Episode 45: Torrey Podmajersky, Google - Demonstrating value as a UX practitioner

Kristina Halvorson:

Hello and welcome to the Content Strategy Podcast. I’m your host, Kristina Halvorson, and every episode of this podcast I chat to established leaders and exciting new voices exploring our ever-evolving field of content strategy. We cover all the topics that inform how we shape digital content. From user experience design to customer experience, accessibility to content design and everything in between.

Hello there, friends and neighbors. Welcome once again to the Content Strategy Podcast with me, Kristina. I hope that you're all hanging in there and finding moments of joy and respite, or at least, distraction during this time.

Things are chaos in my world, personally. I'm just going to put that out there. I got a lot of family stuff going on with an active COVID case in my house, my poor kid. I've got elders that I'm concerned about. I've got neighbors that are trying to figure stuff out. School, who knows about school? Is it going to close? Nobody knows. Just know that I am there with you and the reason that I'm continuing this podcast, because this is a moment where I get to refuel and re-engage and think about one of my very, very favorite topics on the planet which is, content strategy. That's right.

Today, I have one of the most lovely human beings that I've ever had the pleasure of knowing, frankly ever, and her name is Torrey Podmajersky. And Torrey is a UX writer at Google. Some might say "the UX writer," but we'll get to that. Torrey helped see teams solve business and customer problems using UX content. She's written inclusive and accessible consumer and professional experiences for Xbox, Microsoft account, Windows apps, privacy, Microsoft education, and OfferUp, and now works at Google. Her book, her little book, Strategic Writing for UX, not a big deal, was published by O'Reilly Media in 2019.

Torrey, welcome to the Content Strategy Podcast.

Torrey Podmajersky:

Kristina, thank you so much for having me here. Something that Kristina didn't say is that we have rescheduled this three or more times.

Kristina Halvorson:

Correct.

Torrey Podmajersky:

Every time, it's just given me more opportunities to spend time with Kristina, as we say, "Oh, God, we can't meet today. What the hell?" But today, we get to and I'm so excited.

Kristina Halvorson:

We reschedule during the time that we're supposed to be recording, where I'm just like, "I just don't think I can do it, Torrey. I don't think I can talk about content strategy right now." And she would say, "It's okay. Let's just chat." And it's just lovely every time. 

The question I had for Torrey was, "How, during these COVID times, have you kept up this fantastic hair?" And, Torrey, what was your answer?

Torrey Podmajersky:

My delightful, unbelievable, magical husband has learned how to cut my hair, and has been my colorist for several years now. And-

Kristina Halvorson:

Your husband?

Torrey Podmajersky:

Yes.

Kristina Halvorson:

Yeah, and at which point, I demanded to meet him and he is, in fact, lovely. Okay. Well, that's just the little visual cue for those joining us on this audio-only podcast.

Torrey, I was making little jokey, silly comments about your book that came out in 2019. I wonder if you could share with our listening audience a little bit about your content journey, and what led you to writing that book for O'Reilly, the work you're doing at Google, and the impact you have seen that book have on the content design and the UX writing community. Torrey, take it away.

Torrey Podmajersky:

I'll do all of that in two minutes. Let's see. I can do this.

Kristina Halvorson:

No, it's okay. I'll give you five to seven. Go ahead.

Torrey Podmajersky:

Okay, thanks. In 2009, I was a marketing communications, internal communications person at Microsoft. This little book came out called Content Strategy For The Web and luckily, that author came and did a tour, and she doesn't even remember it now, but you may have heard of her, Kristina Halvorson.

Kristina Halvorson:

What?

Torrey Podmajersky:

Okay, to the listeners, I just sprang this on Kristina, right before we hit record.

Kristina Halvorson:

Yeah, a lot of things happened before this recording and I should have hit record then. I'm really sorry that I didn't, Dear listener, next time I will, because there was a lot. Anyway.

Torrey Podmajersky:

Well, it really made me think about my role then and say, "Wait, this internal communication, this doing PR comms, doing executive comms, this is not where my skillset is, but it is a job or at least that job should have been five different jobs." But you know, that happens in content land.

When I was looking for my next thing, I talked to the UX content, or actually, then it was the content development manager at Xbox, and he talked me into writing for Xbox. He says, "You've been a high school teacher. You're going to be able to explain these abstract concepts to kids so that they can set up their Xboxes on Christmas morning without waking up their parents and having it be a magical experience." I said, "Okay" and I worked with some fantastic people who taught me how to work on UX, who taught me how to work with content in this really minuscule but deep corporate liability-affecting way, and also brand-affecting, and user-affecting, most importantly, way.

I worked on important things at Xbox and really satisfying things, fundamental things. I found out that I really like working in the super un-sexy areas. Like, what are the things that everybody has to do but shouldn't have to notice that they're doing? Shouldn't have to stress about, shouldn't have to spend a lot of time on. That took me through several roles at Microsoft.

Then, I started working at OfferUp, which is a startup. And then, I came to Google. Between the startup and my full-time role at Google, I took myself to Confab... See, Kristina, you're all over the story.

I think that might have been the first Confab where we had a really live Slack presence too. I found there was a Slack channel of like 40 other product content people. And we all said, "Let's meet up and have lunch together." I said, "This is great." Not all 40 came to that lunch or that table at lunch, but they were talking about things that were like, "I've got this really hard problem to solve." And talking about this and I'm looking around, and we introduced ourselves and "How long have you been doing this?"

I was the person who'd been doing it for eight years at that table, in, I think, 2018. Everybody else had been there for a couple years, really had their feet under them. But I was saying, "No, no, no. We solved this problem in 2011. Why are we still talking about it?" Oh, shit. We solved this problem in our product, at our company, and we didn't share.

I had already at that point, been teaching UX writing at the School of Visual Concepts in Seattle with Elly Searle. She and I developed that original class. So, I was very familiar with this like, "Oh, you just don't know yet." That recognition of like, "Oh, God, there's this whole world. There's this whole... Oh, shit." I left her and my magical husband and a good friend of mine in UX said, "Oh, so you need to write a book."

Kristina Halvorson:

Just like that.

Torrey Podmajersky:

Just like that. So the weekend I came back from Confab, I sat down and I said, "Well, what would an outline look like for this?"

Kristina Halvorson:

No kidding.

Torrey Podmajersky:

"And what would a pitch look like?" I sent that pitch to Rosenfeld and three months later I heard back, saying, "Oh, we've already got a project in process." I felt like, "Enough of this."

Kristina Halvorson:

And that was Andy Welfle and Michael Metts, Writing is Designing. That's right.

Torrey Podmajersky:

But that wasn't announced yet, but that rejection did help me then. I felt sorry for myself for a couple weeks. Then, I said, "Okay, I've learned from fiction writing, which I've done on the side, that the thing to do is to just get that pitch out there, do it to the best market possible." So I sent an over-the-transom email to editors at O'Reilly and heard back.

Kristina Halvorson:

Oh, my gosh. Wow. But that was a big deal because-

Torrey Podmajersky:

It was a huge deal.

Kristina Halvorson:

... that's the first book that said UX Writing in the title, right?

Torrey Podmajersky:

Well, it's the first one from a major publisher that was widely available. Kinneret Yifrah in, I think, Tel Aviv, her book is magical and has had a great spread, and is being translated more and more. My book opened a bunch of doors. It's been translated into Portuguese and Italian, and new translations are coming out. I think it's okay to share. I'm pretty sure it's okay to share. O'Reilly would be really happy if I shared that it's going to come out in Korean and in Japanese.

Kristina Halvorson:

Oh, congratulations to you.

Torrey Podmajersky:

Thank you.

Kristina Halvorson:

There was one other book that had come out when I published Content Strategy for the Web, and it was Ann Rockley's book focusing on enterprise content management. She used content strategy in the title, but this was... Mine was the first book that really was talking about content strategy for websites and the UX of websites. That is a weird seat to sit in, to be like that person who wrote that book. But it's exciting and it also is so gratifying to hear you talk about how the doors that it has opened for people.

That kind of helps us shift into the next thing that I wanted to talk about, which is that, there are so many people pounding on the UX writing door right now. Not only are there so many people knocking on that door, but there are so many employers who are like, "Yes, come in, come in, come in." 

