Copywriters, stop calling me that!

Transcript

Andy Parker

Welcome to the nostalgia hour for those of you born between 1975 and 1986. This is a bonus episode and very much a conversation that I wanted to share with others.

I’ve known Ellen for a few years. She’s one of my brother’s closest friends, and as a result, she maintains the UX Coach theme of having music and DIY ethics at the root of her value system.

We talk about finding yourself in life and changes in mindsets towards work and art over time. Ellen and I have shared life experiences with dreams of being music journalists, running record labels, and being on tour, only to find ourselves becoming a slave to the wage.

Ellen shares her experiences of being immersed in subcultures and how this place of being still directs and influences her work and finding the environments in which she can thrive.

You’ll have to excuse the banging and other background noise. It is the season for DIY in the literal sense everywhere in England as we’re recording this; please forgive me for the audio; I wanted to share as much of this as possible with you. So strap in. This is very much something that I hope you can have in the background, as well as some of the things you’re trying as you drift in and out, which I guess is how most people listen to podcasts these days. So, let’s get on with the show.

Ellen Gofton

I’m in sunny Penge, which is in South London it’s glorious today it’s a really nice Friday morning with lots of sunshine I am South London through and through, I have always been in this neck of the woods, to be honest.

Very London-centric because you grew up in London as well. So basically until I was 8, I was a couple of roads away from where I live now which is a good shame for where it’s weird. But then when I was 8 and I changed schools, I moved to Croydon, which is, a London Borough of Croydon, so technically still London but very Croydon, so yeah, I’m a Croydon girl. Did you not know that I am so Croydon?

Andy Parker

I didn’t and now it’s all becoming clear my experiences of Croydon have been very limited to a site visit for potential supplier in, is it called one Croydon the 50 P building?

Ellen Gofton

Oh, that’s iconic. Yeah, I don’t know what officially called, But yeah, 50p building thruppenny bit. Yeah, brutalist.

Andy Parker

I have been there. I picked someone up there on the way to a festival once, I was perplexed because I ended up ringing them and going, I’m on a tram line.

Ellen Gofton

Yes!

Andy Parker

Confused, by the fact that there were trams in Croydon

Ellen Gofton

Oh yeah, we have tramps

Andy Parker

And then going and seeing This Morning with Richard and not Judy, which must have been 1996 or something crazy at the. is it the Fairfield Hall?

Ellen Gofton

Fairfield Hall is still there. Yeah, it’s a good place to grow up, being near London, but in your own specific place is quite good, and it makes it quite resilient. If you’re from a sort of widely laughed place. I think you’d become sort of immune to it, and then you can take the mick out of Croydon as well, which is really good. No one else can. I love it. I am the Croydon ambassador.

Andy Parker

So how do you get out of Croydon? I guess you did the whole university stick?

Ellen Gofton

I did. Yeah, I went on a very traditional path. So I chose to go to university in Birmingham. Where I studied English, there was literally no looking back on it. The amount of little thought I put into my university degree subject is hilarious. But yes, I wanted to go and read books for three years, which I think a lot of content people probably spent their time doing as well, and I was there when, same as you, right, the fees weren’t so bad, not definitely not what they are now. So I could just go and faff around in Birmingham, and I wanted to go to Birmingham because it is the home of metal, so I was like, this has got a great music scene. It’s where Black Sabbath from it’s where Napalm Death are, Napalm Death was still hanging out in pubs when I was there, so yes, I chose basically not really for the university but more because I knew it had a good music scene. So yeah, I went and did that.

Andy Parker

You were looking for a grimy subculture?

Ellen Gofton

Oh yeah.

Andy Parker

Birmingham is hardly cosmopolitan from my limited experiences of being there.

Ellen Gofton

you know what? I really did choose Croydon over Birmingham. Like people who aren’t UK-centric. You might be like that they sound like nice places, but their reputations do precede them, but yeah, I wanted to. I mean, I mean, the University is pretty, like definitely a red brick. What’s the word for that group of universities, Russell? Is that something that the Russell Group is really good at? Yeah, I applied to Oxford, but I didn’t get in. That’s a story for another time, and we’re not being recorded. But there Birmingham for me, it’s my time at Birmingham in university, which is very much like finding myself. So I got really heavily into the music scene, so I put on gigs. I wrote fanzines, I mean, I started a label when I left university, worked at a festival when I was there and like, worked, like, some really amazing for amazing creators. So for me, it was like, I found my crew who weren’t necessarily like university, people that I met, like one of my best friends now I met there because she was from Birmingham, and we met, we would go to gigs all the time, and the grimy pub gigs, not the like when sometimes we go to a big gig, but mostly it was the grimy pub gig. So yeah, that’s how I got into, like, hardcore punk

Andy Parker

Amazing. So there’s the further context, and music is just naturally going to find its way into this conversation throughout. Whether we like it or not, that’s because I met Ellen through my brother, who is also a musician. He’s a musician and an artist and a scientist and all of the things in between, Dr Matthew Parker, who also spent some time in Birmingham, we met through him at a Converge gig. So that sets a bit of context for it. But I think that there’s there is also something in this that I find interesting, because throughout this entire experience of creating this podcast, the number of people who I have interviewed that have been involved in user experience design that have very close ties within the music industry, or that sort of like alternative music culture is massive, I’d say it’s probably on like a 90% ratio of the people I’ve interviewed have got some kind of connection, because there’s so many I love it. It’s strange, isn’t it?

