“Content design” as a discipline is becoming more and more popular. Not only is its importance felt in government spaces, but it’s also now the default job title for content jobs at Facebook.

Content design focuses on user needs and tasks

Why this shift to content design specifically? According to content design pioneer Sarah Winters, “ Content design is answering a user need in the best way for the user to consume it. “

For product and service-focused content, it seems like a natural progression for what content can do. It’s all about the user and what they need.

For me in non-pandemic times working at San Francisco Digital Services, content design usually means explaining a government process in a task-based way. I help explain how a program works, just enough so that someone can successfully apply for it. No more, no less.

Enter COVID-19

But for COVID-19 response communications, I had another layer added on top.

We had to encourage certain behaviors in our constituents. Not just how to do something, but to introduce the idea to them in the first place. We had to get people to mask up, get tested, and avoid gathering with others. And later, we had to encourage people to get vaccinated for COVID-19.

It’s not quite as simple as explaining what to do! We have to embed little nudges for behavior change, while informing our readers about how to get something done.

It’s even harder when it’s something that people are not used to doing!

In the past year, I did a lot of reading about how to do this with content. Here are some of the things I put into practice for SF.gov.

Know what your medium is capable of

“Content is king.”

A nice thought for anyone who content designs for screens, but unfortunately, inadequate for the job at hand. Words on a screen does not make the biggest difference in encouraging a change in behavior.

What does? Personal relationships, making connections face to face, and using emotions to connect with people.

Websites are not good for that. Websites are words on a page. You can’t relate to that. It comes off as extremely disingenuous. There is absolutely nothing I could write on SF.gov that connects to people like others telling their personal stories.

What SF.gov could do was tell the general public what they could do right away. It could empower people with information. SF.gov could also be used as a tool for partners and the public, to support them while they have those conversations with people they know.

SF.gov could step in for support, once someone’s found the internal motivation to change their behavior. Help your partners help you.

Communicate mental models, not just facts

Your users have to understand the why, and find it compelling, before they develop the motivation to try something new.

For people to understand why they should do something new, you need to explain the new state of things, and how it’s different from the former state of things. What has changed in general, and what that means for them.

Content design already puts us halfway there. Good content design inherently avoids listing a bunch of information at random. That’s part of its impact. It takes a lot of mental effort to pull out actionable items from a set of detailed facts.

Content design is also inherently a BS-free zone. You have to cut the fluff and be as direct as you can. That matters even more when you have to explain why people should do something.

I always make the effort to learn about what I was writing, inside and out. I’ve always said, “If I don’t know it, I can’t write it.”

Talk, or at least listen, to the experts

The best way to get the correct framing is to talk to subject matter experts (SMEs). Really understand where their heads are at. In all likelihood, you do not have the technical expertise to understand what a list of written facts truly means.

I have a molecular biology background. Understanding the nuances and limitations of scientific studies came naturally to me. But I (still!) am not an expert in public health, or respiratory illnesses, or even infectious diseases in general. If you gave me facts or a paper to read, I wouldn’t know how to frame it in a way that was most useful, or necessarily consistent with the experts’ conclusions.

My colleagues at SF Department of Public Health (SFDPH) were invaluable. Over the past year, I asked them many questions about various situations, so I could truly understand what any public health guidelines meant. Talking it out ensured that everyone was on the same page too.

If you don’t have colleagues who can help with this, reading or listening to other experts can give you some idea.

Upon California’s lauded reopening on June 15, 2021, I knew that we couldn’t have “Stay home” as a headline anymore on the main webpage that talked about the public health order. It would be drastically inconsistent with the new mental model, that the state would be reopening. But we still had to have something, and my SFDPH colleagues were looking to me for the content ideas!

When I have a block like this, I do more research. I listen to COVID-related podcasts like In the Bubble and This Week in Virology, where experts communicate their thoughts directly to the public. And I noticed all the hosts had a similar farewell at the end of each episode: “Be safe.”

I realized that’s what I could use instead: “ Stay safe “ instead of “Stay home.” It was both pithy and consistent with our new mental model.

Sweat consistent messaging, not esoteric details

The website is only a part of an overall communications strategy. Every time your product or service is mentioned by anyone anywhere, ideally, people should know what it’s about.

You have to be aligned on high-level messaging. Work with anyone who might be involved in communications. If there’s someone else creating the high-level messaging, follow their lead. Any dissonance confuses people and loses their trust. People will also lose any motivation to change their behavior for you. They won’t believe anything else you have to say.

If you need to get in front of something now, put your efforts into making sure your overall messaging is consistent, and leave the details for later. It’s better to immediately publish the right mental model with details 90% correct, than to be 100% correct on absolutely all details but a week late.

This was especially important for anything related to COVID-19. News and rumors traveled fast and furious. We had to get in front of them, and offer accurate mental models to people right away. If people don’t understand what’s going on, they will make something up (or read something unofficial) to explain what they just saw. And more often then not, they end up believing their first explanation long-term. Mental models are hard to shake!

COVID-19 messaging work in San Francisco

SF had a lot going for it during the pandemic, which helped us achieve the lowest death rate in any major city in the country. We’re a city and county in one, which streamlined many of our workflows. Our leaders worked together and listened to the science to save lives, and we already had a lot of community-level public health partnerships from the AIDS crisis decades ago.

Still, one thing that surprised me was that our local news media was usually simpatico with our overall messaging. Clickbait, contradictory headlines were few and far between, unlike what I saw with other localities.

There are likely many reasons for this. But from what I saw, SF’s COVID-19 response communications team put great efforts in making sure anyone doing COVID-19 communications had information directly from us. The team held media roundtables for reporters and community-based organizations. They fielded calls from reporters constantly. We all made sure the messaging was consistent, so everyone would say the same thing.

What I could do was make sure SF.gov was consistent with any changes in messaging. Every time there was an update about staying home or masking, I’d make sure all of those changes were reflected on all pages that mentioned staying home or masking.

When you ask people to do something they’re not used to doing, they often check to confirm what they’ve just read. If one page says one thing but another page contradicts it, you’ve completely lost people’s trust.

Frame everything as a social norm

Human beings don’t make decisions in a vacuum, nor do we have limitless mental energy to make decisions on every single action we take. Instead, we base a lot of our behaviors on external factors, including what is default, or what others are doing.

By changing our language a little, we can reframe a brand new behavior to be a new social norm. If you overexplain yourself, your readers might wonder why you’re trying so hard to convince them. Frame it as a default social norm instead.

Teaching how to have safer gatherings during the pandemic

When SFDPH wrote public health guidance about how to have safer gatherings in summer 2020, I noted that it had a lot of useful information. But it still came across as a list of facts that everyone had to find, read, and then learn from on their own. There was no indication that this would be a shared understanding.

I figured that this was information people would be clamoring for, so I content designed it to make it as task-based as possible. Not only that, but I also hinted at some social norms into the title and description of the page itself. Instead of walking people through detailed explanations of the instructions, I shortcut all of it to the conclusion:

“Have safer outdoor gatherings during the coronavirus pandemic. Reduce your risk of COVID-19 when celebrating a special occasion outside with a small group.”

By being upfront and direct about what you expect people to do, you set the expectation that others are doing it too.

Respect your users

Respect their time, and respect what experience they already bring when they come across your content. When you ask them to change their behavior, you’re really asking them to be partners with you.

When I was onsite at Moscone Center doing COVID-19 response work, I had 2 Post-Its on my monitor at all times that displayed the following (in bold):

• BLUF (Bottom Line Up Front) so people get the info they need right off the bat
• Explain why we’re asking people to do something
• Options/tradeoffs so people feel they have control, and are making an educated choice
• Acknowledge ❤️ and 😮 to ease people gently into the new mental model

That list was what I came up with, after learning about crisis communications and distilling it into what I could do with SF.gov’s content. When I was writing a new piece of content, it was a good reminder to make sure I’d checked off all those boxes.

Answer their questions without asking the questions outright

Asking people to change their behavior is a huge ask. It’s also very stressful if it comes with a shift in mental models. When people are stressed, they don’t read. They need the answers right away.

Your users will be already asking the question in their heads. They don’t need to read it again before getting the answer they seek. It wastes your screen space and your readers’ goodwill.

It’s also not friendly to people using screenreaders, who often use headings to navigate the page.

By asking the exact question you think everyone may be asking, you may also frame the content in a way that harms your overall goal. Your users should not be setting the frame-you should. (That is also a big reason why I dislike FAQs. A lot.)

Note that when I write headings, even on this page, I’m already telling you what the answer is. You read further to get more detail about how to do it.

Stay positive, not punitive

Assume people will do the right thing. Focus on what people can do now, not what they cannot or should not do.

Motivation must come from within. We need to nurture it by encouraging action and empowerment. That’s the only way we can encourage everyone to be partners with us.

Encouraging people to stay home for the holidays

In Winter 2020, we already expected we’d have to mandate business closures again. But we were also concerned about private gatherings for the holidays, which we expected to be a big source of COVID-19 spread.

Namely, we didn’t want people to gather outside of their household. At all. This is a huge ask! The holidays are meant for gathering indoors and seeing loved ones. We didn’t want to bring people down even further.

In the introductory text of the holiday-related webpage, I walked people through the following thought process:

1. Bottom line up front: We have to celebrate the holidays at home this year.
2. All of us have an impact.
3. Things are looking pretty bad, so that’s why we’re asking you to do do this. We know it isn’t normal.
4. Here’s what you can do to help.

If something was expressly forbidden, we’d tell them not to do it. But otherwise, it was all about encouraging the behavior that we wanted to see.

Think about future implications

Avoid boxing yourself into a corner, especially when you give explanations. Make room for change.

Since content has to be as short as possible, I like to go as high-level and general as I can when it comes to explanations.

Mental models can be hard to shift, especially if they’re large, sudden changes. We have to ease users into a new world where a new behavior is encouraged.

The biggest example of keeping our options open during the pandemic was masks. Before scientists realized that masks were actually quite important to prevent the spread, “masks aren’t effective for the general public” was a message that some national official channels really claimed!

But SFDPH never went that far. Early on, they only said “ there is no recommendation to wear masks “ which I believe gave us a lot of room to shift later.

Again, work with your SMEs to make sure you all agree on future implications. They may want to overpromise too!

Introducing vaccines

When I was first writing vaccine content, I wanted to ease everyone into the idea of getting them. There were many talking points SFDPH was using in December 2020, but I didn’t want to overpromise based on current data. I wanted to say something that would continue to be true, no matter what new data might say.

I settled on “ A safe and effective vaccine is one of the most important ways to end the pandemic. “ At the end of the day, that’s the goal of everything. It’s as high-level as you can get! That statement is also something we haven’t had to change, even as efficacy continues to be studied in the face of the more-transmissible Delta variant.

Be culturally aware and stay flexible

Many of our content design standards are from GOV.UK. That isn’t surprising, since the concept of “content design” was defined and refined there. But what works in the UK may not work in SF.

Even though we’ve gotten great feedback about our content overall, it doesn’t necessarily mean it works for absolutely everyone we serve in San Francisco.

We’re still learning! Working with colleagues from diverse backgrounds and community-based organizations ensured that we were as culturally aware as possible when creating targeted campaigns.

You’re always learning how to better connect with people.

Going further with content design

As the field of content design develops and we combine knowledge from other fields, I’m excited to see where it could go next.

The following are some resources that helped me develop my COVID-19 response work principles in the past year.

Websites

• CDC’s Crisis and Emergency Risk Communications (CERC) manual (also see how I applied CERC principles to working with stakeholders)
• Guide to COVID-19 vaccine communications
• de Beaumont
• FrameWorks Institute
• Everything written by Julia Marcus, Zeynep Tufekci, and Ed Yong in The Atlantic

Coursera courses

• Communicating during Global Emergencies (about the CERC manual)
• Social Psychology

Originally published at http://anitacheng.com on August 13, 2021.

Content design for behavior change was originally published in San Francisco Digital Services on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Starting March 2020, content designers from San Francisco Digital Services were on the front lines of SF’s COVID-19 response. We sat with hundreds of other City staff, all recruited from other departments at the Emergency Operations Center (EOC) at the Moscone Center for 2-week shifts.

Initially, we were asked to publish health orders and other announcements on SF.gov, as soon as they came in. And they were coming in very quickly!

