Episode 100: Celebration and Reflection on the Journey Intro: Welcome to a special episode of Writers in Tech! We are thrilled to be celebrating our 100th episode with you, our incredible listeners. Over the past episodes, we have explored various aspects of writing, technology, and creativity. Today, we embark on a unique journey as we dive into the world of "Post-Apocalyptic Leadership in Content Design." Join us as we reflect on the remarkable stories, insights, and lessons we have gathered along the way. Episode Summary: In this milestone episode, we reflect on the extraordinary challenges and triumphs of leaders in the realm of content design within a post-apocalyptic setting. We explore the unconventional and inventive approaches required to thrive and create impactful content in a world forever changed. In this episode of Writers in Tech, Jenn Shreve, Content Design Lead at Google, shares insights on maintaining consistency in writing and the valuable contributions of journalists in the field of UX. She discusses the importance of understanding one's energy patterns and establishing a routine that aligns with personal productivity. Jenn introduces "The Artist Way" process, specifically the practice of Morning Pages, as a method to stimulate creativity and generate ideas. The conversation dives into how journalists excel in simplifying complex concepts and technologies, enabling them to effectively advocate for users in UX writing. The ability to find and convey a compelling narrative is highlighted as a valuable skill in prioritizing messaging and shaping the user journey. Jenn offers tips for UX writers who are transitioning into leadership roles within their organizations, emphasizing the importance of developing a broader perspective and focusing on solving larger content problems. The discussion also addresses concerns surrounding AI tools like Chat GPT. While acknowledging the power of such technologies, Jenn encourages a critical approach and questioning the potential benefits and drawbacks. Drawing a parallel to concept cars in the automotive industry, she raises the question of whether certain AI capabilities are practical or aligned with industry trends. As we conclude this 100th-episode celebration, we express our deepest gratitude to all our listeners, guests, and supporters who have joined us on this incredible journey. We are honored to have shared these thought-provoking conversations and insights with you, and we look forward to continuing to explore the evolving landscape of content design and leadership in the post-apocalyptic world. Remember to stay tuned for more episodes of Writers in Tech as we continue to delve into the ever-evolving realm of writing, technology, and creativity. Thank you for being a part of our community!
Show notes: Join our free UX writing course: https://course.uxwritinghub.com/free_course
Follow Jenn Shreve: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jenn-shreve/
00:00
We find the story. And that really helps when you're trying to prioritize what messaging comes first. When you're thinking through the user journey, a sense of story, a sense of narrative, a sense of problem, solution, outcome can really help guide some of the decision making that goes beyond just the words on the screen.
00:24
You good. This is Writers in Tech, a podcast where today's top content strategists, UX writers and content designers share their well kept industry secrets. Hello and welcome everyone to Writers in Tech, a podcast that brought you by the UX Writing Hub. This is actually the 100th episode of the podcast Writers in Tech and I couldn't be more excited to have here my guest for today. Her name is Jen Shrieve and Jen is a content design lead at Google and she's here with us. Jen, how are you?
01:07
Hello. Hi. I'm good, how are you?
01:11
I'm pretty good. Excited for our call for today. Thank you for coming.
01:15
It's a pleasure.
01:16
So before we'll start, tell us a little bit about your background and how did you find yourself doing what you do?
01:23
I'm going to age myself right from the beginning. When I graduated from college, the internet was very young, very new, and my college newspaper was one of the first to have a website of any kind. And I was just immediately fascinated by the possibilities of communication in this new medium. And so that led me to get my early job, my first job, which was at a website called Salon.com. I was like one of the 9th employees, and I was an assistant editor, and I did all kinds of copywriting and things, but I was as interested in the technology that was kind of creating it as I was in kind of the things I was writing about. And so I've just had a career where I followed my passion. So I ended up being a technology journalist for many years, writing about the industry. I then moved into a mix of what we would call UX writing today.
02:18
No one called it then and copywriting. I ended up working in the creative part of digital advertising. So I ended up doing everything from making like eight bit video games that you play in a banner ad to videos. And in that time I kind of dipped in and out of Google, I would like to say. So this is actually my third time there, but I was a freelancer the first two times, actually three times. And then I converted finally to full time and ended up in UX, which again I had been kind of doing all along but had never really called it that. And there I've stayed. I really love it.
