How does my professional work experience translate to UX? Thanks for asking, I’d love to tell you!
(See “...And More!” for meme reference)
My current JIRA board has 20 tickets on it - all in various stages of completion. Beyond everything else in this job, I am bouncing around in tickets and mentally keeping track of what I need from each one. One ticket is waiting for a new cover, another I was in progress of working on but I got pulled away for tame a fire (not literal, but I’m sure you know what I mean), and this other ticket is waiting on the dev team to update a redirect, etc. I don’t always have the time to write detailed notes on what’s happening on each ticket. Instead, relying on the trained multitasking part of my brain to absorb the information - and I’m not half bad at it!
I know in a UX career there will be times I am working on simultaneous projects that I have to step away and come back to days later due to waiting on something from Product or the UX Designer or the Research team and so on. Something I am perfectly capable of doing.
On a typical week I am working with 5+ marketing teams, publisher relations, editorial, various specialty product teams (book, special issues, etc.), our online magazine store product team, project managers, developers, and tech teams - then add in about 1 or 2 different teams a week too that need something from my or my coworker. Most of these being internal, but also have some external teams sprinkled in as well.
And because I work with so many teams, I also have to handle various personalities. I want to tell you I have a secret formula for how I handle hard to deal with people, but honestly, I just treat them like the humans they are. Humans who have bad days, or don’t understand these complex processes, or whose problem is important to them even when we see it as small. This is probably where a lot of my empathy plays in. And over the years I’ve learned how to be kind enough to actually help the problem, but not too kind to where I am going to be walked all over. But also, if you don’t respond to me when I need something I will continue pressing or go above you because I am not about to have late work 😉
When I was creating emails for Shape and Parents, I absolutely loved coming in on a Monday and analyzing how my sends did the previous week. Being able to use data to translate into how I should create my next newsletter sends, was highly beneficial in upping our click-through rates (CTR)!
With UX writing, I cannot wait to dive into all of the information and data the researchers have found. And then, translating said data into words to help consumers or an A/B test for trying something new.
I have a lot of writing and creative avenues in my background. It’s probably the most natural skill I have out of all the ones listed above - and a skill I rely on heavily to prevent overthinking what I am doing UX (along with natural empathy). This lifetime skill and talent helps me with user experience in terms of storytelling, being able to easily learn UX Writing, microcopy, and content design. I know how to use short sentences to make a strong impact, while also understanding who my user (or reader) is. But if UX is also needed on a more marketing-swinging design aspect, I have the capability of providing that as well.
To break it down, I am going to list the types of content I have written and how I have noticed it benefits me when I am doing UX writing projects.