landing pages, emails, and more.
Starting at Dropbox as the lone UX Writer for Paper (Dropbox's equivalent of Docs), she saw the team grow over several years and eventually became the Head of Content Design.
After Dropbox, she embarked on a journey with Cruise, a self-driving technology company. She founded and led the content design team and was instrumental in establishing a community of content creators at the company.
Her responsibilities spanned a wide range, including the development of resources, tooling, and systems, as well as orchestrating UX content across various platforms and channels involving a strategic approach to crafting narratives that enhance user experiences in the complex domain of self-driving technology.
Roxanna advocates the real added value of content designers and how they can be more than just word-smiths. She is a firm believer that content designers can help spot opportunities for alignment that build product cohesion and take user experience to the next level.
She also values collaboration and communication with everyone working on the product, as well as listening to users as a tool to gain different perspectives and a source of inspiration for improving the product and user experience.
One of Roxanna's tips for better UX Writing is balancing scannability with a conversational tone. She advises keeping in mind how search engines prioritize results by headings and keywords. Also, make your copy feel like you're talking to your users (human to human).
Her background as a book and magazine editor equipped her with many skills that facilitated her transition toward UX Writing; here is Roxanna's list of skills that she believes can be applied to UX:
Letting the story shine through
Relying on style resources
Knowing the power of perspective
Finding a voice in the words
Collaborating with designers
Rewriting until it's right
Putting on a marketing hat
Keeping competition in mind
Having an eagle eye
Shipping on time
🔗 Read her article "10 Reasons Why Editors Make Great UX Writers"
Before we discuss Roxanna's valuable insights, we would like to 🎉 congratulate her on joining the Apple team as the Head of UX Writing for Apple Services.
Without further ado, let's get to the Q&A:
10 Questions with Roxanna Font
With your experience leading content design teams at Dropbox and Cruise and soon to be heading the UX Writing team at Apple, which has a vast global reach, could you share what your content design team’s daily routine looks like?
Every content design team is different, and ideally the way a team operates is aligned with what the company needs. While I was at Dropbox the team grew from 4 to 19 at one point; as we scaled we had to adjust the ways we worked, which inevitably impacted our daily routines. At both Dropbox and Cruise we were organized in a hybrid fashion—centralized as a function, and embedded with our various design teams. While we were connecting regularly as a content design team on matters of craft, each content designer was also working directly with multiple cross-functional partners in their day-to-day.
Which key tools or platforms do you consider essential for fostering collaboration and effective communication within your team, particularly in a remote or hybrid work setting? Can you name these tools and any you would like to use but are restricted by company policies?
Beyond the regular suspects like Zoom and Google Hangouts (or some other video conferencing platform) and a real-time communication platform like Slack, for creative collaboration we used FigJam a lot. I’ve also been an advocate for Writer, particularly for multi-disciplinary writing teams. It’s a platform that fosters alignment on standards across content formats while also leveraging generative-AI capabilities.
It looks like you had a pretty good background in book and magazine editing. How has your editorial experience shaped your approach to content strategy in the digital world? Which aspects of traditional publishing do you find transferrable and valuable in UX writing and content design?
I’m grateful that I spent many years in books and magazines. When I transitioned into tech from publishing I found a number of my skills mapped to my work as a UX writer and it inspired me to write about it, in part to demystify tech for those outside the industry. A novel to me is the quintessential end-to-end experience. Editing requires the ability to look at the overall narrative arc, chapters that take a reader on the journey, as well as every sentence and word—all at once. At its core, UX writing is about evaluating all those altitudes too. How are you going to take a user from point A to point B? My “non-tech” background helps me keep UX grounded at a practical level. At the end of the day, I believe content design is rooted in the what/where/why basics of good communication.
Leading Cruise’s Content Design team, how did you navigate the unique challenges of crafting content design for self-driving technology, with its hardware, infrastructure, and software complexities? How is this experience different from working with entirely digital subscription businesses like Dropbox and Ancestry?
Cruise was a design challenge like none other. We were crafting experiences that had no real predecessors. It was a dream to design the content for it— multi-modal requiring UI for screens and mobile, as well as messages for audio and in-cabin stickers. So much of designing for a frontier technology is about building trust with people, and UX writers are well positioned on the informational and clarity front as well as the humanizing aspects of design. The orchestration of all of these things was at the heart of the work we did. Dropbox and Ancestry held their own fascinating challenges with unique product goals, but Cruise was my first foray into exploring how to design content for an immersive experience across such a broad scope of channels.
A long one here: While at Cruise, what strategies did you use to ensure the content design team was integrated into all phases of the user journey across various project touchpoints rather than only being involved at the end when words were needed? Are there specific methodologies or frameworks you used to ensure a seamless adoption within other teams, particularly with engineering and PMs? Despite the challenges and stress in Software/Tech companies, how did you overcome these hurdles, and how was your work perceived across the board?