But a common thing we're also hearing is that it can be really difficult for people who have writing experience, maybe it's in technical writing or marketing copywriting, to begin to make that transition into the field of UX writing. And there are some great online courses that are available. UX Content Collective is a really well-known one that offers a variety of online courses for people and their own kind of certification so you can have your certificate, and there's a portfolio of what comes out of that, and so on.

A concern that I'm hearing from a lot of hiring managers, and a lot of product managers, is that they're seeing UX writers coming out in a little bit of a vacuum, where they really are focused on word choice and language, and not necessarily on the actual experience part of user experience.

A thing that I know that you've been working really hard on personally, is to begin to work with higher ed institutions to develop certifications that do take into consideration the strategic thinking, and the design thinking, and all of that additional context that is required to be a really stellar UX writer content designer. So, I wonder if you could talk a little bit about the work you've done there.

Torrey Podmajersky:

I would love to. Yeah. So, I briefly mentioned the School of Visual Concepts in Seattle. They're starting... I am just blown away by the variety of things available. Actually, let me take a step back. There was nothing available three years ago to even share knowledge in a meaningful way, outside of like John Seto's post about when to use close versus, whatever it is, save.

Kristina Halvorson:

Right. But the content UX Slack group, though, had been started.

Torrey Podmajersky:

Right. They've been started.

Kristina Halvorson:

But there were like 400 people in there, right?

Torrey Podmajersky:

Yup.‍

Kristina Halvorson:

That was Michael Metts and Andy, right? Or Michael, anyway.

Torrey Podmajersky:

It was Michael. And all of these things hadn't achieved a wide enough mass yet, just really began growing and gathering people, and being those nexus... nexi?... for spreading the knowledge and making those connections. That started happening now.

These classes, whether they're the online resources, or the workshop intensives, or these larger certificate programs, which are sometimes in-house, in-person, and sometimes online, are... gosh, it's just wonderful that these are happening. But I would say as a rule of thumb, My... I wouldn't say this is a rule of thumb. I would say that my gut reaction to all of these, as somebody who is also reviewing portfolios and trying to make sure that people can be hired into the field, is great word choices. Use words as a weapon, as a tool, meet those goals. But if you can't also talk about the goals that you are meeting, and how you are measuring that, and the effect it's having on the customer, and on the brand, then I got nothing. Then I have a clever person with words, which is not what I can hire. I can't hire you to be clever with words, I can hire you to meet a business goal. That's what I hope that more and more of the education goes to.

There is a wonderful set of UX writing challenges that came out very early, and I think has been added to over time. Those are great for practicing the language, the very basics of the language, which is a necessary thing and is especially useful, I think, for people who are already UX writers in a native language that isn't English, and who want to practice it in other languages or practice in English. How do we apply this as a tool?

But if you're not starting with, "Who is the customer? What do they want? What is the business trying to accomplish here? How would we measure this later on? What is the terminology we need to align with?" Then that's not really doing the design work. That's not doing the UX work, that end to end user experience.

So, I'm super excited, and actually, this is all top of mind, because I start the very first class in the UDev, I'm sorry, University of Washington, Foundations of UX Writing class on Wednesday, so, tomorrow night. I don't actually know when this is coming out, but yay. So excited. 

Kristina Halvorson:

Well, Congratulations. So, this is a huge deal that this foundation's class is being taught and is sold out at a major university. So, congratulations and then you also developed a curriculum for the School of Visual Concepts in Seattle, and that's been going for a couple of years, right?

Torrey Podmajersky:

Right. The curriculum for their UX writing class has been going for several years now, and they're developing it into an entire certificate program. So, five quarters that includes so much of that UX thinking. So, for writers who have... Who are like, "I can use words to do anything. Words are my tool of choice." But how do you apply those in a UX context? That brings both sides of that equation together, which is just marvelous.

Kristina Halvorson:

Yep. That is. I think saying that too helps maybe, lead into this next topic that we wanted to tackle, which is the... For me, it's like people are conflating UX with interface design.

Torrey Podmajersky:

Yes.

Kristina Halvorson:

Right?

