How do we ensure well-structured content is at the heart of our products and services? By putting our focus on the process, and especially who is part of that process and at which stage.

Usually, a UX writer is brought on towards the end of a project to put the right words in the right places. Instead, they often discover discrepancies and the need to re-think a concept or the content management process, because something essential simply wasn’t considered earlier.

Content is a team effort, and so is content modeling. Whether we inherit an existing model or need to create one from scratch, we need the whole team together from the start of a project to do research and consider business, design, and technology requirements. Only then can we ensure we’re speaking the same language about user interface and content management system components and are looking at the service holistically.

From the point of view of a content-oriented UX designer and a UX-oriented content designer, we dive into our own ways of working and describe how we involve teammates and stakeholders across departments and companies, and lessons learned from successful cases as well as those that didn’t go so well – at least not from the start.