02:54
That's amazing. What a journey. And I know that you have also background in journalism, right? So at some point you did journalism as well.
03:02
Yeah, I still do my own writing. I had really started out writing essays and I've gone back to that. So I'm actually an early riser. I write in the mornings and occasionally when I'm happy with something I've written, I post it to Medium and share it on LinkedIn and other places so others can read it, hopefully benefit from it.
03:20
Do you have some kind of trick or tip to be consistent when it comes to writing, especially in the morning? Something that I'm struggling with lately and I'm really trying hard.
03:33
I think it's a couple of things. One is actually getting to know your chronotype, as they call it. So understanding just when your energy is highest and lowest in the day. Mine happens to be in the morning. And so that was kind of piece one. But don't work against your body, don't work against your rhythm. Find the time to devote that is best for you. The second thing is it's not willpower, it's routine. So really making a habit and a routine of something, for me is the best way to be consistent and keep at it. And then the third piece of it is dropping your expectations of greatness or anything else to come out of it. It's about the practice. It's about doing the work and being curious about what comes out of that. And so I started following a process called The Artist Way, and there's a whole piece of this called Morning Pages.
04:25
So you start your day writing two or three pages of just whatever is on your mind and it's kind of like clearing out the trash of your brain. And then out of that I was finding topics would emerge. And so then I had to make more time to start writing those down and shaping those into pieces that I could share.
04:42
Sounds like a really cool process. It's an interesting point of view because some people say that in the end of the day, you should just brain dump whatever you have in your mind and maybe that could turn up to be some interesting piece. And there are the early risers that prefer to write in the morning. And the artist way I never heard about it and I would love to read more about it. It sounds interesting.
05:03
Yeah, it's a great book. And it's not just for writers. She uses this technique for painters and all kinds of artists. But yeah, kind of meant to it's sort of I think it's like five or eight weeks meant to help you kind of access your creative side and start to practice and take yourself seriously, which we all could probably use more of.
05:24
What do you think about everything that is happening right now with artificial intelligence and being creative?
05:33
Yeah, I think it's a really interesting time. AI is a tool. It is not a human being. It has amazing potentials and amazing limitations. I think just as I started my career and being curious about the Internet technology, I'm curious about AI. I think I'm cautious about it, but I'm trying to play with it every day and get to know it and correct it, because I have the opportunity to do that sometimes at my work. But I hear a lot of fear around in the industry, especially among writers. Is this going to replace us? And my response to that is, I don't even think that makes sense. I mean, the AI can write some sentences and make them sound pretty good. That is the tip of the iceberg. If my work is an iceberg, 90% of what I do is not the writing, but all of the thinking and the process and the relationship building and collaboration that eventually results in those words.
06:28
Right. So I see AI as a possible tool, but frankly, I'm less interested in its language capabilities than I am in its potential to, say, diagnose diseases much faster and earlier than people can do. So yeah. Anyway, I try to excel at things that only humans can do and use the non human tools as support and sometimes just interesting playthings. There are things that AI can do that humans can't do. We should certainly be interested in using those things to help us.
07:02
Definitely. But talking about the artist way, I feel like we could get into new levels of creativity using these tools. For example, new type of writings or new type of content production, even visual content production. Instead of like painting 1 hour in the morning, you could maybe think about different concepts and throw them into mid journey, which is like this visual painter that is doing so many different things lately.
07:30
I have a close friend who's a fiction writer. She has a novel coming out next year. She's also a technical writer and she does some programming. And this was early days, several years ago, many years ago. Now it feels like she took the contents of her discarded drafts for her fiction and fed them into a machine learning tool and created a bot that lived on Twitter. And then she had me take all of my discarded drafts of my short story collection and things like that, and she fed that into another one. And so then our bots talked to each other, and they talked to each other for about two or three years. It was just this back and forth, and most of it made no sense. But I recognized my vocal patterns and her vocal patterns and just the way that we yeah, the way we wrote our subject matter.
08:18
So our little bots had taken something we had created out of our own minds and turned it into something else. And it was fun, like watching a tennis match. And I think that probably violated Twitter policy, for which I do not apologize.
