hyland baron

Hi Sarah,

We met at General Assembly in 2018 when you substituted for Lauren Golden’s UX Design Immersive.

I dig your approach to UX—particularly your passion for an engaging whiteboard experience.

When you critiqued my portfolio, you took a shine to some of my work:

You picked up on my writing chops and my decades of practicing visual design, and I was thrilled.

Working with a team who taps both my writing and design skills is my dream gig.

To that end I studied up on Marqeta, and the payments industry as a whole. I spent a few days reading and digesting Marqeta’s site, white pages, blog posts, and Business Insider insides.

I compiled my findings into a little ditty that goes something like this:

To get a fix on our customers, I placed them all into a spreadsheet organized by business sector, client, client needs, end user needs, and finally by product:

One of the most satisfying projects I’ve ever delivered was designing and co-writing a guide to writing UX copy.

Hired to simply write the guide, I knew a snazzy presentation would be key to capturing my audience’s attention.

Product Managers at a tech company were the end user. They were certainly not going to be ecstatic to receive instructions for writing product copy. No one jumps for joy when you send them something to read, especially a work thing. Empathy in action.

My client was expecting a well written albeit visually dull text document, and was so delighted to receive a designed product that he called the entire company together to see it.

Deep in my heart I knew the ultimate solution would be to add UX copywriters to the team.

UX copy requires a team member whose sole focus is on the user’s perspective and overall experience. Product managing requires the polar opposite mindset.

SAUSAGE RECIPE

Because I know you like to see how the sausages are made, here are some of my working docs for this very story:

THANK YOU, SARAH

I look forward to learning how I can be of service to your team—as Lead UX Content Writer or a combined writer/designer role.

Cheers,

Hyland Baron