The power of patterns and playbooks in content design | by Kate Agena, PhD

Build out your content design system to reduce stress and create consistently effective content across the end-to-end experience.

Most content leaders agree that a style guide and terminology list belong in a design system — and that design system components must include content or sample content according to the correct content guidelines. This is a start, but I believe every content team should also work toward building out their own set of content components and patterns. Extensive patterns build consistency while reducing stress and allowing content designers to focus on larger design issues.

Writing is subjective and stakeholders are many. Often stakeholders don’t agree on the best approach or even the desired outcome of a content experience. Recently, I found myself feeling the need to provide air cover for a content designer in a stakeholder review with an executive who had plenty of opinions and little context. Another content designer spent six months reacting to constantly shifting directions as the company went through some pretty severe leadership churn.

How, as an organizational leader of content designers, can I equip my team with the arguments, tools, and evidence they need to respond to contradictory and shifting demands?

I can help them develop the right questions (“It sounds like you’re suggesting a solution to a problem. Could you tell me the issue you’re trying to solve for instead?”). We can create artifacts for reference, such as an extra box in the Figma that explains the content strategy behind a specific flow. And, we can work closely with our UX research partners to demonstrate the effectiveness of our choices. But I think these tactics don’t take advantage of the benefits gained from further creating a system for making content decisions.

My PhD is in Rhetoric, and my understanding of the position content designers are in can be framed using Aristotle’s framing of the rhetorical situation. The author and text sit at the center and work with three inputs — the audience, the purpose, and the context. Without these inputs, the rhetor cannot be…