08:35
Well, Twitter violated our own. The user of this app were violated many times in the past few months, I believe. Have you heard about this app named Blue Sky? I've been using it lately.
08:52
No, I haven't. Tell me about it.
08:54
So Jack Dorsey decided to replicate Twitter and recreate it with an app named Blue Sky. It's supposed to be decentralized, means that every person is in charge of their own. Like, you can actually put your own domain over there and that would be your user and you'll host your own user. For now, it's invite only. So it feels like a very small room with not a lot of discussions. But it's been around for a few years now. So I just got my invite and it's interesting, people inside of it are excited and they say Twitter is like they say that just like Microsoft Edge is the browser that you use to download Chrome. So Twitter is the social media that you use to get an invite for Blue Sky. That's like the comparison that people are doing this. I'm trying it, I'm trying it for now.
09:47
It's not a huge, interesting thing, but hopefully it will better than Twitter and we'll see many more people.
09:53
Yeah, it's easy to take an existing product that has sort of evolved in all kinds of unpredictable ways and sort of pluck out what you like and what you want to keep about it and create something else. But I think the reality is most of the products we work on right are more like Twitter. Things grow and evolve in strange ways. A bit like slime molds and Hindsight is 2020 on any product. But when you're in it, as many of us are, you can't always see where it's going or what it's turning into.
10:27
Definitely very unpredictable. We know that the search box named Google will evolve to so many suites of products like cloud and ad and math.
10:40
Yeah, I say that as someone who has launched a lot of products. So I've had the experience of kind of building things from scratch. I worked on the launch of Uniqlo.com in the US and then their global platform. I was the content lead, writing all of the content and developing the voice and tone for the Google Store launch.
10:59
You said the Uniclo. The clothing store.
11:01
Yeah, the clothing store. That was when I was at an agency. Yeah. It was one of those dreams of mine. I really wanted to work on their brand because I love their brand so much.
11:12
It's a good brand, very technological as well.
11:15
Well, and they consider themselves a technology company. But we build these beautiful product experiences exactly the way we want them. Right. And you hand them off and then you watch as they become something that you didn't expect. Or they grow ugly little pockets and things. It's just the way it goes. But I'm always remarking on the care and thought that goes into launching a product and then the lack of care that can go into maintaining it and growing it.
11:43
What is the product that you've launched? You are the most proud of?
11:47
That's a great question. I mean I worked on the launch of my ad center for Google last and we launched in October of last year, it launched to all Google users. So the reach of this product was really huge and the intention is to give people control over their personal data as pertains to advertising. So that was a very exciting opportunity for me. I think we have all kind of lived in a world where ads happen to us and to actually give people agency over those ads and the information that's used I think is an important step in the right direction of putting people first. I think I'm most proud of that. And also just the scale and the amount of all the languages and everything. There was a lot that kind of went into getting that launch into place. But I had always wanted to work on an experience that was generally unpleasant and painful for users and settings, any kind of privacy settings or privacy information is that.
12:47
And so I think what I'm most proud of with this project was that we really did our best to make it feel like a consumer product. A really smooth user experience. Making the language relatable warm human and helping people understand some very difficult concepts about what happens when you I don't know, if you click an ad and then you go and see it somewhere else. What's happening there? Right, so how do you start to explain these concepts to people in ways that they can actually understand and then actually use to make informed decisions? So yeah, most recent, most proud.
13:28
Nice. Sounds good. It's like when I started to do marketing for the UX Writing Hub, which is the company that I run these days. So I got to know the marketing side of things. So I didn't know that you have a pixel on your website, which is what others might call a cookie or something like that and it's paint you writing quotes and then it's retargeting you and companies use this data afterwards. Companies, every basically company that target you with ads can retarget you based on the data. And for me it was really new when starting out and I'm sure that for me it was new. So my parents definitely are not aware to it and my best friends that are not in the marketing industry would not be aware to it. So sounds like quite of a challenge to communicate it to, let's say the average Joe or average Jane.
14:24
Yeah, just to everyday people. When I was a journalist, I interviewed a lot of scientists, especially I worked on a newsletter, computer science newsletter, but the audience was donors so they weren't people who are necessarily versed in the science. And I have an English degree and then a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing. So I don't come from a science or tech background myself. And so I would have to find a way to get these people to tell me what they did and explain it to me in ways that I could understand well enough to explain to other people. That's still very much a part of my work today is, yeah, how does this work? I have to really ingest it and really know it very intuitively before I can make it clear to someone else what's happening and find the word.
15:15
That's why I think the journalists make great UX writers because they know how to simplify complicated ideas and complicated technologies to people that would actually for people that could actually use it, help you to advocate for the user, basically.
15:33
Yeah. And journalists are also we find the story. And that really helps when you're trying to prioritize what messaging comes first when you're thinking through the user journey. A sense of story, a sense of narrative, a sense of problem, solution, outcome can really help guide some of the decision making that goes beyond just the words on the screen.
15:57
And you told me something really cool before we started about seeing people and not users and not conversions, but actually see the people. So in your process, what would be the best way to communicate to people, to see that, to also internally talk with your team and always talk about the people first.
16:18
Yeah. In UX, right, we have this expression we call people our users. Right? They are the people who use our products. I try to always take one step back before that and say, we are all human beings and human beings have intrinsic value that is outside of whether they click my button or not. And so if I see people that way before I see them as someone using my product, before I see them as someone who is an audience that I want to convert or whatever you're doing, how do I treat them? Right? And so that in our work translates into things like, let's just say it's a shopping product, right? If I put the human before the consumer, then I want to make sure that the human being only buys something that they're really going to be happy with, that they really need, that they really understand.
17:11
Right? And so then how can I make sure that the product description and the way that we're depicting the photography, all of those things, how do I make sure that person has everything they need? Right? And then they decide. Right? And so it's just saying rather than trying to be deceitful and manipulative because you're not seeing the person, you're only seeing the monetary value that the person might bring you. You put them first. So it can influence all kinds of design decisions and all kinds of writing decisions. And it doesn't mean that you don't care. Right. If you're doing an ecommerce site, you care. You certainly want to sell things to people, but you also want to make sure that they're happy with buying them and they're confident. So it's balancing those impulses. And I find increasingly we live in a culture where we don't see each other as human beings, and we see each other's, I don't know, through the lens of productivity or the lens of profit or whatever it is.
18:14
I wrote about this on my Medium Channel. I had this encounter in a Trader Joe's in real life, and Trader Joe's actually you want to talk about Scaled Content, right? Like, they have this incredible even their physical stores have an incredible story and content program, essentially the way that they message things, the way that their employees communicate with customers. Anyway, but I was in this Trader Joe's, and this guy was stalking cheese, and I said, Excuse me, I'm sorry to interrupt you. I just need to reach over your head. And he stopped what he was doing. He said thank you. Thank you for just asking. He said, you wouldn't believe how many people just treat me like a shelf to reach over without considering that I'm a person first. And so, frankly, it's just a way of engaging with people in the world that for me has and for me, honestly didn't come naturally.
19:05
I had to learn how to be this way. But now that I practice it on a daily basis, I find it incredibly valuable, and it makes me a lot more happy and proud of the work that I'm doing as well.
19:17
That's awesome. I did want to talk with you about growing into a leadership role as a content designer. UX writer, it doesn't matter what your title, but we have many UX writers that until not that long time ago, was the first UX writers in their companies or kind of built this role in their company, and now they going to more of a leadership role. So what would be your tips for a person in that position? A person that want to grow into a leadership role organically? Not organically, but naturally growing into a leadership role, and they need some advice.
20:01
Okay. I have a quirky perspective on leadership in general. I've worked in companies where, oh, the leads will pass down the knowledge, and we shall follow. I don't know. I call it leader worship. And I think it's very strange because to me, leadership is simply about the perspective that you are working from. So my point of view on leadership is that what makes a leader is simply well, there's a number of things, but one of the most fundamental things is kind of the way that they're viewing the problems, right? So when you're starting your career, if you think of it as a mountain, right? You're down at the base of the mountain, and you are in the weeds, as we say, and you are working on solving these small, usually kind of individual, discrete content problems as you move up towards leadership if that's your goal.