We started to earn trust by working directly with staff from Public Health, Emergency Management, and the Mayor’s Office. We extended that trust by having me be deployed at the EOC long-term. The initial 2-week shift turned into more than a year.

I became a familiar face and got to know many of our stakeholders.

Adapting our content design principles for COVID-19

As things began to settle a little in the summer, it was clear that we needed to rethink our content principles.

We always said that people went to government websites to get stuff done, not get information. But this situation was different.

People would be coming to us, not to get services really. But to get information…to get something done. Namely, information they would need to make a decision on a task they wanted to do. For example, “How can I protect myself when going to the store?”

We did not really have principles for this! What could I do in this ever-changing environment?

I did a bit of research. I figured someone must have come up with some content principles to use in a crisis.

Introducing crisis and emergency risk communications

Lo and behold, someone did. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, our beleaguered CDC, has a manual for crisis and emergency risk communications. Or, the CERC manual.

So over a weekend last summer, I sat down to learn just what CERC was about.

The first thing they impart to you, is that the right message, at the right time, from the right person, can save lives. The stakes couldn’t be any higher.

Crisis communications has special considerations

But what makes crisis comms different from the regular communications that we usually do?

There’s often an unspoken time constraint to everything. The response needs to be immediate.

The crux of the communication is that it should always help people make the best possible decisions about their well-being, often with limited information.

And it helps people accept the imperfect nature of choices, where the decision has to be made quickly.

So all the communication is informational, but it has to serve a task. It has to answer the question, “What do I do?”

Not to mention, users in an emergency are often in a very different mindset than most users of digital products and services!

You have to zero in on:

• What do they need now?
• How will they best receive the message?
• What are they concerned about now?

The 6 principles of CERC

And to lead the way, here are the 6 principles of CERC:

1. Be first
2. Be right
3. Be credible
4. Express empathy
5. Promote action
6. Show respect

All these principles are ways to promote trust in our constituents. That’s the only way this all works.

Use the CERC principles to elevate content design too

And then, I took a longer look at the CERC manual’s definition of crisis comms.

“Providing facts…about an unexpected emergency, beyond an organization’s control, that involves the organization and requires an immediate response.”

That means, working on the response is a crisis within a crisis! Doing crisis comms, is also doing crisis comms!

To truly promote content design in the COVID-19 response work, I would need to practice crisis comms with my colleagues.

So here are the 6 principles of CERC, and what they mean for content designers working with stakeholders.

1. Being fast is your best leverage

The very first CERC principle is to be first. For stakeholders, this means you have to know the landscape and get it done.

The CERC manual says, “Communicating information quickly is crucial. For members of the public, the first source of information often becomes the preferred source.”

In any emergency, it’s important to get your message out there as soon as possible. I found that being first, or at least being fast, actually became my best leverage in elevating content design.

Know the landscape

You have to know what’s going on in general. You don’t necessarily need to know the details, but at least you have to know it’s happening.

This is part of what SF’s COVID-19 response entails:

By knowing the landscape, you’ll know the players. To earn their trust, make their jobs easier, especially for the 311 and social media teams! I give them intel, they give me feedback about what’s happening on the ground. I can then take it back to the decision makers who can actually improve things. It’s a symbiotic relationship, really.

Even for the public health clinicians and lawyers, they write all that content so it’s out there for the public! If you help that content reach more people, everyone wins!

Especially when everyone’s in the middle of operations, nobody’s thinking about the website until the last minute. But you’ll be ready when they do realize it!

Get it done

After you learn about the landscape, then you gotta get it done.

Truthfully, everyone loves a thorough content approval process, until something has to be published “ASAP.” Then the process goes out the window. It’s happened on every single high stakes comms project in this pandemic-testing, reopening, now vaccines.

Getting it done will be your biggest lever.

I’m pretty sure that the biggest reason why I’ve earned so much trust is because I turn operational information into impact right away. Over the past year, I’ve been brought on to meetings where things are decided earlier and earlier. If people want something on SF.gov ASAP, I have to know about it ASAP. Stakeholders do come around on that!

To get it done, you have to know what you’re working with.

One of the first things I did was do a content inventory in Airtable. Yes, even when things are changing all the time, you have to inventory what’s there! You’ll never regret having one, I promise you.

This is only a tiny view of it. I’ve got around 5 views I use heavily, and about 30 columns. I maxed out at 260 pages that had anything to do with COVID.

I’ve got all the pages organized by status, public health subject, and reopening subject. And I have a Google Doc for almost each one.

Every time there’s an announcement on reopening, or some other public health guidance change, I can quickly find which pages I need to update.

If I need stakeholder approval, I can send them the Google Doc and tell them to make comments or suggestions.

Know your source materials

Another thing you have to do is know your source materials. What led everything was the health order. Written by the City Attorneys and the health officer, it told everyone in San Francisco, this is what you have to do. This is the legal bible of what is allowed and what is not allowed.

We also had public health guidance, written by doctors. Not quite a legal bible, but had lots of information about what you should do to stay safe.

Now, there was a time early on, where I was reading everything. Health Orders, directives, guidances, FAQs. That’s when everything was closing!

Turns out, it’s much harder to reopen businesses, given the specific public health guidelines for each one.

But it’s still important to know what each one was meant for, and where it came from.

To get it done, you have to be ready to get it done.

• Know your inventory inside and out.
• Be familiar with your source materials.
• Know your principles. Be ready to defend them. Or at least educate people on them!
• Recruit some backup when things get busy.

2. Be right, or at least honest

The next principle of CERC is to be right. I don’t think I have to explain why being wrong a lot would cause people to lose trust in you!

But when working with stakeholders, there are a few more considerations: Be honest, and give context.

The CERC manual explains that to be right, that “information can include what is known, what is not known, and what is being done to fill in the gaps.”

An interesting thing about pandemic work is that it has completely cleared my ego. I really stopped worrying about how I came off, and started focusing on the work. It was all about getting the info I needed. If I didn’t know it, I’d just start asking!

Tell people what you know. And tell them what you don’t know.

Give context

It’s important to give context because all the information is just blasting at everyone all the time. Make it really clear what you want people to do.

Dispel assumptions. Give your stakeholders a heads up if something involves them. They’ll be grateful to get that intel early!

Tell them if they need to do anything. That’ll be the first question on their mind.

And tell them if there’s anything at stake, especially if you need an answer or decision right away.

With these tips, it is possible to get a handle on a runaway train with an email!

There was one time where a few teams were working on 2 projects with a similar mission. One project was a quick fix, another was a better, longer-term solution that would need lots of work.

An email chain blew up, assumptions were made, a high-up stakeholder (that I’d never talked to, of course), got wind of some parts, freaked out, and wanted to cancel everything. On a Saturday.

I was like, “Whoa, okay, time to pull back and give some context.”

I literally wrote, “Bottom line up front: I can do Webpage A on Monday, but that’s a short term solution. The longer term solution is Website B, and this is why.” And then I explained who everyone on that email chain was, why they were there, and why both projects were valid.

That high-up stakeholder replied back, thanked me for the detail, and explained that of course, no one had explained the plan to her directly. And then we proceeded to decide how to go forward.

Whew, crisis averted!

I will say that even though I write in plain language for a living, writing that email was hard! It took me hours of wracking my brain! But it’s worth doing it.

3. Be credible by knowing your limits

The third CERC principle is “Be credible.” What this means when working with stakeholders is to know your limits.

The CERC manual says, “Honesty and truthfulness should not be compromised during crises.” Sometimes that means acknowledging that you are not the best avenue to do that work.

Know how to make the most impact with the channel that you have.

In my case, I acknowledged that the SF.gov website could not do everything. It’s taken me somewhat longer to admit that I couldn’t do everything either. But that’s true too!

Leave the personal entreaties to people, not websites

One aspect of crisis communication is what we call metamessaging. That’s where you say, “Times are hard, we feel you, we get you.” Or “I know it’s hard, especially around the holidays.” It’s when you use emotion to connect to people.

Websites are not good for that. Websites are words on a page. You can’t relate to that. It comes off extremely disingenuous.

You have to have a person look you in the eye, and say it. Ideally, it would be a leader.

Luckily, Mayor London Breed was already doing it in her press conferences. And she does it very well! She explained how we all needed to do our part to tamp down the holiday surge. And we did have a holiday surge, but it could have been a lot worse.

There is absolutely nothing I could write on SF.gov that connects to people like that.

So, I let our partners do that. The mayor does the metamessaging, and community leaders would have those more intimate 1-on-1 conversations with people. “This is why you have to stay home for the holidays.” “This is why you have to wear a mask.” One on one, human to human.

What SF.gov could do was tell the general public what they could do right away. Empower people with information.

Even further, SF.gov could be used as a tool for partners and the public, to support them while they have those conversations with people they know.

4. Express empathy by acknowledging struggles

The fourth CERC principle is to express empathy. What this means for stakeholders, is to acknowledge their struggles.

The manual says, “Addressing what people are feeling, and the challenges they face, builds trust and rapport.”

They go on further to say that people don’t panic in an emergency. People react in ways that make sense to them. Always.

This is where knowing the landscape comes in handy.

Everyone you’re working with is feeling pressure that you may not know about. From above, from the sides, from the bottom. Who knows!

To get stuff done, you have to work with that. Know that everyone has their own goal. Tap into that. You want something, I want something. Here’s how we can get there together.

Make it a win/win.

And really, keep in mind that it’s not about you. Everyone is stressed out!

Help everyone embrace the chaos

This is especially helpful when new people get tossed in the fray. Just acknowledge that things suck! Help them embrace the chaos!

Most folks in my regular Digital Services team were not directly part of the COVID response work. And then a good chunk of the team was pulled into vaccines. It was the first time that most of them experienced the frantic pace of changing priorities and information. Constantly pivoting, even when you’re trying to work in a proper sprint, can be overwhelming.

I kept on telling them, “You gotta embrace the chaos! It’s the only way I’ve survived doing this work for a year!”

Then one of our engineers added the Elmo fire gif as a Slack reacji, and I was like, “Yes! Embody the Elmo!”

So anytime we get a new piece of information that completely blows up our current plan, someone reacts with Elmo fire. We sigh a bit. And then we get to work.

Acknowledging all your struggles binds people together. You can show some vulnerability right away. The psychological safety that builds up will only make you more impactful.

5. Promote action by giving people options

The fifth CERC principle is to promote action. When working with stakeholders, this can mean giving them options.

The CERC manual says “Giving people meaningful things to do calms anxiety, helps restore order, and promotes some sense of control.”

When people are stressed out, the loss of control is the scariest feeling. So you always have to give them a path. Another thing I’ve found is that if I say if I can’t do it on SF.gov, they’ll often choose another option that is not as accessible or user friendly.

But you can delegate. If you know there’s another team doing something similar, make those introductions. Again, knowing the landscape is super important!

You can also offer compromises and win/win situations. The proposed content may not fit exactly into our strict content standards on SF.gov, but if we can nudge it that way, that’s still huge progress.

That goes back into knowing your tools. I had to know what SF.gov could do. I had to know what content types we had, their goals, what they were good for, and what their limitations were.

So when someone comes in with a solution or website copy for me to publish verbatim, I can go, “Hmm, well it won’t work quite the way you envision it, but here’s what I can do. It will be more readable, accessible, user-centered, all that good stuff.”

Everybody wins!

6. Show respect

The last CERC principle is to show respect. When working with stakeholders, this means acknowledging their expertise, keeping people updated, and asking for help.

The CERC manual says “Respectful communication is particularly important when people feel vulnerable. It promotes cooperation and rapport.”

Even in a crisis, people don’t want to be treated as if they don’t have autonomy.

Acknowledge others’ expertise

You have to work with everybody. It’s not about you necessarily being an expert in that exact subject. Everyone is an expert in their own field. That’s why they’re there.

You’re “translating” other people’s work to empower the public. They have a message they want to share. My job was to help them spread that message. I studied behavior change and emergency communications, not the details of how aerosols work.

Keep everyone updated

Another thing that the pandemic taught me, was to not be afraid to keep everyone updated on everything. Before, I’d be nervous about flooding someone’s inbox.

But really, it’s a lot better to have a message unread in someone’s inbox, but there (and therefore their responsibility), than having it be your fault they didn’t find out about something.

So, keep those lines of communication open. Keep people updated. Learn what they prefer. I have Slack, Teams, and Mail open pretty much all the time. And then some stakeholders, you can only reach quickly with a text message or phone call.

