Story 5: Explaining complex expertise and unique value

I began working with Produxs, a Seattle-based user experience (UX) design firm as its writer/communicator-on-call in late 2011. (Produxs later combined forces with Peak Systems to become UpTop, a UX design, development and usability research firm.)

From my perspective as an outsider and non-UX expert, I thought the company's biggest communication challenge was explaining clearly what UX design is and why it matters (i.e., why potential clients should want to hire them).

This is something tech companies of all sizes struggle with, and I see the same issues over and over again. Companies use popular catchphrases and industry jargon – which means that their marketing copy often sounds just like the next company's copy.

Everyone is driving growth, increasing ROI, "leveraging" everything imaginable, creating "meaningful" experiences, guaranteeing measurable results, etc.

The Produxs team invited me to click through the company website and offer up a new visitor’s perspective (or in UX parlance, a new “user” perspective). I made a list of what I considered to be the good, the bad and the much-needed. Most of what I suggested had to do with words and content, as I’m no designer, but I did note any confusing or time-consuming navigation problems.

Produxs unveiled a streamlined, inviting new home on the web, and I’m proud to have been involved in the word-smithing part of the project.

The website is no longer live since Produxs is now part of another company, but this project is a great example of my belief that you can take a complex set of services and describe them in a straightforward, conversational way.

Below are a couple of screenshots with examples of the web content I wrote for the Produxs site.