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Design systems are collections of guidelines, principles, components, and assets that are used to create and maintain consistent and cohesive visual and functional design across a product or organization. Done well, they present a comprehensive and holistic approach to design that considers all aspects of the user experience, including visual design, interaction design, accessibility, and usability.

A design system typically includes components such as typography, color palettes, iconography, buttons, form elements, and other UI elements, as well as guidelines for how they should be used and combined. It may also include documentation on design principles, user research, design patterns, and development best practices.

Design systems are used to streamline design and development workflows, improve consistency and quality across products, and facilitate collaboration between designers and developers. They are particularly valuable for large organizations or teams working on multiple products, as they help ensure that design is cohesive and scalable across all projects. 

To bring a new lens to this topic, the March Meetup of Content Strategy Seattle featured Margot Bloomstein and Greg Storey. Unlike our typical events where a speaker presents a prepared presentation, this meetup was designed to be more of a fireside chat and conversation about governance and design systems.

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This graphic from Margot and Greg’s slides illustrates what a design system is and how it creates an all-encompassing system that scales to all aspects of a brand’s digital experience. While there will always be differences between companies, working with your clients or stakeholders to understand what their users need is a key component of a design system being effective. Content strategists are good at understanding the overall idea of governance but sometimes proving that to a client can be tricky. 

About Our Speakers

Both Margo and Greg bring years of strategic leadership experience to bear on the topic of design system governance. Margot founded the consultancy Appropriate, Inc. in 2000 and Greg is Design Principal at Airbag Industries and Strategic Advisor to Luro App. In addition to these independent and in-house experiences, they recently formed the Loupe Collective. Along with two other industry professionals, they are a collective of experts in content strategy that come together to collaborate to further the field in a cohesive way. With years of experience between the members of the collective, they have seen projects succeed, fail, and have found ways to recover to create success again.

Governance and Design Systems

In August 2022, Michael Haggerty-Villa led a panel for the Meetup about design systems and since then this topic has continued to grow. 

Margot and Greg brought the topic of governance to the conversation, discussing how, as with any set of processes and guidelines, design systems require governance to ensure that they remain consistent and can be managed collaboratively.. Governance sounds expensive but in the long run putting a focusing effort on the design system could save clients a lot of money. Putting an emphasis on design systems could potentially avoid accessibility lawsuits and other legal issues. Another way governance could potentially save money in the long run is through employee retention because the employees feel they are a part of the design process and this could result in a more positive work environment. 

Design System Initiative Rollout 

A typical experience with an initial design system rollout experience is that you build the design system and launch it and then it fails. Margot and Greg think that failure does not need to happen. One reason  systems fail so often is because they didn’t start with governance and adoption. Another reason is success is not defined and therefore can’t be measured. Companies can prepare for a successful design system by starting with co-creation with shared ownership within the company, collaborating on buy-in from product owners, and defining what “done” looks like and how it will be measured. Being a contractor coming into companies and telling them what to do in the style guide, for example, could potentially fail. Margot mentioned she sat down with a client company and listened to what they are already doing and helped them realize why she suggested the design system. 

With this collaborative system design there is greater compliance within the company.  Every design system needs a system model that can be considered a living document. Making sure there is a process to add new additions and edit processes so that the users of the system are contributors and creators. Getting feedback and getting people to the table during these conversations about the system strategy creates a way to get on the same page with cross-organizational teams. When the expectations and standards are laid out clearly for teams, they know how to engage. A content strategist can play the role of a mediator, helping to develop a common language in a collaborative way with a team.

‍Watch the video of this lively, informative conversation.

Why knowledge management?

Knowledge management is the process of capturing, distributing, and effectively using knowledge that resides within an organization. To capture this tacit knowledge and organize it effectively, there must be a framework in place. Employees want their voices heard and showing that people come first can cultivate a positive environment within the organization. This also helps mitigate the issue of employees leaving the company with important information in their heads.

Everyone has had the experience of beginning a job in a new company and receiving initial training, but thereafter needing to tap on a more experienced employee’s shoulder to pick their brain about a certain task. With remote work and hybrid models becoming the norm, this could look like a ping, an email, or a message on Slack. Even with text-based searchable communications, though, it can often be difficult to track down specific conversations.

A searchable system to capture tacit knowledge

Our February Content Strategy Seattle Meetup talk was presented by Mike Doane. Mike is a professor at the University of Washington and a consultant in information architecture, content strategy, and taxonomy. Mike spoke on a recent project that sheds new light on how to create a a searchable knowledge management system that captures the information that is often communicated in emails and other messages, helping new employees get up to speed on ongoing projects.

Email can be one of the largest repositories of tacit information, but as was pointed out in the event chat, company retention policies can hinder the long-term storage of that information. One attendee mentioned that their company deletes emails after 90 days. Mike’s framework would remedy this issue by creating an intentional “brain drain.”

How it works

The framework doesn’t rely on any fancy new software that might be over the company’s budget, and instead works with software they may already have such as Microsoft Office and Zoom. In a recent example of this “brain drain” framework being utilized, a team conducted interviews with current employees via Zoom. The employees being interviewed were given time to review the questions beforehand so they felt comfortable with their answers. The team then used Zoom’s transcript function to export a VTT file. From this file, using a simple word processor, they organized the information and removed any of the errors in spelling and grammar to create a document that could be easily searched in a database. With new features of AI coming out, there will probably soon be a way to ask an internal AI for the answers stored in the knowledge management system using the information from these interviews.

Now when another employee has a question about a topic, they can either search and hear the person explaining the topic in real time on the Zoom interview or they can read the transcript. This can also be seen as a reverse funnel: Instead of trying to get information from someone during an exit interview, this can be done at employee intake and throughout employment so when they do their exit interview it's more of a recap.

A people-first approach

A key concept in this type of knowledge management is thinking of the people first and the technology second. When working with information and highly technical groups that’s not always the case, but if you value an employee's knowledge from the start, listen to their ideas, and find a way to organize them, employees’ sense of value will increase. After interviews are done a few times, they also come to be seen as a common practice for sharing knowledge. Employees get better at communicating their knowledge, and the system becomes more useful over time.

Mike’s talk was informative and innovative. As we head into a new year with new goals, let’s continue to think of new ways to put people first in technology.

For further reading:

Tacit Knowledge: What is Tacit Knowledge? Definition, Differences and Examples (thecloudtutorial.com)

Knowledge Portals & PoolParty: Knowledge Portals and Why TheyMatter | PoolParty

Knowledge Management: Knowledge management strategy |Deloitte Insights

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2022 was a breakthrough year for Content Strategy Seattle. In addition to our packed calendar of events, this is the year that we launched our new branding (thanks to volunteer designer Megan Biggs), launched this website (thanks to volunteer Webflow guru Amy White), and even developed a line of CSS merchandise!

Our 2022 speaker lineup spanned a wide range of topics and garnered a large, widespread audience (one of the benefits of being virtual is being able to bring in speakers and attendees from all over the country and around the world).

2022 also marked our first in-person event in over two years, when we hosted a Button conference pre-party in October, preceded by a fireside chat with Kristina Halvorson in September.

One major theme of the year reflected a theme in our industry—the increasing awareness of the connection between content and design, including a two-part panel discussion led by Michael Haggerty Villa on content in design systems (our July and August events) and a discussion about how content strategists can leverage object-oriented UX, led by Sophia Prater (September). Scott Kubie (June) and Sarah Johnson (April) gave us practical, useful tools for keeping content front and center in our designs and content ecosystems.

Natalie Marie Dunbar (October) and Corey Vilhauer (March) focused on the practice and role of content strategists, from building a practice to being the glue that holds web projects together. Bram Wessel (May) spoke about our role as content strategists in combatting misinformation.

Amy Grace Wells (November) and Lauren Etheridge and Carrie Hane (February) reminded us of the importance of the human element in our content work, with talks on supporting neurodiversity and accessibility and unlocking empathy.

And we bookended the year with topics on the cutting edge of our practice--Rebecca Evanhoe (January) spoke about conversation design and the intersection with content strategy and Andrea Zeller (December) introduced us to the challenges and opportunities of writing for virtual reality experiences.

Our goal: to move beyond being just a Meetup and build out a community that supports and uplifts its members, whether that’s through learning and connecting through our events, opportunities to speak, sharing of resources, or finding a job through our Slack #jobs channel. There’s so much more we hope to do in the coming year—we hope you’ll stay tuned and get involved. In addition to attending our events, we would love to have guest writers for this blog, suggestions for resources in our Topics area, and of course, speakers. If you’re interested in any of those opportunities, contact us.

Content Strategy Seattle’s last in-person Meetup event was in January 2020. When everything changed in those early months of 2020, we pivoted to doing virtual events and have kept going strong–even growing!

Nonetheless, we’d missed the experience of being in the same place, at the same time, enjoying conversations with other content folks. That’s why we were thrilled when the Button conference came to town and the organizers asked if we would be interested in doing a pre-conference event.

On the evening of Sunday, October 9th, we welcomed 60-ish Button speakers, attendees, and local Seattle content folks to the Wunderman Thompson office with tacos, beverages, and good cheer. We had talk previews from several of the Button speakers. Eight guests went home with some of the best books in the field, courtesy of their authors. So many happy reunions and new connections were made.

