Standing up for yourself as a UX person and getting buy-in from senior management.

Once upon a time, there was a company without a content designer. All the texts on the company’s website were written by whoever was working with that bit of the platform at the time.

Time passed, and managers realized that something was wrong with their Kingdom:

• Some links didn’t work.
• Users complained they couldn’t find what they wanted.
• People were leaving their website disappointed.

So, in their quest for a happy ever after, managers summoned a magical being — a content designer, the first of her kind in the realm.

To their surprise, this new creature said it wouldn’t be enough to “fix” the links or rewrite some texts on the platform. She said they needed… content transformation? Tone of voice? A/B testing texts?!

This sounded completely silly. And expensive. However, to not sadden the creature, managers promised that “maybe next year” they’ll have time for experiments. This year… can you please just fix the texts?

And, with time, the new member of the UX team accepted her fate. She was only there to answer the questions, not to ask them. The metrics didn’t improve much since she started working, but at least the texts were a little bit prettier.

Just like that, the company landed (and crashed) its first content designer.

This story is about the two most underappreciated professions in UX: that of a UX researcher and a UX writer (content designer). And the ways we can stop being Cinderellas of the team.

Why is it so hard to get a buy-in for UX roles?

At the UX research workshop with Joe Formica (Bitesize UX), this question produced all kinds of answers: