UX writing & content strategy portfolio presentation

Fozia Akter

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This presentation deck includes...

1. My Etomon project: Redesign homepage (slide 5)

Role: UX writer & content strategist intern

• My Google project: Systematize a case study format (slide 26)

Role: UX writer intern

About me

I’m a writer with a background in teaching English and mental health counseling.

High school

teacher

Mental health & human behavior

Startup

Approach to UXW & content strategy

Gather and document information to

1. understand and learn, and
2. to communicate it to others.

• Cast a wide net (go wide)
• Explore, ask questions
• Pull it apart (unbake the cake)
• Focus on the problem
• Partner with UXR to validate research
• Condense information (communicating narrow)—TL;DR doc
• Share work early and often to get stakeholder buy-in
• Create strategy
• Benchmark tactics against strategy

Etomon Project

Etomon

Etomon is an e-learning platform with a fully interactive virtual classroom that connects students in China to instructors in the West.

Etomon’s mission is to democratize educational opportunities for students in rural China with a fusion of traditional classroom and online learning.

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The Teaching Room:

Type, write, draw, and screenshare in real-time

Etomon homepage content strategy

The project

Online tutoring app downloads soared 5-30x more than before the outbreak in China.

• Design a content strategy, draft information hierarchy, and homepage

Constraints—limited resources, money, no researcher, no courses, or social proof

Timeline—2.5 weeks

The team

My role—conducted audits, content strategy, UX writing, information hierarchy, a/b testing, plan for success

UX designer’s role—provide feedback, product strategy, design, testing design

Manager’s role—coordinate a feedback cycle, measure work against acceptance criteria, approve work

Problem

Our research shows that people often leave web pages in 10-20 seconds, but pages with a clear value proposition can hold people’s attention for much longer.

We have 200+ instructors, but very few students.

The old homepage:

• Marketed to teachers
• Included a lot of dead ends and bugs
• Low engagement by primary users
• Disorganized information hierarchy

Problem: prioritizing too many “benefits”

Process

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Research

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Etomon goals

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User goals

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Team insights

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Audits

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Content strategy & information hierarchy template

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Draft, test, iterate &

feedback cycle

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Measurement plan for metrics

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Process: where I looked

Etomon Goals

User Goals

Team Insights

To grow student user base

To launch in 1 month

To set up shareability on social media channels

To explore

To sign up

To search courses

1. K-12 tutoring
2. Career growth
3. Wellness & lifestyle

Focus on student users

Promote unique value

Include voice & tone

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Research

Audit

• Completed competitor audit including:
• Chegg, Udemy, Coursera
• Evaluated what works, what doesn’t, and opportunities to stand out
• Reviewed prior research to understand user needs
• Scheduled 1:1s with stakeholders to evaluate goals and metrics for measuring success for a redesigned website
• Drafted recommendations for a content strategy

Taking a content-first approach

Etomon homepage content audit

Navigation Bar

Banner

User Groups

Featured Courses

Popular Courses

Teaching at Etomon

CTA

Content disorganization

Content not findable

Content prioritization

Too technical

Content Strategy

Content recommendations

Turning frustrations into opportunities

1. Prioritize first-time student users
2. Feature Etomon’s unique value (product) as the banner to grab people’s attention
3. Establish a connection by pointing out a common problem people have
4. Use conversational tone to highlight the unique product features (content style guide)
5. Add value by answering why our product is different from competitors
6. Include a clear CTA
7. Test word choice for ELL & Chinese speakers

Core content strategy goals

Goals

To redesign a new homepage that:

• Captures the users’ attention
• Informs users who Etomon is
• Easy to understand (can be accessible to non-English speakers)
• Directs new and returning student users to top tasks (explore, search, sign up/login)

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Tailor content to user journeys

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Content mapping & User stories

Map user journey to identify where the user is starting —> outcome desired

User stories

Content mapping & feedback

Information Hierarchy (Figma)

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Acceptance Criteria (Figma)

Feedback Cycle

Rapid iterations

Draft A

Draft B

Where I landed

Hero image

Click field form

Outcome

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• User activity spiked in March
• 5,165 unique page viewers
• 223 users created profiles
• Reduced bounce rate from 40% to 31%

(Google Analytics, August 2020)

Measuring (future) success

Measurement plan for metrics

Material Design Project

Material Design

Google’s interface design system. Material.io includes guidelines, components, and resources to make it easy for developers and designers to build apps.

