What is content design?

Have you ever opened a website or an app with bad content and got frustrated with it? In the digital world, design is crucial to make the customer use it. Increased cognitive load on the user makes them quit their task. Hence, the digital world needs a content designer.

Content design is not the same as editing or writing. It is often confused with the job of a copywriter, content or UX writer, digital marketer, or journalist. But content design is a lot more than making a sentence sound good.

Content design is making information easy to find, simple to understand, concise, and accessible. That requires user research and testing. Content design tries to establish a balance between the user’s needs and the business goals of the app or website.

The term ‘content design’ was coined by Sarah Winters while she was working on the UK government’s websites. The job role is still new and is confused with marketing or editing.

Working with a team: Content designers never work in silos. They work with UX (user experience) researchers, UX/UI designers, Product Managers, Engineers, UX writers, Data Analysts, Graphic designers, and sometimes with finance and marketing teams as well.

Skills: Content design requires a mix of research, design, writing, and coding. It encompasses wireframing, information architecture, testing and iterating. Its importance has grown with the digital age and hence requires to be differentiated and defined properly.

Companies: Big tech companies like Meta (previously Facebook), Microsoft, and Google have expanded their design teams to include content designers. Other companies like Shopify, HubSpot, and Flipkart also have well-defined job descriptions for the same.

Solution Orientation: Good content design communicates how a product or service solves a user’s problem. It identifies the (often hidden) obstacles or breakpoints which stop a person from continuing to use the product or service.

Empathy: This is a vital skill in design thinking. Without empathy, it is difficult to understand the user’s motivations, emotional state, expectations, goals, and pain points. It is required to map the user’s journey and understand their reaction to content and communications.

Final Note: With most of our lives living online, the user experience of digital products needs to be better. Good content design can add a layer of emotion and brand voice or tone so that users get the right information at the right time to help them make a decision.