So there’s obviously something there’s obviously something there about, I don’t know whether it’s counterculture, because it’s very rarely mainstream music people or into it’s something that’s slightly on the fringes or completely out there, there’s got to be some kind of connection there. So you’re studying English, there’s this sort of love for the art of wordsmithery. And you’re listening to hardcore punk, it’s all about the message. How do you sort of move on from there and find yourself to bridge that gap? So right now, what’s your job title today?

Ellen Gofton

My job title today is I mean, I’m going to rephrase it as UX writing manager, but actually, my official job title is experience writing Manager, which sounds quite wild. I work for John Lewis.

So the John Lewis Partnership, which if you’re not familiar with there is well, John Lewis is probably one of the big support one of the remaining like department stores in the UK. But the partnership as a whole is also responsible for Waitrose, so a supermarket. And we also do finance. So yeah, I’m sold out, man. I work for The Man. I’d say. Yeah, the punky thought of the DIY background is yeah, I completely agree with you. There’s tons of people from music who then worked through and you could probably do like a whole lot. You said a whole chat about why did DIY kids end up in user centred design, and I think that’s a really, really good route. It does, and it still plays out.

So the partnership where I work now, there, has extremely democratic values, it’s built as a partnership. So all the employees own the business. So I feel like I’m still maybe clinging on to it, and I do wrangle. I talked about it really recently with someone else, like I really wrangled with this fact, this duality of growing up and being an extremely, like, righteous thinking I was extremely righteous. I mean, I’m a white girl from Croydon trying to be really right on. And then, at the end of it, I had to get a job. Like I had to sort of go on a path of, Yeah, capitalism, I need a job, I need to pay my rent. So that’s sort of how I fell into the world of content, really. So it was; it sounds really ungracious now. It was a kind of chosen path.

But yeah, I mean, for a long time, I was like, I want to be a music journalist. I was like, I want to write about grimy bands, and go and see bands and maybe run a record label. Turns out music journalism is not the easiest, not the easiest route. And obviously like especially now Thank God, I think I wouldn’t have survived that. So yeah, so when I actually started looking for jobs, the world of online content was mega and was booming.

So there were so many jobs like content editor in the title. And I think it was just being the right place in like 2006 was, which was when I was graduating in 2005 started just in 2006 content was everywhere. So he kind of dictated and sort of made a pass, which obviously now I’m really glad it worked out. But for a while, I was like, oh my god, I’m gonna be churning out weird web content the rest of my life, which was interesting.

Andy Parker

You say that that period of time, is that still classified as sort of like the emergence of web 2.0? I suppose it is, isn’t it? It’s beginning to be commerce and things are starting to move.

The BBC website was like a big deal. Well, you’ve got not too far around the corner. This is really the first of a social media platform, which is now I don’t even know what a collection of bad photos is. But Myspace is not far, not far around from that. And I guess you’ve got all of those other things that came into it, picking up on something that you’ve, you’ve already sort of said, which is about you wrote fanzines, and got involved in music and that kind of way. And I actually had to explain to someone a couple of weeks ago what a fanzine was because I had said the same thing. I was like, Well, you know, I’ve done all of these things in my life. My life hasn’t just been doing this job. And one of those was fanzines. And they were like, what, what’s that, and I was like, well, it’s like a website that you make for yourself. But it’s paper and you use a Pritt-stick, and like to cut out random bits and photocopy them excessively, until they look really bad. And then you kind of pile it all together. And some random person that picked your details off the back of NME, or Kerrang, in the free ads, said that they would send you a stamp so that you could get it.

This sounds wild, what is this?

But there’s again, is that it’s that creative aspect, isn’t it in the artistry, and like you say the tie worked for a whole load of magazines of Rock Sound, and then moving online to things like Drowned in Sound and Pitchfork. And then it was one of the main reviewers for ThrashHits, which was sort of like a splinter off of DrowinedinSound. And yeah, none of us made any money. We barely managed to pay for the servers. And if it’s still up now, it will only be because Hugh, or Raz the guys that are running it, are still paying for it somewhere by accident. Because it was just hard. But that’s all that’s all I did it for. So we all hit that point of needing to get the coin

Ellen Gofton

Also, like I did it for free, like free gig tickets, and you got free CDs, like the number of CDRs or the number of like CDs and like little paper wallets to review. And I remember getting given like a first Arcade Fire album to review and being like, wow, this is great. And all there like other people I was reviewing, obviously, I was into metal, but I was also into weird indie music as well. So like hearing new stuff like that, like bands that are now absolutely huge was like a really, really special time.

But for me, yeah, it wasn’t. It wasn’t sustainable. And it was just we’re not going to be late. It’s late. It’s a labour of love. And I think the thing about doing it is like choosing it as a career path.

And for me, I was very much like I needed to go and get paid for I mean, God, I still like I loved it for so long. But the amount. Yeah, this emergence of social media was such a, like, I was thinking about the other days, I was working for MSN, RIP, just MSN doesn’t exist anymore, does it? But MSN, literally when Twitter launched, I remember going to work and setting up things like MSN shopping, Twitter accounts and stuff like that. And you’re like me trying to explain that to someone who’s under 30. And they’ll be like, Why are you talking about grandma? That meme if they’re telling the grandma and be like, Shut up grandma, and someone holding up doing a training course at MSN and someone holding up like a really, really mean phone. And being like, in the future, everyone’s going to be reading MSN on their phones. And I was like this is nuts when quite often no one’s reading MSN now. But like that emergence, when like, so much was changing so rapidly. And it was just such a Yeah, that was quite a weird time. But it was churning out content for an advertising vehicle. So I mean, it is what it is. But yeah, I wrote a blog or music blog for MSN, MSN Music. So that was a Yeah, it was still fairly creative in my own way that working for Microsoft. So there you go.