And if you’re unsure, just CC everyone!

Ask for help

Last, but surely not least, is asking for help. I’m still working on this, slowly but surely. It’s really the only way to scale.

What has been working for me so far, is bringing stakeholders directly into the process. Pair-write with them, even if it’s sending Google Docs back and forth.

Mentor. They’ll have questions about why you have the principles you have. They’re not trying to be annoying, they genuinely want to be a part of what you’re part of.

Give feedback. If they don’t know what they can improve on and why, they won’t improve.

And have a relationship with your stakeholders. It doesn’t stop with training. It takes time! You can learn all about content design principles but the only way to really learn it, is to do it. And then they’ll need help.

Again, we’re still working on this, but we’ve gotten a few allies in the public health department who write the long guidance. They know their PDF guidance can be more readable, they just don’t know how to do it. But welcoming them with SF.gov content principles means that they can start improving their own content right now.

The most important thing to remember is that everyone wants to make a difference. That’s why they’re there!

Conclusion: Work with stakeholders to elevate content design

So, here we are, at the end of the 6 principles of CERC, and how they can help you work with stakeholders to elevate content design.

1. Be first. Know the landscape. Get it done.
2. Be right. Be honest, and give context.
3. Be credible. Know your limits.
4. Express empathy. Acknowledge their struggles.
5. Promote action. Give them options.
6. Show respect. Acknowledge their expertise, keep people updated, and ask for help

How is it working so far?

SF.gov is now understood to be the destination for the general public on everything COVID-19. One of the most gratifying things in doing this work, is seeing strangers, reporters even, use content I wrote to help each other. People helping each other understand what masks to use, and how to have safer holidays. Helping each other understand vaccine eligibility.

Most importantly, I’ve gotten to be a part of making real impact.

Dr. Bob Wachter’s COVID chronicles on Twitter have been a constant source of hope when things were not looking great. And in March 2021, he calculated that if the US mirrored SF’s COVID mortality rate, more than 364,000 Americans would still be alive. (As of July 2021, that number is more than 400,000.)

That is staggering.

What else can we do when we elevate content design? The mind boggles.

I believe that using content design and crisis comms together, we can scale our work in magnitudes.

Thank you.

Originally published at http://anitacheng.com on August 5, 2021.

Taking content design center stage in a crisis was originally published in San Francisco Digital Services on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

We’re handling it all between 2 content designers, and we need more help. We’re looking for a senior content strategist right now, and will post 2 content designer jobs later in the year.

We need to recruit for a movement.

Digital Services designs content first

We sit on the design team. Before any mockups are done, we work together on figuring out what content needs to be where.

We make sure at least 1 content person participates in all design feedback sessions and product meetings.

We help design better services

Our content work is not just microcopy, limited to individual screens. Our work is a combination of information architecture, content strategy, and UX writing. We help residents succeed in complex processes like buying a home or applying for a cannabis permit.

We help departments understand what it means to be user-centered

The bulk of our work is in reframing our stakeholders’ understanding of their own services. We run workshops to create user stories and get buy in.

We write new user-centered services with subject matter experts. Then we train content leads at the departments to own their own content.

Learn what one City department’s experience was like.

We are still figuring out what content work looks like in the City

We are less than a year into moving department services onto SF.gov. Everything’s still pretty new. We iterate on each workshop, migration, and training session.

We refer to how other government entities have handled content. GOV.UK, 18F, and federal plain language resources are all fair game.

We’re also still working on our content standards, striving for 5th grade reading level if at all possible. Check out our working content style guide at https://sfdigitalservices.gitbook.io/style-guide/ (We’ll need your help filling that out too!)

Join us!

We’re currently hiring content people. Apply at https://digitalservices.sfgov.org/joinus/

You can also sign up for our mailing list at the bottom of https://digitalservices.sfgov.org/ We’ll let you know of any upcoming roles we have.

Read more about the work we’re doing, our principles, and more about the team.

Making content user-centered at Digital Services was originally published in San Francisco Digital Services on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

I had graduated with a hard science major, looking forward to a career mostly working alone and with my hands. I wanted to avoid “office politics,” and avoid writing. (I thought I wasn’t good at writing; I had gotten a better score on the SAT math section than the writing section.)

I thought that’s what I wanted. But a few years into that, I wanted more for myself.

Now I’m designing and writing content to empower residents in one of the most innovative cities in the world. I’m working with amazing people, collaborating across multiple agencies and stakeholders.

Looking back on my experience to help others

I recently started my third position in that new career, 5 years after quitting my original path. The time has given me some perspective, but I still remember what it was like.

I hope this helps those who are looking at their current job and thinking, “Is this all for me? Do I dare to dream for more?”

The answer is, of course, yes!

So…you’ll still have to work

First things first. I kind of lied with that clickbaity headline. (Sorry!)

Changing your career will require time, it will require energy, and it often requires some money.

But had I listened to people who said career changers had to:

• hit up networking events to meet everyone, multiple times a week
• freelance after a full 8-hour day job, until 2am every night
• quit their job to do a 10-week $15,000 bootcamp
• quit their job to get a $50,000 2-year master’s degree

…I wouldn’t have started at all!

I did none of those things. Granted, it was a journey that took years for me. But I made it, with a solid path, zero debt, and with my chill demeanor intact.

Be efficient and effective

I knew my limits. I knew I wasn’t an extroverted, hyper-achieving Type-A person. And I was adamant about not squeezing myself into a box that didn’t fit me.

I had to be efficient and effective. If you aren’t a naturally extroverted, hyper-achieving Type-A person, you’ll need to do the same.

You’ll have to know yourself. And you’ll have to carefully consider your options against your needs.

It sounds like a lot of work, and yes, it’s a lot of research and thinking. But it’s better than flailing around, trying expensive and time-consuming paths that may not be right for you.

Remember, you are a person, not a set of skills

When switching careers, you may believe that you’ll need to catch up to everyone else who started straight out of college. You can spend months or even years trying to “learn everything.”

Well here’s the hard truth: You won’t. Someone else’s years of education and work experience can’t be easily dismissed.

But that doesn’t mean your resume will always be put aside in favor of theirs.

You are more than a set of skills. You are a person. You have experience that non-career-changers don’t, since you came from somewhere else. You can leverage that.

First, know thyself

The more you know yourself, the better prepared you’ll be to tackle the decisions you’ll have to make. And there will be a lot of them!

The very first one, and perhaps the most important, is figuring out what you should do.

Find your new goal

It’s easy to get excited over a new trendy or lucrative field. But before you commit, make sure it’s right for you.

Figure out your lifelong motivating theme

If you are switching from another career, there’s no need to erase your previous life. You can use it to set your future direction and present a unique narrative.

Cancer research and UX design don’t seem any way related. But ever since I was a kid, I loved taking useful notes. I loved being able to help my classmates who had been out sick. “No worries, you can copy my notes!” Yup, I am one proud nerd.

Taking good notes sure was useful in my lab job! My boss was able to refer to my lab notes years after I’d left. It even manifests now in my live-tweeting of design events. Even if you aren’t there, you can learn something from what I write.

I may not be the originator of the story, idea, or policy. But I’ve always aimed to translate it for as many people as I can. That’s essentially what I do today.

What is the motivation behind something you naturally do, even just for fun? What about it is translatable to a new career?

Find a passion

To sustain energy and drive for this career change and beyond, you have to find what you really like doing. For hours on end, even if it’s hard.

I believe everyone has something like this. For me, it wasn’t my original major. Not even close.

It was something I came upon completely by accident. Out of extreme Batman fandom, I wanted to build a large online archive. Instead of just dreaming about it, I took it upon myself to design and build it. After a year of work, I still loved doing (almost) everything about it, so I figured I should do it for a job! 🙂

If you really like doing something, pursue it! See where it takes you. It doesn’t have to translate directly into a job. But things will be a lot easier if you enjoy your new career.

Check things out

Finding something you like is important. But so will making sure you’ll like the day-to-day.

Before I discovered UX, I thought I could combine my talents for art and science into medical illustration. I looked seriously into applying for medical illustration programs.

Then I contacted several working medical illustrators, asking to job shadow them for an hour. Turns out the day-to-day was quite different from the creative artistry I believed it would be.

One illustrator was spending that day digitally painting blood vessels on eyeballs for surgical training software. The other was camped out in Adobe Illustrator, drawing spheres of various sizes and gradients. She told me that’s where all the money was — drawing spheres to depict molecular processes.

I wanted more creativity and autonomy than that. So I closed the door on medical illustration. Sure, I had already put a lot of time and effort into art classes, but at least I figured it out before going for the expensive certificate programs!

Before you get too excited, do a little research or try a small real-world project on your own. Make sure you like the day-to-day before going much further.

Figure out what you need

Once you’ve chosen what direction to go towards, it’s time to decide which path to take.

It’s easy to choose the path that seems straightforward, or claims to guarantee you a job. Be wary — industries change and things may not be all they seem.

It’s hard enough for young recent grads to follow the path they’re supposed to: degree, internships, more degrees, junior roles, etc. Career changers have even less options. You’ll have to get creative.

Do you really need a degree?

Very few jobs absolutely require that you have a related degree or certification. Medical doctor, lawyer, some vocational trades. But very few do. Certainly not tech jobs, for one.

School, especially in the US, is very expensive. Lenders will quite happily lend you tens (or even hundreds) of thousands of dollars for a degree. Then they expect you to pay it all back whether you have a well-paying job or not.

For UX, many design bootcamp graduates have the same portfolio and seem to think the same way. How is a hiring manager supposed to differentiate between grads from the same class if this is the case? The grads end up doing more work on top of the expensive education. They have to prove that they are more than the schooling they got.

Ask yourself, what difference does that degree make? If you want to go to school, focus on the things you’ll learn. Don’t make decisions from the assumed legitimacy of the degree.

Cobbling together an education

Once I had decided on UX, I looked at my options. I wanted to keep my full-time job since I didn’t want the financial stress. The following were out:

• (another) bachelor’s degree, in design
• full-time bootcamp
• full-time master’s degree

Those were the most obvious routes. What was left? I did some research, and found that there were certificate programs I could do part-time at state and community colleges.

I knew I needed to shore up my visual design skills. Lucky for me, I lived close to both ArtCenter College of Design and Pasadena City College (PCC). A few instructors taught at both. I could get ArtCenter education while paying community college prices!

Despite it being a community college education, I pushed myself creatively as far as I could. The instructors, seeing my drive, pushed me further as well. I’m still not the best visual designer, but the education gave me a solid foundation to work with.

After a few freelance gigs, I felt that I was still lacking in specific UX skills. Mostly user research methods, but I also wanted more rigorous training in wireframing and business. By that time, I had networked enough to hear about the Cal State Fullerton UX certificate program from multiple senior designers. It was for working professionals since it was on Saturdays only. The curriculum seemed like it would give me a good foundation about how to think as a UXer.

I signed up, and was surprised at how many working UXers were in my class, looking to get more rigorous training themselves. You bet I learned from them too!

All in all, I finished my UX education before I quit my lab job to pursue UX full-time.

It doesn’t have to be all or nothing. Figure out what’s best for you and your situation.

Prove you can do the work

Whether you decide to get a formal education or not, the most important thing is proving you can do the work. That’s what it takes to convince someone to hire you. Having years of experience or lots of degrees are merely shorthand of proving you can do the work.

Sometimes just that degree is enough. Usually, it isn’t.

Proving you can do the work can be:

• having an impressive resume with famous companies and degrees
• writing compelling case studies of anything you’ve done, including school and personal projects
• having data that shows you moved the needle for clients

If you don’t have degrees or famous companies on your resume, there are still other options!

Start small and be scrappy

It’s a catch–22: to get a job, you need experience. But to get experience, you need a job!

Or do you?

The whole point of “having experience” is being able to apply what you know.

Personal projects are experience. Side projects are experience. Freelance gigs are experience. Build up on everything you do, collect measurements, and soon you’ll be too impactful to ignore!

I started my UX journey on a personal project where I learned everything I needed to launch a website: UX, design, content, code, SEO, hosting. I learned as I went, and only when it was needed.

I used that knowledge for my first paying website job through a friend of a friend. (Referrals work!) The requirements weren’t a huge jump from what I was familiar with. Neither was the next freelance gig, nor the next one. Each was a gradual, but unmistakable, stepping stone.