Part of the draw of coming to Cruise was establishing the content design function from the very beginning and building an infrastructure for content creation that supported coordination across teams without sacrificing our speed of development. That meant establishing relationships with everyone touching content at Cruise—various functions under product as well as marketing and support teams. Socializing the impact of content designers (and how to maximize it) was a part of all of those conversations. To help scale the understanding, we launched a monthly Content Design 101 session, including the rundown of our hi-lo-no engagement model, which allowed us to dedicate efforts more deeply on select projects. The reality is there is no sure-fire way to get everyone to integrate content designers all the time and as a discipline I think we will continue to face frustrations in this respect. I also believe that part of our job is acknowledging that reality and finding ways to consistently show up and build the understanding of our craft one team at a time.
Given your vast experience, how do you anticipate the role of content design will evolve in the broader tech industry? What trends do you foresee driving the future of UX writing and content design?
I’m continuing to stay open and curious to seeing how things evolve myself! Certainly AI-generated content is something to monitor and there are already so many talented content designers going deep into the best ways to leverage this new technology to expedite and augment the work we do.
As the Head of Content Design, could you describe the interplay between content and design in your team's process? How are both elements integrated into your workflow? Additionally, within the content-design dynamic, which takes precedence or sets the direction—is it content leading design, or vice versa
I think all of this largely depends on the product you're working on and the problem you’re trying to solve. At Cruise I hired content designers who could work Figma-first because we needed to move quickly with our product design counterparts. But I think there are some experiences—particularly those around education—that benefit from being content-led. Sometimes what needs to be communicated in the UX is fundamental to shaping the sequencing, interactions, and visual design.
What distinct value do content designers provide to organizations, particularly given the historical roles of copywriters and content strategists in managing content? Do you think a tech company can still survive without content designers or UX writers today? If yes, how? If no, why?
Content designers are expert bridge builders. Words—and communication more broadly—is the great common denominator in…well, pretty much everything. And when you’re talking about user-facing product experiences, content designers have a purview that allows them to connect dots across an organization in ways that other functions don’t have so readily. For example, we can provide feature benefits for marketers, function insights for support writers, and context for localization teams. And because content designers often work across orgs (in part because our teams tend to be smaller) we are often the first to spot opportunities for alignment that build product cohesion. Our value goes well beyond our specific craft, empowered by the diversity of skills required to handle language in a nuanced manner. While tech companies might be able to survive without content designers, is simply surviving the goal? I think most companies want to go beyond that; content designers and UX writers can help take product experiences to the next level and drive engagement, retention, and overall growth.
Content designers are typically involved at the very end. They are provided with a high-fidelity UI prototype and asked to write or improve the copy with little context, if any. How does this process cause problems and difficulties?
Content designers are the obvious yin to a product designer’s yang. We think about all the UX concerns of our counterparts, just with a primary lens of language. Many years ago, I was working on a sunset flow and was brought in late. In a room with engineers and a designer I uncovered several edge cases that needed error messages, so we had to backtrack. It’s not uncommon for content designers to raise issues like this if they’re brought in late, which causes frustration and thrash for everyone. The ability of content practitioners to think along communication lines means we tend to pull threads through that otherwise get missed. All disciplines have something to contribute in product development and leveraging that diversity supports efficiency and better design.
Finally, at Punkt, we are transforming the UX industry by developing a Content-First UX Platform where Content Designers and UX Writers co-lead product UX and design decisions from the outset. We believe this approach will address many common issues faced by product teams. Do you think the Content Team could eventually be part of the leading team guiding the entire UX process? Or is it too soon for them to take a front seat with other teams?
It’s exciting to hear about a content-first UX platform that can help teams discover the power of this approach. Language is fundamental to how we connect as humans so no matter the flow at hand, taking a content-first approach gives heart to our UX—and I don’t mean that in just a touchy-feely way! At the end of the day, great UX helps people do the things they want to do. The way they move through an experience is an exchange akin to conversation. And while a conversation isn’t always about the words, it is always about what we’re communicating. Especially as we move more and more into frontier technologies, content teams have a strong role to play in keeping product experiences relatable and compelling.
👋 Don't forget to follow Roxanna
LinkedIn linkedin.com/in/roxanna-aliaga
Website roxannafont.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 — Roxanna Font (Aliaga),
Head of UX Writing for Apple Services.
Like many others in the UX Writing field, Roxanna has started her career in a different industry. With a background in theater, publishing, and poetry, she began her career as a book and magazine editor years before becoming a UX writer. Her work as an editor and freelance writer has appeared in publications like O, The Oprah Magazine, Parents, and New York Press.