Andy Parker

Let’s talk about content design, and specifically content design and UX writing. So we’ve had few people as guests previously who’ve worked within the content space. And when we were talking the other day, it was saying that one of the main things that I feel like we’ve covered 100 times I’m not going to ask you to do again is there what’s the what is content design and what makes it different to come?

Content Strategy and copywriting. There’s this additional element that you introduced here, which is UX writing, which is something that we haven’t really talked about before. What’s the relationship with these terms? Is it a subset of a thing? Is it something that’s very distinct? Is it a particular skill set? Can we compare it to something else? Is it about your work in the content space, and it’s the same as if you’re a UX designer? You might be really good at information architecture, but not so great. Graphic design, that kind of thing? How does it relate?

Ellen Gofton

I think so. Yeah, I think where you’re the way you’re sort of explaining it in relation to UX design is quite a useful way. I think, generally, in the industry. And even within like the content world, they really use like really interchangeably, which leads to quite the, at least maybe a little bit of confusion. And even though I do have technically UX writing my job title now I still can, I think I would consider myself generally more of a content person and I align more closely with content design, whether I can change my job title, that’s a different conversation. But I think UX writing is perhaps more to do with a level of zoom. And maybe it is a subset of activities within content design, where you’re really, really focused on content and copy within a journey. Maybe not necessarily, though, designing the journey at the zoomed out level that the content designer will be.

But then I say that and then typically any UX writer you speak to, I think, will probably tell you, Oh, no, I do the journey design. And I do all the research activities and all this stuff that a Content Designer will do as well. So that’s where it gets really blurry. And actually, the reality will be much more nuanced and much more sort of open to interpretation.

And the thing I really hammer about with UX writing quite a lot, and it is definitely my bugbear at the moment. I think the interpretation of UX writing often, or the perception of it with lots of people you might work with is that UX writing is just about brevity or cutting things down and making things short. And I really am rallying against that hugely at the moment. So it will include style or and grammar and tone of voice and like all those typical content, copywriting things, and accessibility and inclusivity. And that good stuff, it really can get into a really specialised form of usability.

So one, as an example, one conversation I was having this morning was around the use of what’s the word for these words, possessive adjectives? That right so my and yours, you only have no UI, you might have my all over the place. And then some other websites they have excessively used like your labels and things like that. I think a UX writer’s specialism will really come in, what is best? And what’s the right scenario for things like that. So it is generally the more microcopy side of the world. Whereas the Content Designer and content designs, I imagine you’ve spoken to, you probably will tend to be more about much closer to a UX designer, right? They’re much more like, I’m going to do user-centred design, I am just coming at it from the angle of the content. The problem is you look at a job description for a UX writer, and you can look at one for a Content Designer, and they could literally be either as far as like, big companies are concerned could be one or the other. I’m not married to either. I would just say strongly. I’m not a copywriter. But that’s my own bugbear.

Andy Parker

It seems to me like there’s a problem here that is around the term that’s being used is incredibly specific. Writing is a singular form of good content that there’s this great like, acknowledgement that content is a catch all because everything is, yeah, the contents of the thing. Writing is words. We don’t write a picture. We don’t write photographs. We don’t write well, we write the script for a film, but we don’t write a film. So maybe that’s part of the challenge here. Because I think it works in the other direction as well.

There are an awful lot of people who work in content who have really no sense or understanding of mixed media. They do words. Yeah. Which I know is a dirty term for a lot of people but they do words. That’s it there are copywriters that don’t want to admit to being copywriters.

Ellen Gofton

Completely. And it’s really, really hard because you don’t want to correct someone every time they refer to you in a meeting and say, Oh, we’ll get the copywriters involved in your life inside your diet, and you’re like, Oh my God, you’re just ignoring like 90% of what I what I spend my time, a very small part of my day is actually writing. And also the problem with that as well is, obviously everyone can write.

So this is where we really interface with people who will go down the route of like, oh, we could just put some placeholder in there. And then you can have a look later on and you can just tweak it and work your magic and stuff like that, or we don’t want to necessarily go down the AI chat, but like I would just get chat GPT to Ryan, and I appreciate that there’s so much stuff that people can do without involving A UX writer or content designer? It does minimise the role a lot. And I think that’s why lots of content people do get their back up a bit. And it’s trying to have that discussion in a really productive way.

So I’m jokingly saying, like, oh, I don’t want to be called a copywriter. It’s because I feel like that’s not my biggest strength. And I’ve worked with really incredible, like brand copywriters, or people who just really, like, do that stuff at a different level to me, and I am not, I don’t possess quite the same skills. And I always think that’s maybe why I go to the content design side because I love the research and the insight, and that kind of that part of it. That’s why this whole world is like when it opened up to me, and it was emerging, and it was all fresh and shiny, new. I was like, fuck yeah, it’s like this really like resonated so, like so deeply with me.

So I think it’s like, it’s a real like, well, well-told tale that content designers and UX writers, like, we bang this drum all the time. And I think, and I really, I really want to be empathetic with that, because it is, it’s still an issue. It’s still something we come up against. But also, I feel like it’s talked about a lot. So I’m just like, why? Yeah, copyright is no, please don’t call me that. Or be put, like any designer will get it when you say like, can you work your magic on this? And you’re like, just don’t talk about my work. And I don’t think it’s meant with malice. But it comes, it just lands so badly with me.