I collected impact measurements, such as registration rates and sales. I wrote each of the projects a descriptive case study. It was clear from my work that I knew what I was doing.

You don’t have to go big at first. Start small, and log how you made a difference. Don’t wait for permission to make an impact.

Redefine luck

Your own education, and how you prove you can do the work, that’s all up to you. You control all of that. You call all the shots.

But there’s going to be a lot of factors affecting your journey that have nothing to do with you. Most people would consider that luck. They think all of it is out of your hands.

I disagree.

Luck = Preparation + Opportunity

Yes, luck does have an aspect of random opportunity to it. But if you’re not prepared to take advantage of it, you won’t be lucky.

After I quit academic research, it took me more than a year to land my first full-time job in UX.

At last, a random recruiter found me on Dice for a position at the Los Angeles Department of Building and Safety. One that supposedly required 5+ years of experience.

No matter. I examined the job description and prepared for the interview accordingly. (I wrote another blog post about exactly how I did that.) And I got the job!

It was chance that the recruiter came upon my Dice profile. But if I hadn’t worked diligently on my resume or portfolio, him finding me wouldn’t have made a difference. I had to be ready for the opportunity to take advantage of it.

There are ways to improve your chances that luck will find you.

“Preparation” also means preparing to wait

If you want to make the most of your opportunities, you have to give yourself mental space and some financial runway. I had the luxury of waiting until the right opportunity came along, because I had diligently saved from my previous career.

I’ve had designer peers who think it’ll take them a month or two to find a new gig. Sometimes that happens, but sometimes it takes much longer. You don’t want to find yourself in a place where you feel you have to take anything, in order to pay the bills.

Financial stress should not be taken lightly. It causes people to make bad decisions.

Of course it’s possible to change your career when you’re financially strapped. But it will be more stressful. And stress makes the journey all the more difficult.

Give yourself some financial runway, so you can have room to think.

When you find a foothold, dig in!

A nice way saying it is “bloom where you’re planted” but I’m not being delicate here. It’s more like taking root in a crack in the concrete and buckling the sidewalk.

Whatever opportunity you do get, dig in!

I didn’t scoff at the small freelance gigs I was getting at first. I used each as an opportunity to learn something new and to make an impact.

Finally having a full-time UX job didn’t mean resting on my laurels. It meant finding opportunities to make my colleagues’ lives easier. It meant building a community in the government space, so I could do my job better and help others.

Make it so that people will miss you when you leave.

(There is usually panic and some wailing, in my case. Very sweet, but also a little awkward!)

Find your tribe

You’re going to need all the help you can get, from people around you.

I couldn’t have gotten into UX without the help from my first boss, at the cancer research lab. He had absolutely no reason to help me leave science to do something else.

But he allowed me to do experiments at night, so I could attend design classes at PCC during the day. I learned how to build my first website during downtime between experiments.

He believed that as a boss, his job was to help us however we needed. But he couldn’t have helped if I hadn’t asked.

Some people won’t be supportive. But you won’t know for sure unless you ask.

Finding your tribe also means networking and meeting new people. Or as I like to say, making friends in your new industry! (I’ve written a separate blog post about how to network as an introvert.)

Even if you’re shy or you think you won’t be good at it, knowing folks in your industry comes in very handy.

The only job I fell into randomly was my first. My subsequent roles were found for me through people I knew. Building a network sounds like a lot of work, and it is! But it’s an investment that will easily pay for itself several times over.

I can’t imagine applying for a job cold now. I’d try my networks first.

If you look out for people, they’ll look out for you.

Get rid of toxicity

The flip side of finding your tribe, is to minimize your exposure to things that will hold you back. That includes people.

It’ll take enough of your energy to learn the things you need to learn. You don’t need to have your energy sapped by that well-meaning relative who insists that your path isn’t going to work every time they see you.

I am lucky. I have a spouse who believes in me 110%. I also have high-achieving Asian parents who trusted that I knew what was best for me. My journey would have been a lot more difficult if I hadn’t had their support.

Changing your career is hard. Getting weighed down by toxicity makes it even harder. Be ready to let go of toxic people and situations.

Believe in yourself

Cheesy, but true! Once you’ve set the stage for your career switch, it’s then about having faith in your decisions as you look for that first job.

Job searching is a long slog for everyone. But there are other considerations to keep in mind for career changers.

Own your timeline

Sometimes it may seem that everyone else is moving faster than you. It’s easy to doubt your path and follow what everyone else is doing. Don’t.

You can forge ahead with what you have. You’re on your own path.

When times are tough, remember the reasons why you’re on the path you’re on. You made methodical decisions, and that says something about you.

Your goal isn’t a job that treats you like a set of skills. Your goal is a career that’s worthy of you, with all of your contexts and values and experiences. It’s worth waiting for.

Not getting gigs doesn’t mean you are failing

During my 1+ year of UX job searching, I tried signing up for short-term gigs with staffing agencies like Vitamin T, Creative Circle, and the like. I got some good tips about writing my resume, but otherwise I got zero leads.

It seemed like everyone else was having success through these staffing agencies but me. It seemed like nobody wanted what I had to offer.

I started opening up the industries I was willing to work in. My ideal was healthcare, but I went down my list to ecommerce, which was probably my 4th choice. I was just about to apply to jobs in my “god please no” industry (ad agencies) when the government job fell into my lap. And from the success and reception I’ve found in this field, it’s where I belong.

You couldn’t have said that looking at my first year trying to apply for things! It looked like I didn’t belong anywhere and that I had made a huge mistake.

Sometimes it really is not you

Honestly, hiring is broken for many industries. The reasons that a company rejects you may have nothing to do with you. Sometimes it has to do with the maturity of the company and what they think they need.

7 months before I got my first full-time job in UX, I was rejected from a company I had hit it off with. I had done my research. I knew the users and had talked with them. I reached out to staff there and had very productive conversations with them. It still didn’t work out.

But how they rejected me was a revelation. They made it clear that it wasn’t me, it was the company. They weren’t ready for UX.

4 years later, that company has finally hired their first UXer. And I’m making an impact for all San Franciscans at SF Digital Services. I think I came out ahead!

Tell your story

Going from one industry to another is a huge part of your life. Telling that story can be a compelling way for people to remember you.

(Or hire you. I had one contract gig where I was hired because they figured, “If she could do molecular biology, she can quickly learn this big data enterprise tool we have.” Which honestly worked for me!)

When people ask me about my journey, I have one line I always say:

I quit cancer research to go into tech so I could help people faster.

That one sentence explains where I came from, and what my ultimate goals are. I’m not just checking off boxes or pursuing a salary or job title. I made purposeful decisions along this journey. How I explain those decisions says a lot about me.

The way you tell your story will say a lot about you too. Be in control of your own narrative. That may mean saying no to opportunities, which is scary! But it also means helping you find the opportunities that are a resounding “YES!” for you.

Forget job titles

Speaking of job titles, I recommend you don’t take them too seriously.

Before I changed careers, my sister and I shared the same official job title: Research Associate. I did molecular biology experiments with human cells and E. coli. She worked in public policy on student loans and college affordability. Many job titles don’t actually describe what you do.

Not only that, but you also limit yourself when you have a specific job title as a ultimate goal. You subconsciously put yourself into a box. You have to learn this, but not that. You’re supposed to be good at this thing, but not that. You should be talking to certain people, or applying for certain jobs at certain companies. But not others.

Putting yourself into a box, especially in tech, can make you less nimble for changes down the road. And they will change. My current job title didn’t exist in its current form until about 6 years ago.

Your journey is not a timeline of job titles. It’s a lot more than that. It’s about you and who you are.

It’s a never-ending journey

Even if you make it, it’s still not over. I may be 5 years into my career change, but I’m still learning every day.

I’m learning how to make a bigger impact. I’m learning how to apply what I know to other fields. I’m learning how other fields can apply to mine. And of course, I want to lend a hand to those following behind me.

So in summary, the principles of changing your career are:

1. Be efficient and effective
2. Choose your goal: Find your lifelong motivating theme, find your passion, and check things out
3. Choose your path: Decide if you need a degree, and prove you can do the work
4. Luck = Preparation + Opportunity
5. When you find a foothold, dig in!
6. Find your tribe and get rid of toxicity
7. Believe in yourself and tell your story

What I do in the next 5 years may be completely different than the past 5. But I’ve forged my own path, as have many others.

I believe we are all capable of transformation, given the right tools and guidance. So go forth and be awesome!

Originally published at anitacheng.com on December 31, 2018.

But that doesn’t mean there aren’t people trying to change that.

Making San Francisco residency accessible

MOHCD is such a place. The people there envision “an equitable and diverse City where all residents can afford a place to live.”

MOHCD offers financial help for residents who need it for stable housing in the City. But offering such programs won’t make a difference if information about how to apply for it is still inaccessible.

That’s where I came in. My job at MOHCD was to restructure information on the website so our applicants could understand it.

The reality is that buying a home is just not easy!

When I arrived, MOHCD had already launched an online rental housing application. People who wanted to rent affordable apartments could apply for the lottery online. You could do it in minutes and be on your way.

Buying an apartment in a MOHCD program is not like that.

You have to go through a 6-hour workshop at an approved housing counseling agency. Then you have to meet one on one with a housing counselor to do a basic check of your finances. If you pass the basic check, you then go to a participating lender to get preapproved for a mortgage.

All that before you can even apply! If you miss any of those steps, it’s more headache for you, as well as MOHCD staff, to try to get it rectified before the lottery.

For many, the process looks so arduous that they don’t even try.

But for those who hang on, figuring which program to use can still be confusing!

Making homeownership possible for the “missing middle”

One of the programs I worked on was the Downpayment Assistance Loan Program, or DALP. It’s a loan program for people who are considered middle income. They need just a little boost for their downpayment when buying.

DALP provides a downpayment loan up to $375,000, on a market rate home in San Francisco. Every year, there is a limited amount of funds available to loan out. There is one DALP lottery every year to determine the order in which MOHCD staff go through applications.

That’s the absolute minimum you need to know to apply for DALP. And this was the original DALP page.

For those of you who work in government or have been to a government website, this kind of page looks very familiar. It’s a program page, and it shows everything anyone would ever want to know about that program. And I do mean “anyone” — applicants, lenders, policymakers, staff, and the general public.

If you wanted to apply, how would you do it? That was not clear on the original page. That had to change.

To make government services better, start with content

Why does content matter so much? It seems so…basic, doesn’t it?

Changing the way government services work is hard. It involves tearing down existing ways of working. Ways that have worked (or limped along) for years. Maybe even decades.

Once we tear down the old process, we have to replace it with a new one. And in government, once you start down one rabbit hole, you usually find 10 more to go down. It’s a transition that may take years and years. In the meantime, our residents continue to miss out on opportunities.

Language is access

Instead of changing how the process itself works, one stopgap is updating content. At least people will understand how things work, even if the process itself remains complicated.

Understanding your users’ needs is the best way to improve your content

It’s not enough to use smaller words. If information is not relevant or is presented out of context, it’s still hard to understand.

You have to know your users and what they need. And then organize your content accordingly.

San Francisco Digital Services does it by writing user stories based on real user research. Our template is from GOV.UK’s recommendation: “As a (someone), I need/want/expect to (do something), so I can (achieve some kind of criteria)”

After interviewing several homeownership applicants, I discovered that one main motivation for buying over renting was stability. People don’t want to be priced out of their home, or be evicted.

I wrote the following user story:

As a parent, I want to buy a home in San Francisco, so my children can stay in their school district.

Understand the process you’re writing about

Next, you have to learn about the thing you’re writing about. You can’t fake knowledge if your goal is to write clearly and directly. You have to know the ins and outs. Meet with subject matter experts (SMEs) to walk you through how things work.

One of the first things I did at MOHCD was to meet with each housing program manager and draw out their service on a whiteboard. I also met with them to pair-write the content together. In this case, I drafted up my ideas and then pestered the SMEs in person with questions that came up.

I told the staff, “I can’t write it if I don’t know it.” All of them were more than happy to share their knowledge and experience.

I drew out journey maps for every major service MOHCD had, and pinned them to the outside of my cubicle. It has become a reference for anyone working with MOHCD programs, to understand how it all works.

Structure your content to reduce cognitive load

Extensive research shows that people do not read everything on a webpage. They scan, reading only 20% of what you put on a page.

