When I started at Lyft in early 2020, content design (CD) was about 3.5% of the product design team and supported about 85% of projects. Most CDs were juggling 15+ projects at a time and supporting 50+ partners across product design, product management, engineering, UXR, marketing, and more.
The team was working reactively to cover a high volume of projects. And since quantity was the team’s primary metric for success, CDs were pulled into projects after designs were locked with limited product context and very little time to iterate. CDs were experiencing burnout from context switching, rarely felt pride in the quality of their work, and didn’t always feel like content design was fully understood or appreciated by partners.
If you’re not a CD, you might be wondering why we needed to move away from prioritizing quantity over quality. One of the biggest misconceptions about CD is that it’s always quick. And while product content can be speedy, it often takes more time and iteration than partners realize. That’s because CDs primary focus is determining what to say—not how to say it. The best CDs aren’t merely copyediting the language they receive in a Figma file. Instead, they’re diving deep into the experience by considering what the user really needs to know right now, organizing the overall flow of information across screens and components, understanding the technical constraints of the dev environment, surfacing and addressing edge cases, balancing legal constraints, writing for localization and accessibility, and more.
Content informs the overall design and product strategy. CDs can’t produce content without considering the full flow, hierarchy, and components. It’s what informs how and in what state the info will appear. Similarly, product designers can’t create a flow without considering the content. It’s what gives momentum to the screens and helps determine components. Working together throughout the design process is where the magic happens. When CDs are included early, they can point out that we’re missing a critical piece of information and need to add a screen, that the hierarchy of information is a little confusing and we need to rearrange components, or reach out to an engineering partner to determine if we can include dynamic content in a string to help users make an informed decision.
Although I was the sole IC CD on three high priority lines of business (Driver, Fleet, and Mapping), I set out to transform CD at Lyft so we could have a greater impact on the user experience and business metrics. My goals were to improve ways of working and team morale, raise the bar on craft by creating foundational resources, and get CDs to a place where they could focus on the highest priority projects.
Thanks to these efforts (and many others spearheaded by CDs and others throughout Lyft), by 2022 our team grew to about 8% of the product design org, CDs were able to focus on fewer (and higher impact projects), and the team reported increased job satisfaction.
I focused on three pillars when it came to defining and improving CD at Lyft:
Quality and culture to help streamline styling decisions and provide ongoing guidance to improve craft and morale.
Process to get the team out of reactivity and into proactivity by allocating CDs to fewer and higher priority projects, providing clarity around key CD activities across the product development cycle, and improving cross-functional collaboration.
Evangelizing came to life through ongoing roadshows and presentations* to cross-functional partners and leaders throughout the company.
*In addition to this top down approach, I’m a big believer in the bottoms up approach of proving and showing value. When CDs have time to go deep, iterate with partners, and show thorough explorations, they’re able to highlight how vital and time consuming it is to create useful and concise product content. The day-to-day work of showcasing that product content is a UX practice also helps underscore that CDs can’t meaningfully support everything. Therefore, improving content quality and creating a process is also a big part of evangelization efforts.