Andy Parker

Did you think that graphic designers don’t like it when you tell them that you’re dealing with everything, they just need to?

Ellen Gofton

Yeah, it’s hard. It’s so hard, especially the UX Of course, that you still get the view that your job is like we talked about before, like, doing some wireframes with a big X in a box. And that’s a picture and you’re like, Oh my god.

So yeah, but obviously, that education. content design has a job title that has been around for like, I should have looked at the date before we started this conversation. 12 years, maybe 10, 10 to 12 years, let’s say. So it’s still extremely emerging like it’s a new field. So we do have to do an amount of advocacy. And that’s fine. It’s just like, what’s the what’s too much? I just can’t sit in a meeting with a stakeholder who in bad faith is going to say something like, oh, we’ll just get used to the copy at the end. Like, I’m not going to have that conversation.

Also, I’m too old. So I can’t face it. I’m not like No, dude, I don’t I’m not at this stage of my career. I’m like, not going to not going to entertain that, I guess.

Andy Parker

I don’t need to be having those kinds of conversations. Before we talk about the advocacy side of things and that maturity aspect of the job, I wanted to ask you about what kind of the process or the methods that are used, that actually do make it something different to being a copywriter, because that’s where I think the missing link might be. So if I think about UX design and what a UX designer is, and why a UX designer is not an interface designer or a graphic designer, understanding behaviour, and we don’t talk about that anywhere near enough anymore. That’s something I’ve noticed a lot in UX design, particularly in the last year of meeting lots of different people working in UX, no one’s actually talking about human behaviour, which was the whole point in the first place. So it’s that focus on understanding behaviour to be able to create something that matches that behaviour. And then you produce something that you think works. And then you run experiments to see whether you’re right. Is that process and mindset still, within that content design and UX writing? Is that what makes it different to being a copywriter?

Ellen Gofton

Yeah, 100% is exactly that same approach. So I do have to explain what it is for internal stakeholders, which I have on standby in case I need to whip out the presentation. And it always starts with explaining that UX writing is content, which focuses on usability. So we do Yeah, exactly the same activities, more or less, not exactly, obviously, but they’re similar activities around gathering your research gathering your insight, from a content point of view, which I think tends to be like miss understood, not the same misunderstood tends to be sort of like really reduced to let’s look at some competitors and let’s just add our tone of voice and things like that.

But the problem, I think, like being a content zone 2024 is very much like we’re shifting into the world of we have such a great talk about this Yes, they work to do with like trust to do with empathy to, like you said, human bringing it back to being human-centred, will do the same activities, which involve like research, whether it’s like qualitative, doing those interviews with customers, interviews with users, I am a big like I did before I went to have to read books for three years, I did sort of toying with the idea of doing maths.

So I’m a big numbers like quantitative data, and old school analytics like that kind of, I still love that side of it as well. So I will be confident to look at calm content analytics. So we’ll gather all that data, all that insight, the same way a product or a UX designer would, but use it to shape the content experience. So if you have a really excellent content designer, they will be able to not necessarily not an excellent one, could it but like being able to use the same tools as Figma is, like Figma are so much that’s so much more valuable, then, like, for example, working in a Google Doc or working on a copy document. So I’m sort of what we’re doing. I tell you, it could be 90%. And on paper, you could go through the checklist of what a UX designer does. And you could say, oh, yeah, that’s what a content designer does, as well. But yeah, and then testing, like you said, and experimenting with content is actually much more lightweight. I think maybe product managers forget that you can do a lot with content that could have such powerful results. So trying to sort of bring that into it without being like, you have to redesign the whole experience. And you have to change the layout, and you have to like to move everything around. It’s like why you just try two different CTAs. Like that level of experimenting feels so light, that could be so much more powerful. So we really want to advocate for those kinds of experiments, which don’t necessarily need to be heavy going or involve, like, developing lots of development efforts. So it could be much more effective and much more, much quicker as well. One thing that can really come through with content design and with UX writing, is the huge piece around inclusivity. And to do with accessibility, so bad not to talk about that probably, but just like simplifying like simple language, making things accessible to all like simplifying your content is one of the easiest ways you can do that. And a Content Designer.

I think most copywriters are sort of aware, very aware of these principles as well. But a Content Designer will really really advocate for this the plain, not plain English cut as excellent English, Ellen, but it’s a bit like speaking in simple terms, those kinds of things. Speaking writing, as you would speak, for example, those are the activities which a Content Designer will absolutely bring to the table.

Generally, I’d say a copywriter. If you are, for example, in a brand copy team, or marketing or working on the advertising side of things your role is, is really, you take a brief, you create the content, you create excellent copy, you write to the tone of voice, you write to the brief you write achieving all your objectives. But your objectives are really like a sort of self contained thing. You’re not necessarily viewing it as part of a user’s permission. I’m a journalist. Now I’ve come to the John Lewis website to buy a dishwasher. That’s not necessarily on the radar of a copywriter who’s like, well, I’m going to write an excellent piece of editorial about women’s jackets for spring, which by the way, I love reading all that stuff. But like that there, too. Content is just like you sort of mentioned or alluded to earlier, it’s all worse. Yes. And we all work together. And I’ve really tried to create a great relationship with my brand, and creative counterparts because I think it’s really important that you sort of obviously want to align. But yeah, they’re just different. Like, I think that you said it. If we get into the maturity discussion, I think a real sign of user-centred design, UX, whatever maturity is understanding, like, all these different levels of content are quite different things.