Torrey Podmajersky:

Yes. Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Kristina Halvorson:

But a lot of people, when they're talking about UX writing, are actually thinking about writing in Figma, right? Like choosing the words that are going to go on this screen, which is writing for the interface and a part of UX writing, but does not pay attention to that whole holistic user experience and the business goals.

So, you and I have talked in the past about the moniker of content design and content designer, and UX writing and UX writer. One of the things that I feel has been really successful in terms of spreading awareness about the need for UX writing and content design, helping sort of spark understanding and recognition in a lot of product companies, has been, and I am going to call it branding, because let's face it, that's what we did with content strategy 12, 13 years ago, and say, "Look, if you put content next to the word strategy," then you suddenly are like, "Oh, require strategic thinking, right?"

You put content next to the word design, "Oh, we need to be thinking about content in the design, and not just as like the words we add." So, I think that a thing that has worked and has been working in a lot of organizations is, working to lift up content as design. I mean, that's Michael and Andy's book is called Writing is Designing for that very reason.

And to a point, I'm grateful that that has worked, and I'm grateful that it is working, and I think that Michael Metts appropriately talks about things like pay equity. Like people that are designing content should be paid what people who are designing design, and the engineers who are building the product, right? That should all be considered in a pay equity.

Having said that, I also have been thinking a lot about, don't we need to be lifting up writing as like content?

Torrey Podmajersky:

Yeah.

Kristina Halvorson:

Language and information, all of which is like a brand asset and a business asset, which are all things that organizations spend a lot of money and hire really expensive people to do. So, I wonder, if you can share some of your thoughts about that, because you and I have spoken very specifically about, "Why are you called a UX writer at Google? Why aren't you a content designer?

Torrey Podmajersky:

I love this question and I love not having it on Twitter with like a call out tweet at 6:00 in the morning, Kristina, I'm just saying.

Kristina Halvorson:

I guarantee, you can go to the show notes, Rob Mills will have pulled that tweet to share with all of you, so that you can see what Torrey's talking about. Anyway, go ahead.

Torrey Podmajersky:

Here's the thing, one thing I really, really appreciate at Google in our UX practice, which is extremely diverse across Google, every team does everything it does at Google slightly differently, with very little shared requirements. Then, we share best practices like crazy in a million Google Docs, but that's just part of the culture.

But one of the things we do is in UX, you are a UXer, and that means you are responsible for... You are a steward of the user experience regardless of the specialty you bring to it. Whether you're an interaction designer, or a visual designer, or a content designer, or I don't know, motion designer, sound designer, you are bringing... You are a UXer first.

So, it's really common shorthand for us to have, "Oh, there's UXD, UXR, UXW." It delineates our roles and it says, "Wait, these are different ways to solve these end to end UX problems." Right? Or "These UX opportunities, there's different ways to pursue them."

When we're in places that have product designers, then having content designer, like you were saying, "Let's elevate content in the conversation." They're not just there to write words into the UI in Figma. They're there to think about how is the language affecting this experience and changing the interaction design, and what is the overall information architecture, and all of those questions that are deep content strategy problems.

Honestly, while my title currently is UX Writer, and I... Actually, sometimes when I'm introducing myself, even internally to people I work with, I say, "Oh, I'm the UX content strategist for my team." Because I do very little of the words inside the UI right now. Because I've got some very difficult fish to fry who are not yet in the pan, that I need to put there. That's more of that content strategy piece.

I don't want to attach us as a discipline to just, "Make it sound like design, because people know design is sexy." And I get really worried about that, right? I want people to know, "Hey, it's actually also content engineering. It's also interaction design that we solve with words. It's also..." I mean, it's not... It is just a different beast.
‍

Kristina Halvorson:‍

Yup.
‍

Torrey Podmajersky:

I love that I am not in charge of caring about whether something gets a hairline outline with an elevation on the page, adhering to a columnar guideline. I am terrible at visual design. I am terrible. I've gotten better at like, "Should that be a radio button or a checkbox? Oh, God. Who knows?"

