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
Planning
After gaining research insights to a pre-defined confidence level, the content team moves on to the second stage of the content creation process - planning. Since most of our course work spans 2-3 quarters (6 - 9 months), planning each team member's task starts with sequencing all the content involved. This sequence aligns with company goals and OKRs.
A typical planning sequence
- Individual tasks
- Creation: Writing and finalizing content outlines
- Creation: Writing content in Markdown format
- Review and edit loops
- Sourcing in-house and third-party resources
- Prototyping graphics / instruction assets
- Final graphic production
- Internal publishing on course platform (Handoff)
- Quality assurance checks
- Launch day - Content goes live!
Working closely with the content strategist and product manager, I'd map out required instructional objectives and goals, such as:
- What course narratives remain the same throughout the old and new content?
- What course narrative will change along with the new content? How much will they change?
- How will these new learning goals and narratives affect students' learning curve?
- How will these new learning goals and narratives affect mentors' instruction?
A detailed Gantt chart with proposed tasks, deadlines and phases mapped to each team member is created in Figma or a spreadsheet. Once the tasks are final, they're moved to Asana.
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