And we’re not just like this one big nebulous thing of copy, which then you’re just like, Oh, my God, what a mess. Like you would not say that to a designer. So yeah.

Andy Parker

So what do you think needs to change to be able to move into the next era or the next phase of maturity because you’ve already inadvertently exposed the the siloing that I think is a massive problem, which is, if you go to an agency today, if you were hiring an agency as a company, or even if you were to go and work for an agency as a company, creative is the term that you That’s the agency we use for creative. What the fuck does that mean? Because we’re all creating stuff. So is that it? I know what it means to be derogatory in graphic design. So how do we help, I’ll even throw in there that maybe it’s people that make videos as well. But that’s ultimately what it is. There’s all the other stuff that comes into that. Do these do these, like siloed factions need to start merging together? Because I always think about this with UX design, really. And even within UX design, there’s fracturing now where you reach a certain size of organisation. And I still have it by the way, I’m going to now repeat an analogy that we were talking about the other day, and it’s going to be lost entirely, because I haven’t found the new version yet. This is my Hi Fi separate analogy. So the UX designer is the person who buys the Hi Fi that has a tight, yes, graphic equaliser and a radio and CD player. And maybe it’s got a record player on the top of it, and it’s all one solid box, and it does everything. Okay, maybe it’s got one of those things, that’s really good. And the rest of them are just, they’re good. And then you’ve got this specialism thing where you’ve got graphic designers and stuff like that. And that’s the person that goes and buys a very specific amp and a set of speakers and a record deck and a tape deck and all the rest of it, isn’t that where we are. Now with this, if we’ve got content designers, we’ve got the creatives, we’ve got graphic designers and illustrators, everything else and these are all the specialist components, but we haven’t given it a name for the thing that it all lives in. So they’re all sitting in different bits. And maybe that creates other problems because it sits in different parts of the business. And have you come up with an alternative yet modern? 2024? No,

Ellen Gofton

No, I’m sorry. I’ll try. I’ll think about that. I am the I Am the words here anyway

Andy Parker

This is the only reason I got you here!

Ellen Gofton

I’ll think about it. And I charge you, okay, it’s really fractured. It’s really hard because I think I have to work at really small places where the content manager, an old-school job title, does everything. So you are the SEO copywriter, the brand copywriter, essentially what was like the product copywriter, you do all have it you are the content person. I’m not saying that’s better. But then you go to a big big organisation which has an SEO copywriting team completely separate doing their own thing. And I’m not really speaking to you on product copywriters, which is not a product as in the way we work. So not a product I didn’t have, I’m talking about PDP like I’m going to write the description for an oak table, I spend my day writing descriptions for products, that’s another one, then we have the brands and editorial team, then we have the help customer services team. And then we have like me and my team, that’s like two that’s too fractured. So a massive chat is a huge challenge. And it is obvious that you do the good stuff of trying to create those relationships and build a network and influence where you explain your current situation with your presentation.

And you explain user-centred design and you explain accessibility and you explain why not to use click here and links and things like that to really try and elevate everyone’s experience, or at least we’re trying to join the dots a tiny bit. But you are still fractured, you are still the set roots, and you are still not necessarily operating together as a unit. So yeah, what is the future for? That is in short? I don’t know. I don’t know if I do.

Andy Parker

What would you like it to be?

Ellen Gofton

I think there is a really strong case for bringing it together. If only for efficiency. I am thinking very much in the content space, but having the function which just does not view those things as separate. If nothing else, it will save me time having to Oh, that’s a page that’s maintained by the other team who have access to am and do the editorial stuff. So I have to message them. And also their processes are very different to our processes. So they don’t. Yeah, I think one central world for that stuff is the utopia and is where we’re all living in harmony. But I think that requires that does require such an amount of like investment and sort of unpicking especially in big companies, you really really will have to unpick entrenched ways of working that are perhaps at odds with not at odds with Slack very different to if you’ve been used to working in small agile product teams you work way differently to someone who’s used to getting a briefing for been creating the content.

So yeah, I think there’s a future for that. But it’s really hard, it’s really hard to picture it because I think there’s no, there’s no easy way. And that’s why you end up with situations where companies will go out and bring in an agency or they’ll outsource one part of it, or they’ll do that kind of thing. Because generally, that seemed easier.

The thing I’m really interested in and exploring at the moment, which is a really common thing, content people content designers advocate for is to get invited to projects work at the beginning. So like I said earlier, you don’t want to get there at the end and be like I’ve written, I’ve created this experience. And here’s the lorem ipsum, and you go fill it in. So content design has been banging the drum for a while, give me at the beginning, let me help you shape the experience. The thing I’m working on at the moment is even a step earlier than that. So it’s getting the UX as I am now a UX writer getting myself in, really to like the proposition development stage, the thing you get landed with, I think this is the same for UX designers more broadly. You’ve been you’ve been given a product or you’ve been given a proposition to work with that you’re like, I should have got involved earlier, this does not mean I can’t make sense of something that you’ve created, that still doesn’t quite make sense to me, let alone how am I meant to design this. There’s almost like a level of service designing, even getting UX writers in. That’s where I think the really interesting work is happening now. So involved with proposition development, Proposition naming, actually doing the marketing, the market research, let alone the user research.