In terms of the content, parts of that and the content strategy, I understand those principles, I'm good at them. I love being on a team where I not only am valued for that, but they say... So, I was the first one on my team. I'm now building a team. I work inside the Google support products space inside Google. So, when you go to Google for help, I'm not writing the help content, but I'm helping write the help center that gets you your help content, and that there are content authors can use to write that help content. I'm their first one on there. So, I'm the one saying like, "Hey, shouldn't our tools make it easier to make high quality content than low quality content?" That's the level of strategy that I get to work at now, because of the demonstrated value over time of having content have a seat at the table.

Kristina Halvorson:

Let's talk briefly about what you just said, demonstrated value, key operating descriptor being demonstrated.

Torrey Podmajersky:

Yes.

Kristina Halvorson:

There is conversation right now about burnout in the content design, UX writing community, because people are so tired of advocating for themselves. There are a lot of people that like to talk about how tired they are. Candi Williams said on Twitter recently and quite actually, that sometimes people need to have a rant and they need to get support.

But a thing that we keep coming back to, folks like you, who are established presences in large organizations, and like you said, are valued for the work that you do, for the strategic work that you do, you got there because you demonstrated value.

How did you do that? Because I bet it was not a PowerPoint that showed, sorry, a Google Slide deck that showed people the value, I mean, that showed people the definition of UX writing and explained what it was.

Torrey Podmajersky:

I tell you what, I don't want to dismiss the value of those decks.

Kristina Halvorson:

I do, sorry. Okay.

Torrey Podmajersky:

I know you do. I have used a zillion of those but their purpose has been very, very limited, where I thought they would be much more useful, but they've had two really good discreet purposes that are very small. One of them has been to onboard small groups of new people saying, "Here's what I do, come to me for these things. Here's my engagement model and what you can depend on me for. Nice to meet you. Let's have a little meet and greet. You haven't worked with one of me before. Let's go forward." That's extremely valuable for those decks.

The other thing that's been valuable is, just making sure like, "Am I bananas or do I really have a job that's of value? Let me check it out with other content folks." To be like, "I think I wrote down what I do. Can somebody tell me if this is even a job?" That kind of validation is why we need community, like the Content UX Slack group, like going to Button, and going to Confab. We need the community to help lift our spirits and to tell us, even in the face of all of these doors we've knocked on that we haven't been even allowed in, that, "Yes, it's okay."

But I tell you, it's also the practice of knocking on all those doors and saying, "Hey, if you don't let me in this room, here's the thing that's going to happen. I would be happy to help with these things. Okay, I understand it's too late. Here's this failure point you can look to see in five months." Then that failure point happens in five months and somebody sheepishly comes and says, "Hey, I seem to recall that you predicted this. Did you really have a way for us to get around it?" And I say, "Oh, you sweet thing, you remembered me." Right? Because that doesn't happen-

Kristina Halvorson:

Now, that is interesting. Because so many people focus on, what is the business value? How much money did you save? How many people did you onboard? And you are talking about, "Tell them what's going to go wrong and then sit back and watch it happen."

Torrey Podmajersky:

Yes. I mean, I've also done the other things, right? Like we've talked about a little bit ago, I like working on the fundamental problems. I've worked on sign in, and settings, and privacy disclosures, and opt-ins, and things everybody has to see that has to go right or the company's going to lose millions or hundreds of millions of dollars in lawsuits. This has to go right. I say, "Okay. Yes, we're going to make sign in take on average four seconds longer. Yep. And we know that every second counts. Is this spend going to be worthwhile? How can we balance that and move that forward?" But it's by practicing having those conversations that I've gotten good at them. Right? That's how I got to teach a class, which made me even better at talking about them, and then write a book about it, which made me even better about talking about it. Although sometimes, full disclosure, I will be like, "I have said this somehow before." And I will go back to my book and I will look it up and say, "Oh yeah, good job, past Torrey."

Kristina Halvorson:

We are waiting until it's been 10 years, people are like, "Just that part on your book where you said, blah, blah, blah." And I'm just like, "Yes. Yes."

Torrey Podmajersky:

"I have no idea."

Kristina Halvorson:

I have no idea, yeah.

Torrey Podmajersky:

There's practicing and failing, mostly. I did not get to make the impact I wanted to make on most of the products I've worked on. I got to make some impact, and that's as much as any of us can do really.