The career switch happened when she joined Ancestry, a platform with more than 3 million subscribers that helps people access a vast collection of genealogical records, tools, and resources to help users build their family trees and discover their ancestry and family history. Roxanna served as a Senior UX Writer responsible for content strategy and development for web, mobile, and app experiences. She maintained editorial standards and UX writing for core UI, guidance, landing pages, emails, and more.
Starting at Dropbox as the lone UX Writer for Paper (Dropbox's equivalent of Docs), she saw the team grow over several years and eventually became the Head of Content Design.
After Dropbox, she embarked on a journey with Cruise, a self-driving technology company. She founded and led the content design team and was instrumental in establishing a community of content creators at the company.
Her responsibilities spanned a wide range, including the development of resources, tooling, and systems, as well as orchestrating UX content across various platforms and channels involving a strategic approach to crafting narratives that enhance user experiences in the complex domain of self-driving technology.
Roxanna advocates the real added value of content designers and how they can be more than just word-smiths. She is a firm believer that content designers can help spot opportunities for alignment that build product cohesion and take user experience to the next level.
She also values collaboration and communication with everyone working on the product, as well as listening to users as a tool to gain different perspectives and a source of inspiration for improving the product and user experience.
One of Roxanna's tips for better UX Writing is balancing scannability with a conversational tone. She advises keeping in mind how search engines prioritize results by headings and keywords. Also, make your copy feel like you're talking to your users (human to human).
Her background as a book and magazine editor equipped her with many skills that facilitated her transition toward UX Writing; here is Roxanna's list of skills that she believes can be applied to UX:
Letting the story shine through
Relying on style resources
Knowing the power of perspective
Finding a voice in the words
Collaborating with designers
Rewriting until it's right
Putting on a marketing hat
Keeping competition in mind
Having an eagle eye
Shipping on time
🔗 Read her article "10 Reasons Why Editors Make Great UX Writers"
Before we discuss Roxanna's valuable insights, we would like to 🎉 congratulate her on joining the Apple team as the Head of UX Writing for Apple Services.
Without further ado, let's get to the Q&A:
10 Questions with Roxanna Font
With your experience leading content design teams at Dropbox and Cruise and soon to be heading the UX Writing team at Apple, which has a vast global reach, could you share what your content design team’s daily routine looks like?
Every content design team is different, and ideally the way a team operates is aligned with what the company needs. While I was at Dropbox the team grew from 4 to 19 at one point; as we scaled we had to adjust the ways we worked, which inevitably impacted our daily routines. At both Dropbox and Cruise we were organized in a hybrid fashion—centralized as a function, and embedded with our various design teams. While we were connecting regularly as a content design team on matters of craft, each content designer was also working directly with multiple cross-functional partners in their day-to-day.
Which key tools or platforms do you consider essential for fostering collaboration and effective communication within your team, particularly in a remote or hybrid work setting? Can you name these tools and any you would like to use but are restricted by company policies?
Beyond the regular suspects like Zoom and Google Hangouts (or some other video conferencing platform) and a real-time communication platform like Slack, for creative collaboration we used FigJam a lot. I’ve also been an advocate for Writer, particularly for multi-disciplinary writing teams. It’s a platform that fosters alignment on standards across content formats while also leveraging generative-AI capabilities.
It looks like you had a pretty good background in book and magazine editing. How has your editorial experience shaped your approach to content strategy in the digital world? Which aspects of traditional publishing do you find transferrable and valuable in UX writing and content design?
I’m grateful that I spent many years in books and magazines. When I transitioned into tech from publishing I found a number of my skills mapped to my work as a UX writer and it inspired me to write about it, in part to demystify tech for those outside the industry. A novel to me is the quintessential end-to-end experience. Editing requires the ability to look at the overall narrative arc, chapters that take a reader on the journey, as well as every sentence and word—all at once. At its core, UX writing is about evaluating all those altitudes too. How are you going to take a user from point A to point B? My “non-tech” background helps me keep UX grounded at a practical level. At the end of the day, I believe content design is rooted in the what/where/why basics of good communication.
Leading Cruise’s Content Design team, how did you navigate the unique challenges of crafting content design for self-driving technology, with its hardware, infrastructure, and software complexities? How is this experience different from working with entirely digital subscription businesses like Dropbox and Ancestry?
Cruise was a design challenge like none other. We were crafting experiences that had no real predecessors. It was a dream to design the content for it— multi-modal requiring UI for screens and mobile, as well as messages for audio and in-cabin stickers. So much of designing for a frontier technology is about building trust with people, and UX writers are well positioned on the informational and clarity front as well as the humanizing aspects of design. The orchestration of all of these things was at the heart of the work we did. Dropbox and Ancestry held their own fascinating challenges with unique product goals, but Cruise was my first foray into exploring how to design content for an immersive experience across such a broad scope of channels.