So I’m kind of really interested in that space at the moment and how, let alone the content mess that I’ve just referred to let alone like trying to think about that. It’s like, oh, God, how do you even elevate it even further. So basically, I don’t have a solution to the first problem. And I’m making it worse by saying we should be involved in everything.

Andy Parker

That is maybe that is because that is the direction that things need to go in. There’s always an argument or you haven’t been involved in something sooner. And it doesn’t matter where you are at that stage. I know from actually seeing it in very recent times, there are still organisations that are working in a way that I thought everyone had actually stopped working in 15 years ago. And it’s chucking stuff through gated processes thrown over the wall. And yeah, we might call it XP or waterfall, project management, stuff like that. But it’s not it’s it’s a very Laggard way of looking at work as a manufacturing process. And that we don’t actually need to work like that anymore.

If I think back to the times when I was experiencing that firsthand all day, every day, it involved sales teams, pitching endlessly to clients. That would get a graphic designer involved because they wanted some mood boards mocked up and some storyboards and some other stuff and some other assets, collateral that they could go in and try and impress, which again, is why I say it’s just feel so dated, because I can’t believe that people even think about things in that way anymore from the other side of things, when they’re buying. And then when the project, and they have specked out this entire project, including the process and the timelines and everything else. And then UX, your first step, you do all of the things you think you plan a bit. And you look at the what they’ve sold and go, What fucking idiot sold this. So, to address that situation, you then started the same argument that you’ve got right now, which is why I want to go to these pitch meetings because you’re selling us up the river every time you go out the door. Yeah, so that starts to happen. And you just bring problems forward.

So it kind of begs the question as to what’s the deal? What is the problem, we’re businesses at the moment where there’s a failure to actually see the hole, and to recognise the value and benefit of everyone coming together. At the beginning, it might be a case of that you’re not needed full-time, and no one said you were from day one. But that kickoff and working out what you’re gonna do surely, as a business leader, I want everyone’s voice involved. You’re all hired for very specific reasons, because you have a very unique way of looking at something and I want to bring all of those views and voices together, create this big old melting pot of great stuff, so that we’ve got an idea of what to do and then you drop in and out when you need it. I think this is maybe like a business maturity thing. That’s the problem.

Ellen Gofton

Oh, yeah, it really is. Also it’s really hard because I have worked in so many big companies. So I am so familiar with this. So obviously, If you’ve worked places that are like you’re working at a small nimble tech startup you probably have you have different issues right but you have you would not face into this and say right but I have worked in like when I worked for Royal Mail dude that’s like a 500 year old 600 How old is we’re about so old, the oldest company in the world. Not literally, but um, it is. It’s, so it’s not unique to Royal Mail. It’s not extraordinary as though these are big, big companies, we have so many huge teams. So if you have your pocket of design, which we’re very lucky to, we have a great like design community really, really good, great design leaders who really advocate for like, like you said, like elevating the designers and deacons being like you are your expert in your area, you go off into your product teams, you shape, your carved out experience, but your carved out experience is actually relatively quite small and not very defined. And then as soon as you come out of that, and as soon as you step out of that, that’s where the, that is where the problems are.

And we all I’ve had it so many places I’ve worked isn’t necessarily a problem, but you just accept it, because you look around and you think we work this way. Everyone else doesn’t. And as soon as you have that realisation, you’re like, ah, yeah, um, so yeah, it’s about the building, the influence, the building, the influence outside is so important. And it is, I think, having experience of those places is really useful, because I don’t go in and try and fix everything or preach to them or say, like, we work like this, isn’t it great? Come on, and try and like, tell them what to do. Like they’re not going to change for me being like a sort of random imposter into their team.

So I think I will find other ways to cut through. So you have like, I have to build, like I said, I’ve literally spent two years building relationships with a couple of people just to at least create a network so that we know each other and we know how to work together.

Long term. Yeah, how do you take a company and say, we’re going to, like, flip it on its head? Like, that’s, wow, that’s why I don’t get paid seven figures? What is the answer to that? So I think, if you’re confident, and if you can work, like I’ve been working, I’m 40. This year, I keep talking about a lot, because I’m very, I’m talking about it so much, because I’m accepting time just talking.

Andy Parker

Welcome to the club.

Ellen Gofton

Thank you. I keep mentioning it, cuz I’m like, I’m fine. I’m fine with it. It’s great. It’s not I can’t wait. But I think the point is, I’ve been working for long enough I’ve been full time working for the man who sold me out since I was 21. I’ve been working long enough that I’ve built up a level of confidence in getting into conversations or having conversations that otherwise might be shut off to me. And that is obviously acknowledging the level of privilege and a level of light, being able to do that, which obviously is very useful. It’s quite exhausting having to do that. And after a while, if you say the, the example I’m talking about what I’m saying, like I’m trying to get into proposition development, and trying to say like, let me help you shape this thing, because then it will make selfishly or make my job easier in the long run, because I will not have to design something or work on something that unlike the can’t make sense of this. It’s a really important skill to have. But what is the solution? That’s a big question, Andy!