But then also, as I got even a little bit more mature in my career, I got a lot smarter about choosing what I work on, and saying, "Is this the right place for me to be investing my me-ness right now?" Right? It's only been in the last couple of years that I've had a lot of freedom with that like, "My name's on the book, I get a lot more job offers now." Or at least a lot more job interest. But, what I started to do was say, "Hey, you know what? I'm doing this and I'm good at this, but I'm not as interested as I used to be, or it's shifting in such a way that I can't do a thing." And that's where I want more people with three or more years in to be really looking at, "Are you still doing a thing you love?" And going to a place like, career mobility, like moving around job to job is the fastest way to make more money, and to have to practice talking about what you do and the value you bring.

That's a great time to build up that portfolio and include on every slide or every screen that you share. Here's why I did this, here's why it made a difference. And if you're looking at your current work saying, "I can't justify doing this work," or "I'm working on the last strings on 20 different product simultaneously," that's a good place to be saying, "How am I going to shape this into a portfolio in a year or in two years?"

Start to work with your current manager to say, "How do we focus this to be more impactful?" Because everybody... And this was a key part of the movement you led in content strategy was, "It's not impactful, stop doing it. Good, God, get out."

Kristina Halvorson:

That's right and we are almost out of time, but I think that that is the thing to end on. If you want to start in UX writing, and you have built a portfolio with a bootcamp or whatever, and you look at it and it's all clever writing, and it's all word choice and language, take several steps back and think about how can you form a problem statement, and how can you document that? And how can you write about outcomes and potential failures?

If you are in a current job where you are feeling undervalued, and you're tired of trying to demonstrate value, and you don't know why you're supporting 14 different product teams, you don't feel like you're bringing value. As you build that portfolio, think about how are you demonstrating actual meaningful value to potential employers, which by the way, Torrey, do you know anyone who's hiring in the near future?

Torrey Podmajersky:

OMG, there's so many hiring. Also Google, come work for Google. It's great. But so many are hiring. And LinkedIn is telling me about them all the time and I'm all like, "My hands are full and I have literally a dream job for me right now." So recruiters, please don't send me your ping right now. But really, there's so many good jobs out there.

Kristina Halvorson:

Now is a good time. Yep. That's right.

Torrey Podmajersky:

It's a really good time. Iit is not about complaining, it is not about the whining. Definitely, get support, tell people you're struggling and let them help you. Absolutely.

Kristina Halvorson:

Mostly tell your content, people you're safe, or like your one manager. Don't tell all of LinkedIn, don't tell all of Twitter.

Torrey Podmajersky:

Yeah. It's not-

Kristina Halvorson:

Hold back on the complaining.

Torrey Podmajersky:

Yeah. You don't want to... Because there's so few of us, and those of us who are noisy are noisy, it's really important to not paint the picture that content is full of whiners, and never will be satisfied with anything. Instead, we need to take care of each other and boost each other up.

I read this great book called Professional Troublemaker by Luvvie Jones, go read it, go make professional trouble. And that starts with lifting yourself up with what you can do and who you are in the world.

Kristina Halvorson:

Torrey, thank you so much for joining me today. You are a delight and a joy. I do want to mention for our listeners that Confab is coming, Confab: the Content Strategy Conference, and you can register for that. We have raised that number of times during this conversation at confabevents.com. Torrey, will you be joining us for Confab?

Torrey Podmajersky:

I am still working out internal permissions. 

Kristina Halvorson:

COVID.

Torrey Podmajersky:

I know, I know. But I have raised it for all of the internal permissions that I possibly can, including my husband who doesn't want me to go to Minneapolis right now.

Kristina Halvorson:

No. No, don't come right now. Nobody should go anywhere right now. But May, thinking we're going to be different. Thank you, Torrey.

Torrey Podmajersky:

Thank you, Kristina.

Kristina Halvorson:

Thanks so much for joining me for this week’s episode of the Content Strategy Podcast. Our podcast is brought to you by Brain Traffic, a content strategy services and events company. It’s produced by Robert Mills with editing from Bare Value. Our transcripts are from REV.com. You can find all kinds of episodes at contentstrategy.com and you can learn more about Brain Traffic at braintraffic.com. See you soon.