20:51
By the way, I think there's real value to staying in the weeds. I still enjoy being really close to that work. But you're viewing things from a different level, so you start to view things from a project level, and then you start to view things from a program level, and then you start to view things from a large organizational view. And so the way that you're making decisions and the things that you're trying to change are simply different because of the level that you're working on. So I no longer write every single string, but I'm thinking about it systematically, like how do we operate as a content team? How do we deliver our best work? What are the tools and processes that are going to allow that to happen? When I think about translation, how do we set ourselves up for success from the very start of the project to the end?
21:44
Right? That's how I basically think about leadership. So if you're interested in growing into leadership, start to expand your scope, expand your vision. Start to think about problems one step above the way that you're thinking about them now. And if you're not sure how to do that, go ask someone who's doing it. What are the problems you're trying to solve? What are your motivations? Those are the kinds of questions we can ask to find out, well, how does that compare to the problems I'm trying to solve? What are my motivations? How do I move towards that? And then I think leadership takes the kind of confidence that only comes from humility, which is really knowing what you don't know and also being willing to share the spotlight and shine it on others. Those are all things that I think good leaders do and that anyone wanting to lead and move into leadership should aspire to.
22:40
Which kind of like books or articles do you have to recommend for someone that is in this position right now of growing into leadership?
22:48
It's a great question. To be honest, I am not big on reading books about my work.
22:55
Yeah.
22:59
I read outside my reading time. I don't really follow a lot of this stuff. I just kind of what do you like to read? A few years ago, the world was feeling very bleak to me, and so I started a post apocalyptic book club with some of my closest friends. And so we together read books about the end of the world. Some of them are nonfiction. We read about survivalists and bunker folks, we've read about climate issues. And then some of them are fiction. Some of them are deep in the future. Some are speculative, more recently based. But then we've also started to go back and read about truly apocalyptic situations that have happened in the past. Right now, reading a lot about the end of the world. I'm reading The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck right now. And it's actually tremendously prescient. It's a beautifully written novel, and I turned to it during the layoffs.
23:54
Well, there's still more layoffs happening, right? But there's been a lot of layoffs. And there's this quote from the book about how in The Grapes of Wrath, farmers are being pushed off their land by banks. And it talks about how the banks were made by people, but they were not people, and the people could not control them. And I feel that way a lot about some of the systems and larger forces that we're all subject to. We've built these companies, we've built these technologies, and we are people, but they are not people, and it's hard to control them. And I think that's actually another point about leadership. That's important to remember, is leaders are not that powerful. I think we all kind of they get to make big decisions, but trying to steer these ships is no joke. And there's a lot the more I move up in leadership, the more of the details and the things that I have cared about a great deal in the past, you have to let go of.
24:47
And you can't be that leader who gets everything exactly the way you want. So there's a lot of powerlessness that comes with leadership as well and with the world we live in. And I think that's why it's so important that we individual humans treat each other the way we wish to be treated, that we treat our users the way we wish to be treated. We can be advocates for within these big systems, and we don't have to become like them, even if we are part of them.
25:15
Interesting, from postapocalyptic point of view to leadership.
25:21
Maybe they're combined.
25:25
It is. Have you watched the show? The Last of us.
25:29
I started it because of my early mornings. I don't get to watch very much TV. That was something I had to give up. And I have a child, so I can only watch TV when they're not around.
25:46
It's a good poster show.
25:48
It is. And yes, from what I've seen and what I've heard, it's terrific. So, yeah, it's on my slow watch list.
25:57
Take your time. All right, that's great. How do you think I don't want to put you on the spot. Obviously, we ask every guest this question, which is, how do you think we should name this episode? And then we have some kind of a brainstorming session where we do talk about the topics that we've covered, such as leadership. In this case, leadership at the end of the world.
26:24
Leadership? Yeah, post Apocalyptic leadership and content design.
26:29
I think it's very timely. It's a good name, especially because so many people talking about the end of the world with everything happening with artificial intelligence. Do you think it will lead us to the end of the world, by the way, based on your obviously or post apocalyptic point of view? Right.
26:45
It's so interesting, typically, right. It's something no one saw or expected that really undoes everything. To watch Terminator, I did watch Terminator, so you never know. No, I mean, there is a good reason to be concerned and to be urging caution. Right. And for those of us in companies that are moving into these fields to be advocates for the right thing within those organizations, to be a squeaky wheel when we can do that. So, yeah, maybe it's squeaky wheel content design, leadership.