Andy Parker

It’s time, isn’t it? You’ve recognised and described working on relationships. In years, not the last couple of weeks, I’ve been doing this. And I think there’s a recognition of that. I wanted to sort of bring us to a close in the conversation exploring that aspect a little bit. So we previously talked about how, as we have got older, your mindset changes. And there’s a number of I think there’s actually a number of points in that first 20 years of adulthood, where you are given choices, you can decide which direction you want to go in. And I think we all if we’re working within this creative space and and I think it comes from that advocacy element that we have from why do you why do you write a fanzine? Why do you review these albums is because you actually want to share with other people, you want them to see amazing, wonderful things in this world. And to be able to share the excitement that you have for it. And then I think you get into your early 30s And you think I cannot be fucking bothered anymore. And then maybe you get a second wind in your 40s. I’m not sure if that’s true. I haven’t I haven’t hit it yet, but maybe I will. But there’s definitely this sort of mindset shift and I always had this feeling of when I was in my 20s No one’s listening To me, and then you get older, and suddenly it’s like shit, actually, people do listen to you. Wow. So my hypothesis was correct.

We live in this really Broken Ageist society. And now I’m thinking, I really want to, and one of the reasons why I put this podcast together, things have changed over time. But I wanted to give people who were me 20 years ago, platform. I wanted to listen to their ideas, I wanted to give them the opportunities to fail doing things in a different way. So what I did, how does someone like yourself, who’s in in a good position where you’re, you’re building a team, you have people who you can support, you’re there, you’re not necessarily accountable for them, but you want to give them the best opportunities they can to develop and evolve in their own way? How do these things sort of play together? In your mind? What keeps you up at night when you think?

Ellen Gofton

Yeah, it is, it’s a whole nother big question. It’s a really big thing, isn’t it? People? And everyone is always the cheesy lines, like, Why do you come to work? And like, it’s the people. But yeah, it is. And I really value, I mean, I’ve, I think, pets, and personally, I’ve been lucky that I’ve had some really exceptional line managers, who really did shape my understanding of what being a good manager looks like. And I think having spoken to people who’ve had the exact opposite, wow, it makes such a huge impact. It hasn’t been so profound, and you become your model, your model, your role model, the role model of how to behave with your team is really, really dictated by that. So I had such a, I was very lucky in that way. But also, I think, having luck, you can’t really reflect on how to deal with that stuff without thinking about it like the last few years.

So obviously, living through like managing a team through the pandemic was like, so it’s so mind-altering, because literally, well I remember one day, the first day of working from home and that was when I was working for BTS, I had a much bigger teams, I was managing a team of like 10 or 11 content designers, like probably too many. But it became your day to day role was moderately caught, like the pastoral care the having one to ones Yeah, all that that became my life, like literally overnight, like having won tons of people who were not in various different different ways, different reasons, like adapting to this new way of working and really like the new world. So I think acknowledging the shifts that that caused for a lot of people and it’s really accelerated I have a new attitude to remote working work life balance , which for me, anyway, was super important because I am not a hustler. I am not a writer, I’m not a rise and grinder. I am not a careerist at all. So I think the things that the pandemic exposed I was always really kind of like conversely grateful for because I think it really did help. And it’s so bizarre, isn’t it? Like there’s lots of places doing like a mandated return to the office five days a week and a couple of companies in answer this week. I think what I’m trying to get is I wouldn’t I might rotations my team are you really like your job like we work like you said in a really creative space, we were really good people with day to day, a great company who have values I really admire that stuff is all like big tick in my book and I feel extremely lucky. And I want the team to feel that as well.

And I have a very small team but I really want to get them to feel that but also at the end of the day. Like it is a job full stop like end of sentence like it is not your life I do not live to work and I appreciate like other people might have different views and they are much more like motivated by like the grind and watching the tech talks about how to hustle and make a million pounds like fine but I think just like having that mindset shift and thinking like having someone really model that behaviour will hopefully help them really focus on the shit that matters. So like I mean, I had a child during the pandemic so I may like to wake up moment or shift in terms of like ah, like this fog the world is bad hang happens so quickly like it was it was intense.

So I think then returning to work, post pandemic with a small child, you’re shifted, and then you turn 40 And you just think God is just a job. I don’t like yeah, I say that we’ve done Yes back to do kind of mean it.

Andy Parker

But you didn’t, at some point you didn’t do this, this is what I keep checking myself on, I think I’ve hit the same kind of point now. Because I just think back to the experiences that I’ve had where I’ve stayed in a job, or longer than I should have done. And that has ended up meaning that the relationships within that company because it’s like, say, companies or people you’re with people that you work with, I don’t think this is true today. But it was three years ago, or 2019, it was very true. You spend more time at work with complete random people than you do with anybody else in your life. It was really important, and you created meaningful relationships. I have friends today, I don’t have friends from school, but I do still have friends that I talked to quote someone last night, I worked with five years, best fucking five years ever, because of working with them, not necessarily the company that I was at. And that’s gone. For people who are leaving school where they have heard that, okay, they might not have had it in the last few years, where you go somewhere every day, and you spend time with people. And I do think that is something to raise a flag on and say, We were about to say, like socially, and communally damage. Young people, whilst I’m not totally sure on the whole mandate in the office, why not? When did we suddenly decide that we were so fucking privileged that we get to decide where we were.

So I think there’s a balancing act to have. And there’s something that you said the other day when we were talking about mindfulness that the idea of like mindfulness or mind being a mindful leader is seen on a number of occasions during the pandemic, April, having a really hard time. And not just because of all of those environments, all those things going on. But because they were quite happy with their life, living with their four friends, where they all went to work, and they started their careers together. And it was very exciting to go to the pub on a Friday. And now they were day in day out literally fighting for bandwidth to be able to work. I think it made me realise, again, as an older person, yeah, actually offices have a really important role. And whether you want to call it the grown-up cresh or something else, I think there is a need for that. Because otherwise we’re going to end up with just complete social ineptitude. Just not going to understand how to function with other people in a room.