It was a warm, exciting, fabulous time and we’re so grateful to everyone who came and made it the event we’d dreamed of. Speaking of gratitude, some well-deserved shout-outs:

• The folks at Wunderman Thompson were incredibly generous and we can’t thank them enough for providing the perfect venue. Laura, Shannon, Claudia, Giancarlo, Tionna, Rafael, and Chris, you rock!

• Button speakers Torrey Podmajersky, Scott Kubie, Michael Metts, Andy Welfle, Jonathan Colman, and David Dylan Thomas gave us scintillating previews of their talks, donated books for our giveaway, and brought the Button love. Thanks to speaker Erica Jorgensen for joining us too.
• Kristina Halvorson and Tenessa Gemelke of Button and Brain Traffic offered us support in so many ways, and we appreciate you so much. Ten out of ten, would plan an event with you again!

• Our volunteers Nicole Martinez, Rebecca Kraus, and Marietta Szubski for wrangling the door like champs. You managed lots of people and lots of ambiguity with grace and smiles. We couldn’t have done it without you.
• Larry Asher from the School of Visual Concepts generously sponsored our beverages. We’ve been so lucky to have SVC’s support over the years and we think super highly of their UX writing and content design courses. Check them out!

• And finally, Elless Media for sourcing and sponsoring the tacos, and the fine folks at Manu’s Tacos who made, delivered, and set them up. Those tacos were out of this world. We’ve been ruined for all others.

We look forward to seeing you at our next meetup, and maybe at Button 2023 in Portland, OR!

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Welcome to the Content Strategy Seattle website! We invite you to poke around, learn about our upcoming and past events, and discover resources on topics of interest to content strategists.

A little about how this site came to be

Content Strategy Seattle is the organization behind the Seattle content strategy Meetup. As mentioned on our About page, the Meetup itself has been around and active since 2009. A year or so ago, however, we started feel the limits of the Meetup platform as a place to communicate with our members and share the resources that come out of our monthly events (slides, videos, lists of recommended articles, and so on). So, we decided to create this site as a central hub for our activities.

Just as good content strategists should, we started out with a plan. We wanted to make the construction of this site a case study and use the best practices we would apply to any of our “day job” projects.

The organizing committee met to discuss our goals, objectives, and tactics to articulate a strategy for the site. To learn more about and gather input from our membership, we conducted a survey that asked questions about our members’ job roles, types and sizes of employers, and topics of interest. Those topics fuel both our event programming and the resource lists you’ll find on this site.

Object-Oriented UX

Based on the strategy we developed, one of our volunteers, Amy White, took on the task of building the site.

With her training in Object-Oriented UX (OOUX) and her previous experience with the Webflow CMS, she led the organizers through the process of identifying the structural elements of the site.

We identified 5 main objects that make up the majority of content on the site, and brainstormed the relationships between them. Then we fleshed out the attributes of each object (for example, event has a description, date, time, and location). This discussion helped us clarify all kinds of ideas about how the site, and even the organization as a whole, could work going forward.

OOUX uses the power of structured content to create a system that can scale as the site and the organization grow. Some of these objects became collections in the Webflow CMS right away, while others can be kept in reserve until we need them.

And finally we started building layouts in Webflow! It's a great fit for OOUX because it's easy to create connections between collections, but there are some subtleties - if you're interested in learning more about this, there are some great articles on OOUX.com!

Visual design

To guide the look and feel of the site, we developed a creative brief and put out a call for visual design help. That call was answered by another volunteer, Megan Biggs, who worked with us to come up with a palette, fonts, and graphics. We wanted the site to reflect our beautiful Pacific Northwest location (recognize Mount Rainier in our new logo?) -so the colors and imagery were chosen to evoke that feeling.

Amy and Megan worked together to use another OOUX trick - avoiding "shapeshifter objects" in visual design. When designing cards for events, blog posts, and topics, we tried to make sure they look the same everywhere they appear, and that they look different from each other.

We'd love your input!

The content of the site is driven by our events, so you’ll find a list of past events going back several years, with links to slides and videos when we have them. As mentioned above, we also pulled from the results of the survey and from our events a set list of topics for curated resource lists. We intend to grow those lists over time and you’ll note that there is a way to suggest additions, so please let us know what we missed!

We would also love to have your input in other ways. This blog is intended to be community-sourced, so we welcome your interest if you want to contribute. We are also hoping to develop a mentorship program and eventually present other types of events, so stay tuned for additional ways to engage with the content strategy community.

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