Saying “They didn’t read it, it’s their fault!” won’t do any good. The result is a lose/lose for everyone. Your readers miss opportunities, and your work has made no impact. The responsibility falls to us to make our content as easy to read as possible.

Do everything you can to reduce cognitive load.

One task, process, or audience need per page

The needs of a parent applying for a loan program is very different from the needs of a mortgage lender. An applicant just needs to know enough to apply. The lender needs to know financing details.

Having information for multiple audience needs on the same page increases cognitive load. Having information on multiple processes on the same page also increases cognitive load.

Everyone has to read the whole thing and pick out what’s relevant to them right now. That’s a lot of work, and people can assume wrong.

Make the information as relevant to them as possible. If it involves more than one audience need or task or process, split it off onto a new page. People don’t need everything at once.

When restructuring DALP content, I split it into 2 pages. One for applicants, and one for all other audiences who needed financing details. Those would include lenders, housing counselors, and even reporters.

Use the inverted pyramid

The inverted pyramid is a concept taken from journalism. The basic premise is to assume your user will stop reading your content at any time.

That means the most important information must be presented first. If the user stopped reading after the first sentence, they should have a general idea of what the page was about.

No more “welcome” or “thank you for reading” introductions. I start every page by answering the question, “So what is this thing anyway?”

I then create sections of content, and order that section by audience size. These sections of content are informed by the original user story: “As a parent, I want to buy a home in San Francisco, so my children can stay in their school district.”

What would someone need to know, to apply for an affordable housing program?

1. Everyone wants to know if they’re eligible.
2. If they are eligible, how to fulfill application requirements.
3. If they are eligible and finish all requirements, apply for the program.
4. Some will want to know what to expect after they apply.
5. Very few people, if any, want to learn about the background or history of the program they’re applying for. Only if they’re real policy wonks!

The number of people who would want to read the content becomes smaller as they go down the page. That’s the idea of the inverted pyramid.

Present information where people will see it

In the quest for consistency, many people try to decrease repeated information. This can be confusing for readers who are scanning. It’s best to give them relevant information at the point where they’ll see it, even if it’s repetitive.

For all MOHCD homeownership programs, everyone needs to go to a workshop, meet with a housing counselor, and get a mortgage preapproval letter. It’s not technically a step to apply for DALP, because it’s assumed that you would already have all of that as a preapplication requirement.

We originally published a step by step that started with “fill out this PDF application” as the first item. Three out of the first 5 applications did not contain proof that they had gone to a workshop or gotten a mortgage preapproval. Clearly that wouldn’t do!

We then published a step by step that basically repeated the education requirement. But it was very obvious that that was the absolute first thing you had to do to apply. And then we had much less of a problem with applicants missing it.

Write your copy for a wide audience

Honestly, once you’ve taken care of structuring the content, you’re more than halfway there.

But there are a lot of tips on how to write copy in plain language. I’ll run through some that I’ve found make the biggest impact.

1. Be active

Your user has agency. You’re not doing something for them, you’re empowering them to do things for themselves.

People use websites or apps to achieve a task. Make it clear what the task is, such as “Apply for…” instead of “[Program name] application process.”

In the same vein, opt for active voice over passive voice. An example is “You can resell the unit at market prices” vs “The unit will be resold at market prices.” Using active voice makes it clearer who is doing what.

2. Think short

Shorter sentences are easier to parse. Have only one idea per sentence. Aim for 15 words per sentence, maximum. Aim for 3 sentences per paragraph, maximum.

You can’t stop people from scanning, but you can signal where a different section starts by using subheadings. (Also, people using screenreaders will navigate through a page just using subheadings. Use them liberally!)

If you’re going to have a long list separated by commas, use bulleted lists. If it’s ordered instructions, use numbered lists.

A bonus is that Google Translate has a much easier time with shorter sentences. It’s much harder for software to parse a sentence with multiple clauses. If you find yourself typing in a comma, try replacing it with a period and starting another sentence.

3. Write like you talk

We were all taught in school to write like we wanted to seem smart. The bigger words we used, the smarter we’d seem. Unfortunately, that ignores the fact that the average reading level in the US is Grade 8. Everything you were taught about SAT words, AP tests, and college essays is actually not helpful! You have throw all those rules out the window if you want to write for as many people as possible.

San Francisco Digital Services aims for Grade 5 or 6, using Hemingway App as a guide. We don’t always get there, but it’s the goal!

The original DALP page was at a Grade 11 reading level. The new DALP page is now at a Grade 7 reading level. It was admittedly Grade 6 before we started adding more detail to it. But it’s important to try to push it as low as possible, before government starts creeping back in!

We’ve almost made it into a contest. I end all my drafts with a note about the reading level. That way, city stakeholders can see it and try to keep it low. (This blog post? Grade 5!)

4. Use “you” and “we” if it’s clear

Nothing alienates a user more than reading “the applicant” or “the department” down a webpage.

Think of the page as a conversation. You are the author, and are talking to the reader. For government services, there’s going to be action taken on both sides during any process.

When it was clear that there was one author and one reader, I used “you” to refer to the applicant. I used “we” to refer to MOHCD. It’s a lot warmer and more direct to read.

Take a look at more of our writing tips on the San Francisco Digital Service’s content style guide.

Collaborate to leverage content

I may have written the words, but I couldn’t have done it alone. Collaboration across roles is necessary, for content operations as well as marketing that new content.

Have open communications with program staff

Folks who are on the front lines will tell you when the content can be improved. They get calls and emails from the public, after all! They are also the first to notice when the content is improved.

I make it clear that anyone can contact me if there is an issue that can be solved by updating content. Having clear and accurate content is the first step toward earning your users’ trust. Presenting inaccessible, outdated content can lose their trust. You need collaboration to make sure the content is the best it can be.

Work across roles to boost impact

I was not the only person at MOHCD working on communications with the public. We had Kim Dubin, a FUSE Corps executive fellow who did all of the public relations work.

It was great because I could focus on delivering content to improve services. I didn’t have to attend press conferences or talk to reporters. Kim did a wonderful job connecting people to the content, and letting me know when the website needed more.

For DALP, it culminated in an SF Chronicle article that laid out all of the eligibility requirements I had already laid out. The article encouraged people to apply, and soon our office was inundated with calls from interested applicants.

The combination of the SF Chronicle article and the improved application content made an impact. In 2017, 198 people successfully applied for DALP. In 2018, 266 did, an increase of 34%.

What’s next?

Writing relevant, clear content is proven to improve services. But we can do more in government.

There was a NYTimes article back in May, that talked about how 6,580 San Franciscans applied for a lottery to rent 95 apartments. DALP is similar — it has a lottery too.

The 266 applicants are currently ranked on a lottery result list. MOHCD staff will go through their paperwork in that order. In 2017, they got through about 80 applications and loaned to 23 households before funds ran out.

My efforts in increasing the number of DALP applicants only gave more people a chance. It doesn’t actually help more people. What actually helps more people is having more availability. It means having more housing, and it means having more funds to loan.

As a city employee, official policy is that I can’t tell you how to vote.

But I can tell you that your vote matters. I can tell you that this year, we have 116% more DALP funds to loan out because San Francisco voters overwhelmingly approved Proposition A back in 2015.

Better services can give more people access. But what will make huge strides is in policy changes and civic engagement. And we hope content can help do that too, in talking about impact and connecting the dots.

Content is here to stay, and we certainly hope that it continues making a real difference in people’s lives.

Originally published at anitacheng.com on November 26, 2018.

How clear content can make living in San Francisco possible was originally published in San Francisco Digital Services on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

For the entertainment industry, The Dark Knight’s impact is measured one way. For me personally, its impact means something quite different.

This 10-year anniversary was an unmissable opportunity for me to reminisce about the experiences I discovered and the inspiring people I met. And to take stock of my journey across the last decade — learning how to design experiences, and more recently, how to design the communities we want to be part of. And lastly, what it means to truly make a difference.

All of this began out of my experience around this one film, one that inspires me even today.

I am very much not joking when I tell people that The Dark Knight changed my life.

“Let’s wind the clocks back…”

10 years ago, I was in a completely different place.

I was 2 years into a technician job at a cancer research lab, and I still had no idea what I wanted to do with my life. For most lab techs 2 years in, they’re applying for grad school or med school. Taking that next big step in their career. But all I knew was, I didn’t want to do either! More STEM school would mean more rounds of self-flagellation. (One round in college was enough for me, thank you very much!)

But I liked doing bench work (a.k.a. the stuff you see on CSI), and I really liked the people I worked with. So I stayed. Going through the motions, more or less.

Going down the rabbit hole

And then I got pulled into an intriguing online puzzle. I’d been vaguely aware of a viral marketing campaign for the then-upcoming Batman movie, but I hadn’t been that interested before. Most of it, up to that point, had been unskilled exercises in showing up at a certain place. The first person to do it would get all the glory. For someone who worked a full-time job, count me out, right?

But this exercise was different. It was a puzzle that depended upon arcane knowledge of the campaign’s history. And it was online. There wasn’t one winner, just a group effort in online fan forums to solve the puzzle.

To contribute, I could look things up online. It turns out that looking up details of previous campaigns took a lot more effort than people (other than me, apparently) were willing to expend. So I started researching. And researching even more. And documenting, on an existing wiki. And aiming newbies toward the wiki so we wouldn’t be having the same discussion over and over again. Making sense of things.

And the moment we solved the puzzle through our collective efforts hours later, I was hooked.

For the next year and a half, I became the resident expert of this game. For one, I learned the whole shebang was called an “Alternate Reality Game,” or ARG.

I observed how the games and story pieces were designed to promote collaboration. I noted how the game designers nudged us down the right paths without direct interference.

A tight-knit community formed to support the continuous puzzle-solving effort. This was pre-GamerGate and even pre-Twitter, which I consider to be innocent times now. (I probably don’t have to mention that the vast majority of this community consisted of young men. They always had my back.)

We were just glad to have fun together, being involved in this strange, engrossing story.

Discovering design

After it was all over (I’m talking maybe 5 IMAX viewings total), I wasn’t done. I still wanted to acknowledge the experience that tight-knit community had, the magic that we felt for more than a year.

I decided to make an online archive. I didn’t know the first thing about making a website then, but I didn’t let that stop me. I took it upon myself to learn.

First, I learned about organizing content, because I knew I’d be handling a lot of it. I learned what that was called — information architecture. I made a content inventory and link map in Excel that consisted of 975 rows.

I learned about user experience design, and about creating personas to represent my audience. I learned about using discrete pieces of content to tell a story. I used Powerpoint to create my first wireframes. I wrote a lot.

I learned about HTML, CSS, Javascript, and JQuery. I learned about getting hosting and a domain. And I made my website, hand-coding all 475(ish) pages.

After about a year of work and loving almost every single second (aside for some snags with JQuery), I thought, “Hey if I did this all myself for this long and still like it, I should do it for a job!”

10 years, several design certificate programs, some hard years freelancing, and a few lucky breaks later, I’m here.

I now help make sense of San Francisco’s affordable housing program for almost a million residents. Starting next month, I will extend that impact out to all of San Francisco’s services.

I have been involved in some of the most visible user experience and information architecture communities in the world, working with designers I’ve looked up to for years. Some of these designers I now call friends.

Every day, I still reel at what I get to do.

Coming “home” to Chicago

This year, in March, the IA Summit conference was in Chicago, where most of The Dark Knight was filmed on location. I happened to be on the 2018 organizing committee, acting as content strategist/front-end developer for the website, as well as over-excited social media maven.

It was my first time in Chicago, but it also felt like coming home. This is where it all started for me, 10 years ago with a Batman movie.

Now I was working with some of my heroes, and becoming inspired and recharged by them in the magical 5 days that IA Summit always was.

That could have been the end of it. This part of my story, circling around in a nice retrospective bow. As reality usually works, this story’s not close to done.

“You either die a hero, or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain”

There were rumblings after IA Summit, about the community being unsafe, despite its initially welcoming nature. About the code of conduct being nothing more than some words on a webpage, because the culture allowed for known bad actors to participate year after year. That they would still be around next March, when the event would switch hands and become the Information Architecture Conference.

It came to a head on July 9, when the conference’s governing body released a (now-removed) legalese-heavy CYA Grievance Procedure for Code of Conduct violations. The way that it was released sent a clear message of bulldozing any concern for people who might want to file a report, in favor of reducing liability for the conference.