Material’s Publishing Surfaces team are responsible for Material content and the ways it’s displayed and communicated.

Why do Material case studies matter?

The problem

Case studies educate users about Material design and serve as examples within products. They are: years old and need a refresh. We have many fictional case studies as perfect use cases, but we don’t really have a consistent content strategy.

The goal

1. Revamp and systematize a format for all future case studies
2. Support it with an audit and content strategy
3. Put it into practice by writing a case study

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Problem

Our research shows that people like to learn about Material Design by viewing it in action.

However, Material case studies are also:

• Difficult to find
• Lack real-world examples
• Perfect fictional use cases of Material Design
• Time-consuming to read
• Difficult to reproduce—create and publish

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Shrine case study

By the numbers

14+

5

5

Stakeholders

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With whom I, presented to, and received feedback from.

Feedback cycles

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I shared my work early and often during weekly crit and content planning meetings.

Deliverables

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I was responsible for an audit, initial proposal, content strategy, template, and case study.

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Process

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Audit

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Material goals

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User goals

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Team insights

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Material & non-material case studies

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Survey research*

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Initial proposal

+3 options

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Content strategy

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*collaborated with lead UX Researcher

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Template

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Case Study

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Process: where I looked

Material Goals

User Goals

Team insights

Research

External user strategy

Audience segments

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Prior research and data

Met 1:1 to discuss case studies

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Shared early and often

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Gathered feedback

Conducted large-scale user survey

Research

Audience Segments

• Steps they approach, workflow, setting the scene

User interviews

• Steps they approach, workflow, setting the scene, pain points, empathy map, journey map -> clarify problem statement… address mental model, How do people learn Material Design?

Audit: Where I looked

Best in class: logos, across the industry

Audit

• Completed audit included:
• Material Studies
• Internal Google case studies
• non-Material studies
• Evaluated word count, assets, structure, and layout across all case studies
• Reviewed prior research to better understand user needs
• Drafted recommendations for a proposal and gathered team feedback

Material case study survey

• Collaborated with a Lead UX Researcher to launch a survey on Material.io
• Open-ended question:
• What types of case studies and examples would be helpful to you?
• Outcome: 250+ respondents
• Coded interviews and developed content recommendations

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Survey responses

Material Studies

Content Strategy

Content recommendations

Take the heavy lifting off of case studies as just great examples of Material in practice.

1. Make case studies scannable and succinct
2. Include real-world examples
3. Case studies should meet designers and developers in their workflow
4. Move case studies to the upcoming Material.io blog

Fine-tuning case study voice & tone

Google voice

Material.io voice

Material blog voice

Human

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Useful

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Clear

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Optimistic

Authoritative

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Educational

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Direct

Conversational & accessible

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Inspirational

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Educational

New strategy & criteria

Simplify and templatize the case study format so that they are:

1. Easy to author (easy to reproduce)
2. Inspirational and valuable to users
3. Scannable and condensed

Three concepts & feedback cycle

Option 1

Option 2

Option 3

Before/After

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Interview with team behind a successful product designed with Material.

Problem/Solution

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Discover how a problem was resolved with Material Design.

Informational Blog post

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About making design decisions using Material Design.

“Too time-consuming to reproduce”

“...too similar to guidelines on the site”

“Inspires users by giving them potential solutions to design problems”

Where I landed

Problem/Solution

This case study format starts with a common design problem and includes a solution resolved by Material design components and illustrated with examples.

Multiple iterations to solve problem

Hardsell for Material Design

Funnel to detailed guidance

Case Study

Template

Process:

1. Scheduled 1:1s to define three distinct case study directions based on user needs
2. Met with accessibility and localization teams to review template
3. Wrote three distinct case study drafts
4. Shared with (1) content team, (2) Material team
5. Finalized and presented it to the Material org (200+ members)
6. Drafted three tweets and guidelines to measure success

Outcome: Helped the team save time by creating a research-based, repeatable process (template) and example case study draft to scale all future case studies to Material.io’s 1.3 million users a month.

Thank you!

fakter20@gmail.com

Fozia Akter

Fozia's portfolio

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