A long one here: While at Cruise, what strategies did you use to ensure the content design team was integrated into all phases of the user journey across various project touchpoints rather than only being involved at the end when words were needed? Are there specific methodologies or frameworks you used to ensure a seamless adoption within other teams, particularly with engineering and PMs? Despite the challenges and stress in Software/Tech companies, how did you overcome these hurdles, and how was your work perceived across the board?
Part of the draw of coming to Cruise was establishing the content design function from the very beginning and building an infrastructure for content creation that supported coordination across teams without sacrificing our speed of development. That meant establishing relationships with everyone touching content at Cruise—various functions under product as well as marketing and support teams. Socializing the impact of content designers (and how to maximize it) was a part of all of those conversations. To help scale the understanding, we launched a monthly Content Design 101 session, including the rundown of our hi-lo-no engagement model, which allowed us to dedicate efforts more deeply on select projects. The reality is there is no sure-fire way to get everyone to integrate content designers all the time and as a discipline I think we will continue to face frustrations in this respect. I also believe that part of our job is acknowledging that reality and finding ways to consistently show up and build the understanding of our craft one team at a time.
Given your vast experience, how do you anticipate the role of content design will evolve in the broader tech industry? What trends do you foresee driving the future of UX writing and content design?
I’m continuing to stay open and curious to seeing how things evolve myself! Certainly AI-generated content is something to monitor and there are already so many talented content designers going deep into the best ways to leverage this new technology to expedite and augment the work we do.
As the Head of Content Design, could you describe the interplay between content and design in your team's process? How are both elements integrated into your workflow? Additionally, within the content-design dynamic, which takes precedence or sets the direction—is it content leading design, or vice versa
I think all of this largely depends on the product you're working on and the problem you’re trying to solve. At Cruise I hired content designers who could work Figma-first because we needed to move quickly with our product design counterparts. But I think there are some experiences—particularly those around education—that benefit from being content-led. Sometimes what needs to be communicated in the UX is fundamental to shaping the sequencing, interactions, and visual design.
What distinct value do content designers provide to organizations, particularly given the historical roles of copywriters and content strategists in managing content? Do you think a tech company can still survive without content designers or UX writers today? If yes, how? If no, why?
Content designers are expert bridge builders. Words—and communication more broadly—is the great common denominator in…well, pretty much everything. And when you’re talking about user-facing product experiences, content designers have a purview that allows them to connect dots across an organization in ways that other functions don’t have so readily. For example, we can provide feature benefits for marketers, function insights for support writers, and context for localization teams. And because content designers often work across orgs (in part because our teams tend to be smaller) we are often the first to spot opportunities for alignment that build product cohesion. Our value goes well beyond our specific craft, empowered by the diversity of skills required to handle language in a nuanced manner. While tech companies might be able to survive without content designers, is simply surviving the goal? I think most companies want to go beyond that; content designers and UX writers can help take product experiences to the next level and drive engagement, retention, and overall growth.
Content designers are typically involved at the very end. They are provided with a high-fidelity UI prototype and asked to write or improve the copy with little context, if any. How does this process cause problems and difficulties?
Content designers are the obvious yin to a product designer’s yang. We think about all the UX concerns of our counterparts, just with a primary lens of language. Many years ago, I was working on a sunset flow and was brought in late. In a room with engineers and a designer I uncovered several edge cases that needed error messages, so we had to backtrack. It’s not uncommon for content designers to raise issues like this if they’re brought in late, which causes frustration and thrash for everyone. The ability of content practitioners to think along communication lines means we tend to pull threads through that otherwise get missed. All disciplines have something to contribute in product development and leveraging that diversity supports efficiency and better design.
Finally, at Punkt, we are transforming the UX industry by developing a Content-First UX Platform where Content Designers and UX Writers co-lead product UX and design decisions from the outset. We believe this approach will address many common issues faced by product teams. Do you think the Content Team could eventually be part of the leading team guiding the entire UX process? Or is it too soon for them to take a front seat with other teams?
It’s exciting to hear about a content-first UX platform that can help teams discover the power of this approach. Language is fundamental to how we connect as humans so no matter the flow at hand, taking a content-first approach gives heart to our UX—and I don’t mean that in just a touchy-feely way! At the end of the day, great UX helps people do the things they want to do. The way they move through an experience is an exchange akin to conversation. And while a conversation isn’t always about the words, it is always about what we’re communicating. Especially as we move more and more into frontier technologies, content teams have a strong role to play in keeping product experiences relatable and compelling.
👋 Don't forget to follow Roxanna
LinkedIn linkedin.com/in/roxanna-aliaga
Website roxannafont.com