Twitter exploded. A number of very visible speakers and volunteers resigned over a culture that protected the careers of bad actors over the safety of attendees. (In general, it was not a good week for Codes of Conduct at design conferences.)

In the aftermath, I was mostly disappointed when I realized how many leaders in this empathy-focused industry were cowardly, refusing to take a stand on what kind of community they wanted to build. Going on as if nothing was wrong, when there was a “missing stair” in our midst that the people in charge refused to talk about.

At the same time, I acknowledge that when this happens, most people aren’t out to hurt others or make others feel unsafe.

“I believe in Harvey Dent”

We all have our own mental models for how the world works. We’ve meticulously created an architecture of beliefs that govern our reality.

How we approach social interactions, how we think about success, how we think about our own potential. Each one is a window into our perception of how the world works.

“This is what happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object.”

When we hang our beliefs on something, we will attempt to rewrite our own realities to make it true. Even if it isn’t.

Any cognitive dissonance and defensive behavior results in a backfire effect, where you hang onto beliefs even more. Even if they’re wrong.

The harder someone pushes, the more we push back. Sometimes until we become the very people we vowed we wouldn’t be.

“Does it depress you….to know just how alone you really are?”

Working against a backfire effect, especially on a societal level, can feel insurmountable.

How can we fix a system that just accepts a level of harm, that allows for various systemic –isms to go unchecked, that promotes vicious competition over healthy collaboration?

“They’re only as good as the world allows them to be.”

We can design around it. It’s possible. Our mental models are affected by what we perceive as incentives and goals inherent in the system.

To combat the backfire effect, we can’t just burn everything down. We have to replace it with something better. We have to rewrite people’s mental models.

That makes it possible to expect collaborative behavior out of everyone. To make a system that doesn’t require that one extraordinary person take a stand against the entire world.

“Batman could be anybody.” *

*(Yes, I know this is a quote from The Dark Knight Rises, just indulge me here.)

We don’t need our heroes to come around. In fact, it’s better not to depend on our heroes saving us at all. We can’t wait for them.

We can design our own incentives to make it work for us. We can design around the behaviors we predict, to create the kind of world we want to see.

Take the ARG that started this whole journey. When coming up with a new activity, the foremost thought on the game designers’ minds was player safety. They had to predict the extremes of what players might do in their excitement, and create the activities accordingly.

Granted, there will always be hiccups and unforeseen crowding in planning something unprecedented like a Joker-themed scavenger hunt at San Diego Comic Con. But in general, the real-life events clearly leaned toward fun and collaboration, not dog-eat-dog competition. That’s by design.

“The night is darkest just before the dawn.”

I believe we can do it. When creating a new community culture, we may not know what’s on the other side. We may only have a set of principles to guide our way. But that’s part of the beauty — by working with what we have, we can come up with something even better than we could imagine.

As a designer now, I see the potential of our collective impact more than ever. Ideally, we would design a world where someone like Batman wouldn’t even be needed.

While I embark on helping to build up the Information Architecture Conference and San Francisco Digital Services, I’ll take the following with me:

• Don’t be the one hero. Forge alliances. Find a tribe that also believes we can make things better. I’m optimistic that we have the right team behind IAC and SF Digital Services to make this happen.
• Learn from each other. Encourage each other. We can only make the most impact if we put our brains together and combine our expertise. Take a look at analogous areas and see what they’re doing. Maybe you can take something from that.
• Meet people where they are. Don’t forget that we are all human, and all personally struggling with different things.
• Design the narratives for where we all want to go. Decide what the incentives should be. We have to plan ahead in order to secure the futures we want.

“…Not a hero…a silent guardian, a watchful protector, a dark knight.”

So, how come people are still talking about a movie that came out 10 years ago? Many will talk about its elevation of superhero movies, the political relevance, and Heath Ledger’s Oscar-winning performance.

For me, The Dark Knight’s legacy hinges on its last 2 minutes and what it inspires in me.

Batman and his allies have been beaten and battered, their ideals utterly broken over the course of only a few days. But they still believe that a better world is possible.

Batman believes in that possibility so much, that he sacrifices his own legacy to see it through.

We need some of that unflagging optimism now. To face a broken system, a system that has failed us multiple times, and say, “We can make this better.”

Using a lie isn’t the best way of going about this; it obviously isn’t sustainable. I love you Batman, but no need to be so dramatic!

But we can forge alliances, combine our strengths, listen to people, and design narratives to lead people in the right direction. We can make a better world, no heroes required.

Let’s get started.

Originally published at anitacheng.com on July 18, 2018.

Turns out I have a lot of feelings about job interviews. Here’s what I have learned, as someone who doesn’t suck at job interviews even though she sucks at speaking (more on that later).

First off, yes, job interviews are SCARY, in all caps! They’ll always be intimidating, no matter how many you’ve done. A group of strangers are judging your abilities for an hour, or 3, or 6. And they hold the key to your future — whether you’ll get the job or not! How do you even begin to handle the pressure?

Lots of people will tell you to practice your public speaking. Or to practice interviewing with your friends. They might think it’s important to get yourself to a place where you are as slick as a salesperson.

I actually don’t believe success at interviewing has much to do with what you say in the moment.

You see, I have a stutter. It can be pretty severe. QVC would not hire me to sell anything, that’s for sure!

Yet I’m at about 70% success rate when I get to the interview stage.

In fact, the last time I remember my stutter being so bad it felt like I was barely getting words out of my mouth, it was at a job interview. I got the job anyway! It also happened to be my first full-time UX role, transitioning from a science career. I didn’t have impressive design degrees or companies in my past to back me up.

In fact, they even told me they picked me over people “with more experience” because they liked my storytelling. Not how I told the story, but what I said.

So, I fully believe it’s not how you say things, but what you say. Prepare for your interview with that in mind.

1. Deconstruct the job description

The very first thing to do, is to go through the job description with a fine-toothed comb. You’re going to work backwards, to find out what they really want someone to do.

This is much easier if you know someone who knows the hiring manager, so they can tell you exactly what they’re looking for! Sometimes it isn’t very obvious from the job description, but you do what you can.

Let’s go through an example.

This is the posting that ended up as my first full-time UX job. Take a look at what I emphasized in bold:

The new site must be built immediately as it is using technology that is more than 15 years old. It is no longer supported and at the end of its life. The department urgently needs a Website Content Editor who will analyze and document the existing site. They will organize the content and create the pages for all the information that needs to be published using a Content Management System. They will also create all documentation which will be used by the staff to maintain the system, as well as implement future system enhancements.

The Website Content Editor will have the following responsibilities:

- Inventory and analyze the department’s current web content and other relevant source materials and perform gap analysis

- Create content for the website and update website daily ensuring that the information is current, accurate, and structured appropriately

- Create web content to support the functions of the department

- Document web content and structure

- Optimize content for search engines

- Keeps up-to-date with best practices in writing for the web, internal publications, and business industry trends

- Interview various stakeholders to understand business goals and target audiences

- Align content with organizational goals

- Collaborate with the business experts to gather requirements and document them

- Communicate effectively with project teams

Number of years of experience: 5+; Strong system requirements gathering and documentation; strong hands-on experience designing and working with HTML and images. Imaging software such as Dreamweaver or Photoshop and content management systems; strong hands-on experience with website structure, strategy and web writing; and excellent proofreading and grammatical skills required.

Soft Skills: Excellent writing, communication and organizational skills; works effectively in a team environment; good customer service skills; and has the ability to manage multiple tasks to completion with established deadlines.

Did you notice what wasn’t in that listing? There was zero mention of UX, UX design, information architecture, or content strategy. Sometimes you have to do deep dives to find what the role actually entails.

A note about “experience”

Also, did you notice the years of experience that job listing asked for? 5+. And how much experience did I have at the time? A few years of part-time freelancing, really.

Years of experience isn’t nearly as important as being able to do the job.

To be fair, many famous companies (read: the ones that everyone applies to) use “years of experience” to filter out the piles of job applications they need to sort through. It’s the only way to make the process manageable for them.

That’s why referrals are so important when applying to those companies. You’ll stand out from the pack, no extra years of experience required! So it always depends.

Don’t let experience requirements stop you in your tracks by default. Always consider context.

2. Figure out the one skill they really want

There’s often a long list of skills requested in every job posting.

99.99% of the time, they’ll never find someone who has them all. If they are on a do-or-die quest to actually get that unicorn, you can’t help them anyway. I always have a chuckle when I see positions open for 6 months or more.

Most of the skills are nice-to-haves. They might help if two candidates are otherwise the same and equally likable. But people can’t keep those qualities in their heads all at once when they’re talking to you. They usually just have one important skill in mind.

If they find someone who can do the one thing they’re really looking for, their brains light up and go, “Ooh, that’s exactly what we need!” Everything else doesn’t seem as important.

So distill that job listing down to the one skill you’ll need to have, to be successful in the role!

What I got out of that example job posting, was that they needed someone to organize and write content, because what they had was a mess 15 years in the making. I had to show I could organize content well. It was obvious they were desperate to find someone who could do that.

3. Position yourself as someone who’s got that skill down and will step up right away

You’ve decided on that one skill that will make or break you. Now comes the time for persuasion. But again, not in the slick salesperson way. It means choosing the right past project to focus on during the interview. You’re going to use it, to show how you were successful in that skill.

If you have a varied collection of past projects to choose from, you’ll have a lot of options. For this job interview at this early point in my career, I didn’t have much. But I only needed one. I decided to go all in on one freelance project where I restructured the website, and it resulted in an increase in sales.

That’s it. That was my pitch.

I know how to organize content well, because I did it for this e-commerce site, and sales went up.

I took every opportunity to go back to that. Even when I was barely getting any words out from sheer nervousness, I managed to convey at least that much.

But it was enough. I communicated that I could help solve their problem, and do it well. They could visualize me stepping into the role right away and being successful. And that’s how I got the nod.

A note about being able to code

I won’t lie. A huge part of being able to step immediately into roles I’ve been hired to do, is my ability to code serviceable front-end. (By which I mean HTML, lots of CSS, and enough jQuery to be useful.)

I’ve always been essentially a UX/Dev Team of One. If I want a guarantee of my work actually getting online, I need to do it myself.

Some organizations will really appreciate someone who can do this. To have someone who will do whatever it takes to get stuff done. These would be your small startups, or orgs without dedicated teams for both design and development.

Other organizations couldn’t care less. They would rather you have specialized experience working in large teams. These would be any orgs large enough to have dedicated teams for design as well as development. They won’t need you to code if there are 5 other people who can do it faster and better.

That’s another thing to look for, when you examine the job description. What kind of company is it, what kind of team is it? Will they need you to play by the all political rules, or will they need you to have real moxie?

For my first job, I knew I needed to do some coding, because the skills list included HTML. I ended up learning ASP.NET from scratch for that role to get the job done…but technically I wasn’t wrong!

4. Make it hard for them to say no

Why go through all this effort in the first place? Why isn’t it enough to prove that you have the requisite intelligence and experience to do the job, on a general level?

Because they are not hiring a list of filled-in checkboxes. They are hiring a person. They are hiring someone who will be on their team, to help them solve a problem they have.

Many hiring managers state that their biggest fear is in hiring the wrong person. So you have to anchor them in the belief that you are the right person, from the get-go.

The easiest way to do that, is to go into the interview already familiar with what’s important to them. The hiring manager doesn’t have to do the cognitive work in figuring out how you’d fit into the team. They won’t have to look at your list of skills and accomplishments, and guess how that will help them. You’ll tell them exactly how you’ll do that!

And when someone is already imagining you being a successful part of the team, it’s a lot harder for them to say no down the line. 😃 They’ve already pictured you there. Saying no later means losing you, in their minds. Loss aversion is one of the most powerful cognitive biases, after all.

Instead of letting your list of skills and accomplishments lead, you control your own narrative. But first you have to put in the work.

5. Don’t forget about the work you do before you even apply

The more your past experience naturally fits with the job they plan on having you do, the easier all this will be. The connection between your past projects and the future role will be more natural and evident.

So, picking the right jobs to apply to is extremely important.

As are referrals, of course. If you find the right role at the right organization, you want to make sure you leverage everything you have to get it! I have another post about how to network when you’re an introvert, to help you get started.

6. Don’t settle for “I guess they’ll work…” Strive to be the one “YES!”

One successful job interview I had more recently, my stutter was a lot better but still evident. What probably helped most was the 2–3 people who referred me directly. And the fact I brought in a case study of a past project that was pretty much exactly what they wanted for the work. I didn’t even go through the entire thing. I only pointed out the most relevant parts when a question called for it.