27:23
With everything happening right now with JPT and all of that. So you said that you think that there is a reason to concern, but why do you think what do you think that are the possibilities?
27:39
I would let someone far more deep in AI answer what the concern should be. But what I do recognize is this is a powerful technology. It's accelerating. And as we've seen with every like I said, I got started in my career, early days of the Internet. I had no idea you could not envision where it would go and what it would do. There haven't been a lot of checks and balances and we're seeing both good and bad right. Come out of that in our society. So so any new technology, any new tool, I think we should be questioning it along the way and doing because it but it is hard. It's hard. No one you know, I wish were all powerful and had these great CNIS and could say where is this going and what's it leading to? And anyone who thinks they do for good or for bad, I think is fooling themselves and hopefully not fooling you because I don't think we know yet.
28:39
And honestly, some of these programs to me, remind me of kind of like when I was an advertising creative, I did some auto industry work, right? And they have these car shows and they introduce these prototypes that are sort of fantasy cars and they have all these amazing they're concept cars, but they don't actually work. Right. I feel that way about some of the stuff that gets put out into consumer hands for AI, right? It's sort of like it's magic, but I don't think it's necessarily where the industry is going or what will actually get made and be supported.
29:12
Right, right. Definitely at the early days of the Internet, who would guess that we'd have like mobile devices that will be internet driven apps and so on.
29:23
But I think the core question we should always be asking is who is benefiting from this technology? In the case of early breast cancer detection and AI being used for that, who is benefiting? Wow. Humans are benefiting. And probably some companies that are going to make this stuff that is really exciting. Who benefits from a chat bot that can write an insubstantive sort of airy email for you that says nothing in a lot of words, which is what I just. Did? I don't know. Who is that helping? I don't think it's actually helping anyone.
29:58
I just saw this meme of like a person writing an email with Chad GPT and another person getting this email and doing a recap of that email with Chat GPT.
30:07
That said I had a list of tests that are going to be administered to someone I know and it was just like a bullet list. Right. And I stuck it into I took it into Google's Bard but similar, and just asked it to tell me what each of these tests was about and that would have taken me like hours of time to go research and indeed I got a one sentence summary. So it was the name of the test, which is what I had and just what it measured for. Super helpful, super fast. I have all kinds of questions about where did that content come from, but it was super interesting. Right. So I see potential here to benefit people that we'll see.
30:50
I had idea this morning to have some kind of a web app that is connected to one of these technologies of AI where you put a URL and then it somehow in a magical technological way, scrape the HTML or data and then it tells you if it gives you accessibility score for screen readers.
31:10
There you go. Analyze me for accessibility.
31:16
And I think it's like right now with all of the technology exists out there, it's relatively easy to create something like that and then it will improve the accessibility of many websites. So you can really take this thing to positive directions if you're thinking creatively.
31:35
Absolutely. And thinking creatively is something only humans can do. And that is the relationship I have to this to my job. I try to excel at the things that only a human can do. Right, and then outsource the things that anyone can do. Right, yes. Well, even then I've had to rewrite all the emails, so I don't know if we're there yet.
31:59
Right. Jen, it was a lot of fun to have you today in our 100th episode.
32:06
It's been a pleasure. 100 is a huge accomplishment, so congrats.
32:11
Huge honor to have you. And maybe I could have you for the 200th episode as well. We can have some kind of be.
32:21
An anniversary, but without the years.
32:24
Thank you so much and thank you, the listeners, for staying with us in this fascinating conversation with Jen Shiv. Feel free to follow Jen on Medium and also to reach out to her if you have any questions. If that's okay. Jen, is it okay?
32:43
Yeah, I'm easy to find on LinkedIn. I might be slow to reply, but I do try to respond to everyone who takes the time.
32:50
So if you have any question about mentorship or questions like what kind of problems you're solving today because you're looking to get into leadership, ask Jen. Feel free to reach out to me if you have any question as well. And thank you for sticking around. My name is Yuval Keshe. I'm the founder of the UX writing hub. Feel free to check our website. We have a free UX writing course that have also some generative AI components and how to do user research with artificial intelligence, which is new and to a lot of people. So check it out and see you next time about it. Bye.