Writing Process: Microsoft Advertising Platform
1. When Microsoft redesigned their advertising platform, I was part of the team that rewrote all the help documentation. When new features were added, my team also created that brand new content. In this example, the ability to add custom columns was a new feature.
2. My first step was to meet with the stakeholders and product owner to learn how the new feature worked. The help file needed to go live at the same time as the new feature, so we had to coordinate our work.
3. After being shown the feature, I then experimented with it on my own, learning how things worked so I could describe it as simply as possible.
4. I created the instructions and went through a few edits with the product owner to make sure I was describing things correctly.
5. Content was created in Microsoft's proprietary RSS tool, and I was responsible for running the build as well. Once approved, it was moved into the build for production.
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Writing Process: Project Content
1. This is an example of content created alongside a UX Designer.
2. I work with the designer and stakeholders as part of the team, so that when we reach a content need I am familiar enough with the project to know how to describe a flow or experience.
3. In this project, we used Miro as the collaboration tool, and my edits were delivered in a Word Document.
Writing Process: Cleaning Up a Journey
1. This is an example of improving an existing journey with improved content. The process of signing up for service was convoluted and mistakes were often hard to understand.
2. Working with the stakeholders, I learned how the process was supposed to work, and went through it myself to see if that's what they copy mirrored. It did not.
3. Several steps lacked content that informed the user what their next steps were supposed to be. I corrected that by making the text more understandable and providing actionable error messages. We also added interim content on pages that had poor null states so that users could tell what was supposed to be going on, even if they hadn't yet reached the stage where that information was visible.
4. At the same time, I standardized terms and presentation to avoid additional confusion.
Writing Process: Creating a Journey
1. This is an example of creating and improving the experience through copy changes. The design was almost there, but it still felt clunky and users were testing poorly with it.
2. Working with the designer and the legal department, we determined that the original layout of all the disclaimers at the top was not required, so I consolidated and rewrote them.
3. The new version had a single disclaimer at the bottom of the page, but with an anchor link at the top of the page. Users could read it if they wanted to without being required to go through it before doing what they came to do.