Content Design and Writing
Designlab
Creating content that's helped over 2000+ people achieve their design careers
Role
team
Visit WebsiteLearning Content Designer
product Manager
Curriculum Strategist
Graphic Designer
Learning Content Designer (2)
Curriculum Strategist
Graphic Designer
Learning Content Designer (2)
Designlab is a UX/UI design education company based in the US. It empowers those transitioning their careers to UX and UI design through 12-30 week long bootcamp-style design courses.
As a distanced learning education company, almost 50% of its students and 300+ mentors are based outside of the US. They range from working professionals to university graduates. For 2 years, I was a key contributor in the content creation and design of Designlab's core products: Their UX/UI Foundations and Academy courses.
Before this role, I was a UX instructor with Designlab for 1 year. My knowledge of the course delivery to students was influential in shaping my perspectives on creating high-quality, engaging content.
Joining the tight-knit Learning Content Experience team, I was a key decision-maker in every part of the planning, organization, research and creation of course content. The process carried out for each of these products is similar in structure.
Summary
For 2 years, I worked on Designlab's core products: Academy and Foundations.
Contributing to large curriculum changes and updates, I carried out multiple planning and user research initiatives in collaboration with the Learning Experience Team.
I wrote over 100 content pieces, including content outlines, design projects and quizzes. I created graphic assets to support the design team with the final versions. On each content release, I worked closely with the community engagement and marketing teams on the outreach and update messaging.
Contributing to large curriculum changes and updates, I carried out multiple planning and user research initiatives in collaboration with the Learning Experience Team.
I wrote over 100 content pieces, including content outlines, design projects and quizzes. I created graphic assets to support the design team with the final versions. On each content release, I worked closely with the community engagement and marketing teams on the outreach and update messaging.
Being in a fast-paced, sprint-focused startup, there were several tradeoffs made to shorten release deadlines. During planning phases, 20-30% of initially planned changes are postponed into staggered releases for a more sustainable content creation process. These tasks have been backlogged as far as 6 months after to prioritize more essential content and general maintenance tasks.
When I lead the Academy Capstones project, a beta validation round was cancelled to meet the release deadline. Instead of launching new content to a small group of students and mentors, it was launched to everyone. I negotiated a compromise to send follow-up surveys to the new student cohort so they could easily share their feedback directly to the Learning Experience Team.
When I lead the Academy Capstones project, a beta validation round was cancelled to meet the release deadline. Instead of launching new content to a small group of students and mentors, it was launched to everyone. I negotiated a compromise to send follow-up surveys to the new student cohort so they could easily share their feedback directly to the Learning Experience Team.
1
Content Creation
Content creation happens as soon as the tasks have been drafted in.
Depending on the team skill-sets and content subjects, each of the course requirements varies in emphasis between lessons, projects and knowledge checks.
For the first phase of Academy, most of my work focused on step-by-step guides to design tools, interview soft skills and design history. For its Capstones, I re-wrote all 30 projects and created additional student guides. In Foundations, my focus was on quizzes and 5 lessons. All content is written in US english.
For the first phase of Academy, most of my work focused on step-by-step guides to design tools, interview soft skills and design history. For its Capstones, I re-wrote all 30 projects and created additional student guides. In Foundations, my focus was on quizzes and 5 lessons. All content is written in US english.
My writing process starts with examining if previously-written content aligns with the new content's learning goals. While goal alignment with older content isn't necessary for new content, it maintains a consistent narrative structure that makes it easier to onboard mentors to new topics. With the help of AI, I summarize the major topics and takeaways of these lessons and guides.
Content Type
Content Outline
Content Draft
Draft Reviews
Release Ready
Lesson
Learning Objectives
Text
Interview Script
Current Content
Graphics
Quiz
Current Resources
Video Tutorials
Accessibility
Since Designlab is based in the US and uses US-based examples, its courses require a university-level requirement of English comprehension and a basic knowledge of tech-proficiency. However, as our enrollments come from all over the world, it was still vital that the curriculum was accessible to a global audience.
At a basic level, this meant:
- Limited or no usage of localized idioms
- Use of international products and brands as examples (i.e., Apple, Google)
- Contextualizing location specific examples (i.e., In Tokyo, Japan)
- Providing alt-text for all essential graphics and images
- Video closed captions
- Written summaries of any interactive media that aren't captioned
While I worked on larger course initiatives, I was regularly engaged with other maintenance tasks for live content, such as:
- Updating links, typos, grammar (daily-weekly basis)
- What course narrative will change along with the new content? How much will they change?
- Clarifying project questions with the student or mentor community (weekly basis)
- Additional planning, writing or review support with various teams
Check out a sample from the wiki for more details:
2
Content Examples
In this section, I'll walkthrough three examples.
A step-by-step guide, a short design lesson, and a quiz.
A step-by-step guide, a short design lesson, and a quiz.
All content was written in Google Docs, and formatted in Markdown. Due to proprietary agreements, the full documents are only available on request.
Step-by-step guide: Setting Up Grids for Mobile and Desktop in Figma
At 20 minutes long, this guide with videos was one of the more complex pieces I wrote.
The lesson's goals were to walk-through the fundamentals of web and responsive grids and their applications.
The lesson's goals were to walk-through the fundamentals of web and responsive grids and their applications.
It had several essential parts:
- Step-by-step "how-to" exercise for students to follow along
- Supporting static images with alternate text
- Video walkthroughs (<5 mins)
- Video scripts and storyboards
- Supporting graphics
- Emphasis on teaching skills that are applied to future lessons and projects
As the video tutorials are embedded in different lesson sections, writing the lesson draft and the video script in parallel was essential in keeping a consistent narrative thread.
I also created mockups of graphics and videos that reinforced the instruction. Both graphics and videos were then finalized by the design team.
Content before and after (Click for more images)
Lesson: Design Tools
In this shorter 15 minute lesson, students get an introduction to the many design tools used by UX/UI designers. Being a "standard" lesson, I was in charge of writing and creating simple image mockups. Like any lesson, I started with an outline to figure out the core topics to be discussed.
For this particular lesson, one of the main concerns from feedback data was tool familiarity.
To address this, I added a section discussing ways for students to gain more experience in using design tools and provided a list of resources at the end.
Quiz: UI Elements and Figma Components
Short 5-10 minute long quizzes were placed in the middle and end of a course's 8 units. Consisting of 6-12 questions, they were an optional, fun way for students to check their understanding on a group of subjects they just learnt.
In both Academy and Foundations, most quiz questions were written from scratch, with a few re-purposed from a question bank.
Because quizzes often tested knowledge from 3-4 lessons at a time, I used ChatGPT to brainstorm quiz questions to get a general direction.
Create 5 quiz questions and include their answers about this introductory lesson to [lesson title] in UX/UI design.
After that, I'll refine these questions and create 5-7 new ones, including lesson images where necessary. After going through a round of team review and final edits, the quiz is created in Typeform and linked within the curriculum.