Ellen Gofton

I think the key is choice. So I think the key is flexibility. So I strongly disagree with mandated five days, especially if mandated returns to an office, which is not fit for purpose. So you have your like really old office, we have crappy internet, like worse internet than at home. And then there’s not enough coffee machines. There’s not enough desks like that. That is that’s been honours, and you’ve got to pick up and drop off and pick up and make dinner. But people with multiple kids like wow, hard, okay, and responsibilities or different axes means that it’s really tough. But yeah, choice like, why not have choice? Why not have flexibility?

The choice is the answer that you said, there’s people in our team who are like the majority, our team is sort of probably around 30 or 30 years old, they would tell us coming in two, three days a week. That’s what I mean, it seems to work really excellently as a balance between Fridays in our office is dead. So you would not go anywhere near on a Friday. But yeah, I think that’s the key. And the thing with them, the communities, creating the community, and like really, like helping nurture that is definitely not just going to come from being in the office, though. So I think impersonation is essential. So I do hear you on that. Because since joining John Lewis, there’s an I joined Yeah, two years ago.

So post pandemic, obviously, there are certain relationships that I’ve really spent time with, and people with face to face, but there’s tons that I haven’t. So we’re actually proactively creating things in person. Because I have not as a group, like as a cohort, we haven’t really spent some time together. So yeah, I think acknowledging that culture and community isn’t just by default, I think lots of people just think, oh, it just happens magically. And you have some nice people and it’ll just like, randomly appear. So really being quite intentional in like, what does that How is that created?

Andy Parker

You’ve got to be part of it. And again, I think This is brings us into a nice full circle. I think these are the things which I still take from my teenage years and my early adult life of working in a music venue booking events and stuff, you know…

Ellen Gofton

Andy this is so beautiful. This is like such a good tie.

Andy Parker

That whole sort of point was, I remember, so I don’t know whether I’ve ever talked about it in great detail on the show or not, it doesn’t really matter. I’ve worked for a music venue in my nearby town, which is The Forum in Tunbridge Wells.

Ellen Gofton

Wow! What a venue

Andy Parker

the thing that was drummed into me by them at the age of 18. Actually 17 was when I first started working there was that DIY ethos, if you want to build it, if you want something to happen, make it happen. No one does anything for you. And that applies to everything. So I take that I still have a very strong core value of mine. So if I go into a new organisation, I am going to be the first person who says Oh, where do you live? Okay, yeah, so you live nowhere near the place that we work at either called Where shall we meet? Let’s do it doesn’t because I don’t think it’s about the it’s not the destination so much, right? It’s not like a business is not that building is the people so the people could be anywhere. So let’s find a place to go and meet up. Let’s go to Hackney and sit in a coffee shop and work together for the afternoon. Whatever.

And maybe that’s where the future of work comes from is actually being a little bit more proactive and thinking about the fact that it’s not where you’re going it’s who you’re going there with.

Ellen Gofton

Just so beautiful. I don’t know how to follow that as it converges. Yeah. Yeah, I’m Yeah, I am 100 a people person. I always like to spend time chatting to people and chatting about nonsense and stuff like that. So I think yeah, it’s also about finding your people. Yeah, isn’t it so you find if you’ve got like a natural curiosity, or a natural or like inquisitiveness, you will just like try and find those connections and like creating that network that is 100% and Ian Mackay DIY like that. Is it like you find your people

Andy Parker

all the way through I’ve been trying to avoid saying his name.

Ellen Gofton

Yeah! Ian Mackay, you were mentioned on a UX podcast!

Andy Parker

Yeah, you still can’t buy a Fugazi t-shirt but you’ve made it onto The UX Coach podcast. Congratulations.

Ellen Gofton

Oh, you should make merch! There you go. Ah, genius. We’re gonna do some photoshopping after this! I feel really strong about the photo I said before when I did it. And then like every day like finding your people. He might not necessarily be like, necessarily your peers are my bit nursery, be the people with huge influence, like you create. I always try and like to create small pockets of networks. Because like I said to you, when we did our first intro chat, I intentionally have music posters behind my camera, like behind me so that if someone happens to comment on it, I’m like, yes, let’s talk about music.

But it doesn’t have to be music. Like I used to chat with someone else about the other day like you find a person that’s really into drag race, another huge passion of mine. And then you’re like, oh, we have a Slack channel. Do you want to join our private Slack channel about drag races? I’m like, yes. So yeah, I yeah, I like, I mean, I have a big group of friends that I don’t necessarily spend enough time with outside of work. So I’m not saying like your work. People have to be your besties. Like, for real? Definitely don’t if you don’t want to, but yeah, I want to. I want to make those connections. And I think you’re right, that totally comes from, like, DIY, because you, just like you said, you end up meeting random people or meeting a band who’s on tour from nowheresville America, and you’re like, I’ll come and sleep on my floor in my house in Birmingham. Looking back, I’m like, that’s not very safe, is it?

Andy Parker

thank you for listening once again to the UX Coach podcast. This is the last time You’ll here for me for a while because my life has taken a pivot that I was not expecting. But wait to unsubscribe. There are plans afoot for some new voices to take the mic and continue to share people’s journey through careers in digital and whatever comes next in this post-AI bubble.

And, of course, until then, you can always find me at UX coach.com, where you can go back through the archive of the last four years worth of episodes and fascinating interviews with wonderful people from all over the world.