In fact, they told me later, that after I had left the interview, the team members looked at each other and were like, “Can we just get her to stay here right now and ask her to do THAT??”

That’s the kind of reaction you want. 😃

Remember, the goal isn’t to get a bunch of companies to include you in a pool of 3–5 final candidates where any one of you would do. The goal is to get the right organization, offering the right role, to shout “YES!!”

To do that, never underestimate the importance of prep time. That extra effort, even an hour or two, can make all the difference!

To sum up:

1. Deconstruct the job description
2. Figure out the one skill they really want
3. Position yourself as someone who’s got that skill down and will step up right away
4. Make it hard for them to say no
5. Don’t forget about the work you do before you even apply (choosing the right roles; referrals)
6. Don’t settle for being in a final pool of 3–5 where any one of you would do. Strive to be the one “YES!”

Originally published at anitacheng.com on July 13, 2018.

How to kick butt at your next job interview (even if you suck at speaking)! was originally published in Prototypr on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

I’m talking about something more inherent about design, in how newbies are approaching the design field. I especially see it in students and career-changers.

You see, I’m a career-changer about 5 years out. I came from a completely unrelated field: molecular biology.

Here’s what I know about how to “make it” in UX, in one sentence:

Designers, stop asking for permission to make an impact.

I actually have a lot of feelings about that. So here we go.

Stop worrying about the degrees you don’t have. Stop worrying how “good” at design you are. Stop worrying about getting the attention of so-and-so famous designer or someone at this-and-this famous company. Stop worrying if you’ll measure up, if someone will just give you a chance to do design.

Because you know what? There will always be someone more impressive than you on paper. Always. That’s something my mom drummed into my head as a kid. I think she meant to keep me humble, but instead I relegated myself to academic mediocrity, hah.

But that kind of thinking is actually very freeing. Especially to an adult navigating a new, ever-changing field.

People with impressive degrees and companies on their resume are probably applying to the very same jobs you are. Your resume will sit in a pile with other resumes showing 3, 5, 10 more years of experience than you have. Yes, that thought is scary. How could you ever compete? You might be considering, you know, padding that resume a bit…but don’t do that!

The solution is a lot more simple. You just don’t have to play by those rules.

Your impact as a designer doesn’t depend on the degrees you have, or the past companies you worked for. Being able to make an impact doesn’t even mean having any experience on paper. It’s more of a mindset.

Being a designer means solving problems for people. Period.

If you see a problem, if you see someone struggling, this should be your immediate reaction.

There are problems everywhere to solve. There are always ways to make things better. That is what a designer does — they make things better, wherever they happen to be.

It doesn’t have to mean designing a world-changing product like the iPhone. Making an impact could be helping your friend get their business off the ground by making a Squarespace site for them. It could be leveraging Google Sheets to save your colleagues 15 minutes every single day. (I did all of those in my short journey to city government!)

It might not seem big to you, but for those people you made an impact on, it means a great deal.

So start where you are now. Use what you have.

How can you make things better around you? That’s your brief. How do you know if it’s better? These are your metrics. Write a case study about it and boom, look, now you have a portfolio piece too!

Don’t get me wrong, it’s nice to be acknowledged for your work. But if you aren’t there yet, don’t wait. The only way you can make an impact…is by making an impact.

Design is not about awards or accolades or what your resume looks like. It’s the impact you make.

That’s why I love working in govt. I’ve gotten comments about it “being a trial by fire” for a new designer and I’m like, “Are you kidding? Whatever I do will literally be 1000x better than what exists now!”

I could let things be either nonexistent or unusable, or I could do something about it.

So I took stock. I talked to people, to whoever could give me their time. I did what I could. There’s no perfect way to make a difference. Just talk to people, work with them, and do something. There’s nothing to lose when your do-nothing options are “nonexistent or unusable.”

Once you start making an impact at that level, you can never go back.

Even in government, it took a lucky break for me to feel like I was worthy enough to make this much of an impact. I was pinged randomly by a recruiter for my first full-time tech job at the City of Los Angeles. Before then, I thought I needed to do a Code for America fellowship to transition to government. And before I could apply to that, I needed to do something important in civic tech, etc etc. That rabbit hole never ends.

But instead, I was dropped right into it. And it turns out I was perfectly capable of making a difference even without the perfect resume.

So all you have to do is show up, every day, willing to make an impact wherever you are.

Be done asking for permission.

Expanded from the tweetstorm I had shortly after Infinity War came out. Still not enough Steve Rogers in that…

Originally published at anitacheng.com on May 30, 2018.

How to make an impact as a designer was originally published in Prototypr on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Here are some tips I’ve learned, that will hopefully smooth the path for you:

1. Trust is your most valuable currency

How much design work you get to ship is directly related to how much your colleagues & clients trust you. The most direct way to do that is to do your work well, and communicate what’s going on. (Yes, there are also ways to hobnob with your coworkers. But for us introverts, being kickass at your job is pretty straightforward!)

There’s no need to pretend you know everything. If you don’t know, figure out who to ask for guidance, or figure out how to do it yourself. And if it’s still a no-go, figure out a workable alternative.

You know those impossible requirements on job listings you’re looking at right now? That’s because someone in HR doesn’t trust that the new employee can solve their problem unless they’ve got all the skills and degrees. You can bypass that by earning their trust in other ways. Prove that you can solve their problems. Prove to them that they can trust you to do it!

A note about knowing how to code

As a designer, you shouldn’t need to add “full-time developer” to your job title. However, I will say that coming to the rescue by coding up a solution on the spot, earns people’s trust like nothing else! I’ve gotten pretty good at swooping in and saving the day with just HTML, CSS, JQuery, and enough PHP knowledge to customize WordPress.

2. It always depends

So you know all that stuff you learned in school? All those design principles and how-tos?

You’ll throw a bunch of it out the window when you start working. Real life is not a design exercise. It will not sort itself nicely into a process that you can apply straight from your class notes.

It is messy. And it is a glorious challenge. Revel in it!

3. Learn voraciously

If you’ll be using technology as the backdrop for your design work, know that technology changes all the time. When technology changes, people’s use changes, and design changes with it. It’s the nature of the beast. You can’t alter it, and you certainly can’t stop it.

What is less obvious is that people’s reactions to those technology and design shifts also change their behavior, expectations, and workflow. So you’ll need to adjust to that too.

No matter where you sit in the technology ecosystem, adaptation is the name of the game.

4. Give generously

Because people’s expectations of technology are changing all the time, you can’t be at the forefront of design if you learn solely from books. And neither can those who come after you.

What you experience might be useful for someone else. Share what you know. And step up when help is needed. The community that shows up with you will be your greatest ally. There’s so much work to be done, for all designers. Let’s make it easier for everyone, so we can all go farther.

5. Assume nothing

You might think you know what’s best for a design, given your new degree. You’d be wrong.

Prototype and test your ideas. You’re only one person, and your fellow designers are not typical users of technology.

Discovering the ways you were wrong, and then improving your work to achieve real progress, is one of the great joys of design.

6. It’s not about you

Art serves the ego. Design serves the people.

You are now a conduit through which information, experience, and creativity converge into solutions to make people’s lives better. Your value as a designer is defined by how much positive impact you have on people’s lives.

Nobody cares about your degree, where you went to school, how pixel-perfect your mockups are, or how beautifully you animated your prototypes. If it doesn’t have impact, it’s not good design.

Design also doesn’t happen in a vacuum. It’s more than likely you’ll work on a team. Share the credit. Lift each other up. Positive impact is the goal, not individual awards or accolades.

7. Never stop hating bullshit

A Designer Hangout friend of mine, Louis Elfman, once described a designer as: “Someone who sees bullshit, gets mad, and wants to help fix it!” I think it is the perfect definition of a designer.

We keep improving designs because crappy designs make us seethe. It isn’t acceptable until it’s frictionless, and even then, it’s still probably giving someone else trouble. So we keep on.

The energy generated by hatred of bullshit will see you through months of fighting for user research, evangelizing UX, navigating legacy interactions, overseeing massive content rewrites, and so on. You’ll need that energy, because you’ll never stop fighting in the name of good design.

Often, the messier it is, the more it’s worth doing. The potential impact for even a minor improvement can be staggering, even if it’s won through months of meetings, negotiations, patience, and being extremely resourceful. (I’ve only worked in government as a UXer, so I should know!) I was only able to make the kind of impact I did there, because like I say: “My hatred of bullshit far outweighs my fear of looking dumb.”

If it makes you mad, go fix it!

8. You have more power than you think

Design has stepped out from the confines of Letraset and Photoshop, to improve real-world services in fields like government and healthcare.

Your days as a designer don’t have to be spend agonizing over the color of a button, if you don’t want that. You can dream bigger. I quit cancer research for UX because I wanted to help people faster. I can’t say I’ve been disappointed so far!

Welcome to the wonderfully complex, ever-changing world of design! If you’d like to join our community of amazing UX designers at Designer Hangout, give me a ping!

Originally published at anitacheng.com on August 30, 2017.

Tips for a new design grad was originally published in CCA IxD Thesis Writings on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

In this era of job hunting, we hear it all the time: “To find a job, it’s all about networking!” Indeed, studies have shown that up to 85% of all jobs are filled via networks, although “networking” seems mysterious and insurmountable when you’re just starting out. And especially when you’re not a naturally gregarious extrovert!

By some miracle, I seem to have more or less figured out this whole “networking” thing, as an extreme introvert who also had social anxiety. Even now, my preferred downtime involves vegging out and talking with zero people. (Lemme tell you, it’s very nice for an extreme introvert to have an introverted spouse!) My healthy rate for social outings, where I’d be directly engaging with people for hours, is about one every two weeks. It took me years to reconcile that fact about myself. My time at college was mostly spent fretting about not wanting to go to parties and not meeting people and what was wrong with me???

Don’t get me wrong, I like learning about people. I even like being around them, such as working in a coffee shop. I’ve been participating in online message boards since I was 13. I just…don’t like physically participating in social things very often.

If you told high school or college me that I’d be focusing on my network for a job search, I would have belly-laughed at you. When and where would I have gotten a network?

Networking opens doors and creates community

So I just started a new job, moving from Los Angeles to San Francisco. Here are the stats of that job search:

• 2 job applications
• 1 interview
• 1 offer

I KNOW! Even I’m sitting here going, “Whaaaat? How the heck did that happen??”

Here’s the thing: Yes, I did happen to be unusually qualified for the job. Whatever they needed, I’d already acquired those skills (and more!) in my previous gig. My entire team could vouch for the quality of my work. The results spoke for themselves.

But also, multiple people referred me to that position.

By the time I applied, the manager had already heard my name from people he trusted. The first thing he said when we sat down for the interview was, “Well, you certainly know the right people!”

So what happened? How the heck did I get here, from feeling guilty that I wasn’t social enough, holing myself up with my non-social hobbies?

First, I unlearned my social anxiety.

Unlearning my social anxiety

This doesn’t mean all social anxiety can be unlearned. In my case, I was taught to be socially anxious by my parents when I was a kid, who noted that I had a stutter and was emotionally sensitive. They wanted me not to say certain things, not do certain things, and not to stutter, in case people thought I was lying. They were trying to protect me, as parents are wont to do, but it turns out, trying not to stutter does not actually help you stop stuttering. And worrying about the things you shouldn’t do doesn’t help with making friends either. Figures.

However, I’m lucky to have a cooperative brain. I am extremely level-headed, even in stressful times. For some folks, their brain chemicals need some tweaking to tamp down the mental noise, with talk therapy and/or medication. Do what you need to do to get to a point where you can reason with your brain, because there will be some reasoning necessary when you have social anxiety!

I’m also blessed to have a scientific mind, which I use to observe and test hypotheses, even social ones. As I grew up out of middle school idiocy (on my part and other kids’ parts), I simply observed that there were no long-term ramifications to my social awkwardness. Maybe a chuckle or two at the time, but in my experience, minor gossip is easily brushed off by others if you honestly care about other people and if your intentions are kind.

There are two big ideas that helped me unlearn my social anxiety:

1. People are usually gauging your reaction to yourself.

My stutter hasn’t gone away fully, but people seem to be reacting to it better. I don’t think it’s the stutter itself, but how I’m reacting to it. I’m not ashamed of it anymore. I trust that people are listening to my words and ideas, instead of how fluently those words are said. If I treat the stutter like it’s totally normal, people treat it like it’s totally normal.

