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Questionnaire for Spotlight #Issue 9 with Joline Tang

"Spotlight" is our latest series featuring in-depth, straightforward, no-fluff, zero-BS Q&A sessions. Here, we engage with seasoned professionals and fresh voices in content design and user experience (UX) to streamline knowledge and explore uncharted territories, talking about struggles, daily challenges, tool sets, and their impact on products and business success.

We are eager to get your input on content design and UX.

Thank you, Joline! 🖤

You lead content design at eBay. What does your day-to-day look like?

As the Head of content design, what profiles do you constantly work with (UX Designers, Devs, Content Designers, PMs, etc.)? How do you collaborate and communicate with them? And how do you hand over your work?

Considering your background and the projects you've worked on, it's clear that storytelling plays a significant role. How do you believe storytelling contributes to a product's success? Additionally, could you share your thoughts on how the narrative approach you used for the Microsoft Surface Headphones influences the connection between users and the product?

At Microsoft, you transitioned from a solo act managing everything on Medium and social media to leading a larger team to achieve greater goals. Can you describe how this shift affected your daily routine? Specifically, did your role evolve from being primarily a copywriter to overseeing a team of copywriters?

You managed the Microsoft Design publication on Medium and its social media presence. How did you approach establishing the voice and tone for your content? Did you adhere to the brand guidelines to ensure consistency with the brand voice across product interfaces like Windows, Xbox, Teams, etc., or did you opt for a unique voice that was more suited to the casual nature of social media?

What are the primary software tools you rely on for your daily tasks while managing and collaborating with design, engineering, and marketing teams at Microsoft, and in your current role at eBay?

As the Head of Content Design, could you describe the interplay between content and design in your team's process? How are both elements integrated into your workflow? Additionally, within the content-design dynamic, which takes precedence or sets the direction—is it content leading design, or vice versa?

How engaged are you and your team in UX research? Do you actively participate in or help conduct interviews and other exercises? Or are you primarily receiving the final results in deck format with data? Could you provide more details on this and how it affects your work?

Does your team develop, cultivate, and sustain taxonomies? If so, how do you accomplish this? What platform do you utilize, and how effective has it been for the various UX teams, including Designers, Engineers, Product Managers, Marketing, and Legal?

As Head of Content Design of a global company like eBay, how do you oversee content worldwide? Is localization part of your responsibilities? Can you elaborate on how it works, from validating the copy and ensuring the localization matches the region (e.g. English🇺🇸/ Spanish🇪🇸) to pushing it to code? And what tools do you use for that?

It is common for UX teams to skip the research phase to save time waiting for UX researchers to prepare and deliver their results in a presentable format that they can reuse. What's your take on this?

Content designers are typically involved at the very end. They are provided with a hi-fi prototype and asked to improve the copy. What kind of problems and difficulties does this process make?

How do you view the current UX landscape, and what are the reasons why companies, regardless of size, grapple with various approaches yet still experience chaos, even with highly skilled teams? Please elaborate on this from the angle of content design, specifically focusing on how the Content Design Ratio compares to other roles, its benefits, and its ROI.

Finally, at Punkt, we are revolutionizing the UX industry by building the Content-First UX Platform where Content Designers and UX Writers co-lead the product UX/Design decisions alongside Design/ Engineering/ Marketing/ PMs, etc. A Content-First UX approach will fix too many daily issues most product teams deal with. What would you add to that?

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