Human beings are social animals, and we pick up emotional cues from others. It’s an observable biological effect! So instead of judging your actions as independent and absolute, people are actually gauging your reactions to your own actions. If someone is flustered or embarrassed, people around them are going to feel anxious and awkward too. If someone laughs off a mistake, people instantly feel more comfortable. If it’s not a big deal to someone who made the mistake, it must not be a big deal!

2. 80% of how someone treats you is actually a reflection of them.

Everyone is carrying a bag of rocks you can’t see. How they take action on anything depends on what they’re carrying. In order to see who someone truly is, you have to see what they do in a stressful situation. Doesn’t have to be big, it can be as minor as missing a turn while driving. It’s amazing, the range of reactions you get!

Usually when someone has treated me curtly, I’ve discovered later that they’d had a bad day — their commute was awful, work has been grueling, their kid has been sick. Some people are better at masking it than others. It would be nice if everyone learned how to regulate their emotions, but you can only control — and thus depend on — yourself.

Or if they’re curt to everyone all the time, well, obviously it’s not you, they’re just jerks! Very little of it actually is about you specifically.

You only have to ask yourself two questions:

1. Are you considering other people?
2. Are your intentions kind?

If so, you’re on the right track! If someone wants to brush you off or treat you rudely, then that’s on them, not you.

An aside: There’s an entire system that focuses on this kind of thinking, called Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT). Turns out I’d been doing a light form of it on myself since I was a child and didn’t know it!

Building a network

With that foundation, here’s how I built from there, layer by layer:

1. Be generous
2. Strive for excellence
3. Be interested, not interesting
4. Volunteer
5. Get a wing-mate
6. Practice, practice, practice!

1. Be generous

Despite common usage (including in this piece), I actually don’t like to call it “networking,” because that implies that it’s all about me schmoozing about. It’s not like that at all for me — I’m really helping to build a community. And in order to do that, you have to believe that the world is collaborative. We get ahead by building each other up, not by stepping on others. Nobody wants to help out someone who just takes. Generosity begets more generosity.

Being generous means sharing ideas you’re thinking about, sharing lessons you’ve learned, and having general conversations too, if people invite them. That’s why we’re meeting people in the first place, really — to share with each other. Being generous also includes using your time, patience, ability to listen, and just plain old “showing up.”

There are wonderful things that we introverts have now that we didn’t have before, like online communities. You don’t have to rack up physical event counts to spread generosity anymore! I’ve made some good online friends on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and especially Designer Hangout on Slack.

I volunteered to moderate the enterprise channel on Designer Hangout, which I really had no business doing at the time, what with my one year of UX experience. But the enterprise space is something that I’m endlessly interested in, with its wicked problems and potential impact. And I wanted an excuse to ask questions, in the guise of promoting discussion! It didn’t matter to veterans like Dave Malouf or Jared Spool that a newbie like me was making sure everyone was playing nicely. (Unsurprisingly, the enterprise channel is full of people who play nicely! It’s a pretty easy gig.)

Sharing with others automatically makes you more visible to the community, which is never a bad thing! The more people know you, or know of you, the less work you’ll have to do in meeting them.

2. Strive for excellence

Here’s what I’ve found: Nobody cares how awkward you are, if you’re helpful and effective. They’d be idiots otherwise! And it doesn’t matter how many people you know, if you’re lazy, a chronic flake, or have a bad attitude. In fact, being any of those means you’d be undoing all of your social efforts. Your connections are trusting you with their own reputation, every time they refer you. And if word gets back that you’re not dependable, they’re less likely to help you out. They might even tell their friends. It’s a small world out there!

For introverts, always striving for excellence is an important point, especially if you feel pressured to do ALL THE THINGS. We have limited energy to go around — believe me, I know! Acknowledge the fact that you don’t have the energy to do everything. And in this case, if you can’t do it well, it’s better to save your energy for something more worthwhile.

If you’re not learning stuff or meeting cool people, it’s totally okay to say no. In fact, it’s better if you do say no, so it feels less of a slog doing things you’re not getting anything out of.

Plus, first impressions count. If you continually show up at community events, online or offline, with an air of “I’m in a bad mood, I hate everything,” then that is what you’ll be known for. Then nobody wants to hang out with you, which is a problem with the whole networking thing. 😉 Take a break, gather your wits, and be ready to engage people when you’re in the right headspace for it.

Whatever you do, give it the best you’ve got. Then when eyes are on you or an opportunity comes your way, people will know that you’re an eager, thorough, hardworking person. Not bad characteristics to be known for!

3. Be interested, not interesting

This will make the biggest difference in your networking experience, if you’re new. Many newbies believe they have to do something impressive in order to get the attention of more experienced folks. That they’d have to have paid their dues at a renowned company or have an awesome resume. Not so!

People like people who get excited about similar things. That’s all. And another thing that people like to do, is talk about what gets them excited. It doesn’t even have to be about work. It could be about food, or glasses, or shoes, or knitting — all of which has happened to me more than once!

If there’s no clear opening, I usually start out with “What brings you here?” or “What do you think of the event so far?” Then I start trying to understand their context. How did they get to where they are, physically or mentally? What sort of challenges are they facing? If they start talking freely about it, ask for more details! I’ve gotten people to engage fairly quickly with that simple tip, because I really am genuinely interested, and I’m trying to understand. (The book Humble Inquiry goes into more depth about how listening builds relationships!)

Seeking to understand someone’s context translates as caring about them, as a person. And all we want is to find people who are excited about the same things we are. The trick then, is find out what they’re passionate about, as quickly as possible.

Contrary to a lot of networking tips I’ve seen, I usually find it difficult to avoid shop talk at industry events. If you want to approach a speaker after a talk, well, shop talk is all you have to work with. But no matter the subject you have in common, be passionate about it!

For those who still harbor imposter syndrome at events:

I feel you, and I have a story about how I science-minded my way out of it, at least when meeting people at events. There was one time at a conference where I came up and said “Hi, how’s it going?” to an industry expert (who is generally familiar with what I’m about, as far as I know) at lunch. He then proceeded to introduce me to the rest of the table, talking about the “great work” I’d been doing at the City of LA, which honestly gripped me with terror for a few seconds. My exact thought process was, “You don’t know if I’ve been doing great work, you haven’t seen it! It could be total crap!”

Luckily, I held my composure long enough to accept the compliment as it was without sabotaging myself (thanks Marcella for kicking my butt about that — more about wing-mates later), and to realize an Important Thing: He didn’t have to see my UX deliverables to come to the conclusion that I must be doing great work. He knows I’ve been attending events, he’s seen me converse about UX and ask questions at a certain level. At that point, it doesn’t matter how many years of experience you have, it’s how you think that’s most important. My work will be great because of what I’m considering about it.

If you’re excited about something, you’ll automatically push yourself to learn as much as you can. It’s enough that you’re there talking to more experienced folks about what gets them going. In industries where networking is important, that implies you know that learning from other people, not just books or school curriculum, is important. Enthusiasm and an eagerness to learn counts for A LOT. It’s probably the most important thing, judging by how kindly I’ve been treated as a relative newbie meeting more knowledgeable folks.

Remember, everyone has felt like you at some point. Even the experts of today were newbies once, and still can have imposter syndrome themselves!

4. Volunteer

As an introvert, I still find it difficult to just walk up to strangers at happy hour events and introduce myself. I’m expected to stand around and…just meet people? Spontaneously? What??

I find it much easier to meet new people if we’re all working on something together, even if it’s as straightforward as setting up an event. Commenting on the work being done is a “gimme” icebreaker, for sure!

As a bonus, volunteering is a chance to hobnob with industry elites, while showing them what a smart, hard worker you are. (Ask any of the UXPALA directors or the IA Summit 2017 co-chairs about me!) Leaders want to work with people like them, who have that “take charge” mentality. I know folks who have gotten jobs after volunteering at events and meeting the organizers, who happened to be hiring for matching skills. You just never know!

On top of all that, you also get free admission to events! It’s a win/win/win!

5. Get a wing-mate

As you volunteer more, you’ll eventually catch the eye of someone with a lot of influence. This person can be your wing-mate, who can introduce you to lots more people. So you don’t have to do it all on your own! Yay!

Plus, since they have more experience than you, they can tell you the ins and outs of how the industry works, and how to position yourself in that context. (Which definitely includes how not to put your foot in your mouth!) That will set you up for bigger and better things, faster.

My main wing-mate is Marcella Missirian, President of UXPALA, who’s also my biggest UX cheerleader. She introduces me to everyone she knows, with adulation that I’m still not sure I deserve. But then that just goes back to tip #2. I work harder to be the person she sees me as. :)

I don’t think of it as “faking it ’til you make it,” since people do have to see something in you to bother pushing you so hard. Sure, you may feel like a faker, but how you see yourself may not be how the external world sees you. Again, it’s about engaging your scientific mind and observing, instead of acting on assumptions. Especially if those assumptions are about yourself!

A note on the mentorship thing: I have a number of experienced folks I feel comfortable asking questions of, and I consider them all my mentors. (Designer Hangout is great for this, especially for multiple industries!) But I’ve never asked someone, “Will you be my mentor?” Still wondering how to do that without feeling ridiculous!

6. Practice, practice, practice!

Yup, the old adage is still true! Putting yourself out there will not necessarily come easily, especially if you’re not used to it.

A huge obstacle is getting over the fear of looking foolish and being judged. I’m still working on this, and part of my “training” (yes, I consider it training) is Toastmasters. I have had utterly awful speeches before, total train wrecks where my stutter settles on me like an intractable cloud of smog. But you know what? I survive every single one. It gets easier, and then I feel okay with putting myself out there a little more each time.

One thing I did learn from Toastmasters, is that you can actually feed off that feeling of being foolish. That translates as being excited and animated to an outside observer. The more serious and “professional” you try to be, the more stiff and antisocial you come off. Then, once again, nobody will want to hang out with you! That’s also partly why improv techniques are being adopted for business environments.

One specific item that took practice for me, was formulating questions when chatting with people I’d just met. When I started, I would completely blank out, paralyzed with fear that I would be judged on the quality of the questions I’d ask next. It got a lot easier after I discovered tip #3, that the most important thing is being interested. Though, getting my brain to actually come up with contextual questions on the fly still took practice!

Figure out which part of meeting new people you’re having trouble with, and take the effort to think through those aspects.

Give it some time

Like all big projects, things will likely move slowly. Trust and community, that takes time. You can’t expedite genuine human relationships.

This journey has been a good 4 years in the making for me. I discovered UX, then I started showing up to Meetups and other events. I started tweeting about them because I was genuinely excited to learn from others and share what I’d learned. Marcella pinged me to do social media for UXPALA, which opened more opportunities to meet others, mentor, do some public speaking, and keep practicing.

Things seemed to snowball this past year, when completely unexpected opportunities materialized. Co-teaching a class, being in charge of social media for IA Summit, and well, being referred by multiple people for one job, haha.

The job referral involved all the tips I outlined above, with the following factors:

• Sharing my knowledge about working in civic tech, with a blog post.
• Two Designer Hangout friends referring me to a job posting that was literally perfect for me.
• The blog post spontaneously leading to meeting a few 3rd-level contacts, who knew the manager for the exact job I was looking at.

A lot of luck, yes, but think of “luck” as “being ready when the opportunities come.” If you’re not ready or if there aren’t any opportunities, then you won’t “get lucky.” The more people you know, the more you are generous, then the “luckier” you become. It’s funny how that works!

Believe me, I didn’t think it was possible either, until it happened to me. You’ll never know unless you try.

So get out there…at your own pace!

Being introverted doesn’t mean you’re doomed to the unknown outskirts of professional life. Sure, it isn’t as easy and natural as an extrovert effortlessly waltzing into a conference afterparty. But with some thoughtful effort and the right attitude, even extreme introverts can find themselves integrated into an amazing community.

Thank you so much, to everyone who has been on this journey with me. I can’t remotely express how much it means to me. I never imagined that I’d be so loved. I’m already missing everyone in LA, but am looking forward to building a community in SF!

Thanks also to Dan Turner and Marcella Missirian for reading this over and giving me more ideas to chew on!

Originally published at anitacheng.com on June 21, 2017.