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03.03.2026 19:47
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The Conservative proposal to cut 100,000 university places uses loan repayment data as proof degrees lack value. It isn't. It measures the funding model we chose.
medium.com/@richprowse/...
#UKPolitics #HigherEducation #CreativeIndustries
In my first Content Design Academy post, I explain why content design exists and how content became the service.
contentdesign.london/blog/why-con...
#ContentDesign #UXWriting #ProfessionalDevelopment
Maturity models give organisations a score. They don't tell you what teams actually need or where to focus support.
New post on a different approach to assessing digital capability, borrowed from youth sport.
sensemakers.xyz/assessing-di...
#ContentDesign #DigitalCapability #Leadership
Most content audits tell you what's wrong. They don't tell you why.
New post on why sampling with intent, like ice core drilling, reveals more about your content problems than cataloguing every page ever could.
sensemakers.xyz/youve-been-a...
#ContentStrategy #ContentDesign #ContentAudit
A laptop screen displaying the cover slide for a Content Design Academy course. The slide has a bold red background with white text reading "Content strategy: leading change" and the tagline "Skills for the real world".
Let's do this! Day one of Content Strategy: Leading Change. Over a decade in the making, bringing together everything I've learned from building digital capability. It feels good to finally share it.
#ContentStrategy #ContentOps
Infographic showing 3 panels: The 4 forces of content (people, process, practice, technology), why traditional content strategies fail by describing content rather than changing structures, and what to do instead. Lead change and build capability across the 4 forces to create shared content capabilities and seamless user experience.
Trying something different—an infographic.
A simple idea I keep coming back to: content strategies fail when they focus on describing better content rather than changing what produces it.
#ContentStrategy #ContentOps #Leadership #ChangeMaker
A smiling bald man with a grey and white beard takes a selfie indoors. He wears a light grey t-shirt featuring a cartoon illustration of two superhero characters: Content Strategy Boy, a boy wearing glasses, a cap and a cape with arms crossed, and the Luminator, a black cat. Both characters are hovering in the air. The background shows a softly lit room with white curtains.
Special delivery! I love turning an illustration into a tee, and I couldn't resist with Content Strategy Boy and Luminator the cat. 🦸🏻♂️🐈⬛
BTS: I drew the original Content Strategy Boy character and use GenAI to help speed up production so I can keep these strips coming regularly.
Content Strategy Boy sits calmly at his desk, working on his computer. He says, 'Almost there...' with a slight smile. A cat sleeps peacefully on the office chair beside him.
Close-up of a computer monitor displaying a spreadsheet titled 'TRUNQD INC. CONTENT AUDIT' in Google Sheets. The spreadsheet shows a column of URLs.
Content Strategy Boy sits at his desk with both arms raised triumphantly in the air, a huge smile on his face. He exclaims, 'I'M DONE!' The cat wakes up.
A female colleague stands beside Content Strategy Boy, who sits at his desk with his head buried in his hands in despair. The colleague says, 'Perfect timing, the CEO just bought three competitors’ websites.' A cat buries its head.
Comic title panel: 'The Adventures of Content Strategy Boy: The Audit'. Content Strategy Boy, wearing glasses, a backwards cap, and a jumper with the letter C, runs through a chaotic office. Papers fly through the air as a giant, menacing spreadsheet with an evil grin looms behind him. A startled cat runs away. The office has desks, monitors, and stacks of papers.
Happy Thursday! Content Strategy Boy is back and facing every content auditor's worst nightmare...
#ContentStrategy #ContentOps #Content
The monster taught me that measuring the problem isn't the same as solving it. My content monster: 160,000+ pages at the University of Bath. We spent 6 months auditing the entire website. My team was amazing. The devs built us a custom tool. We documented everything. And we proved what everyone suspected: too much content, too little resource, 84% of pages not updated in over a year. For the first time, we could articulate the problem with evidence. Leadership listened. We gained traction. Then we realised the audits were already out of date. Six months of work. Obsolete before we'd finished. And we still had 160,000 pages of duplicated, outdated content that nobody was reading. Here's what I should have done instead: identified user needs, designed content that actually mattered, developed it. Let the old stuff rot. Because measuring a problem feels productive. It feels like progress. But it's not the same as solving it.
Content Strategy Boy in a cape marked with 'C' hovering triumphantly above the vanquished Rot Monster. The Rot Monster is composed of a pile of papers and documents with a menacing face featuring sharp teeth and glaring eyes.
Question: What's your content monster? The one you defeated, or the one you're currently fighting? And what made the difference?
#ContentStrategy #ContentDesign #UXWriting #Content
A collage of slides and photographs showing content strategy course materials, including definitions of content strategy, diagrams of the four forces (people, process, practice, and technology), hand-drawn sketches on whiteboards, presentation slides about content as service, and photos of meetings and workshops.
Pulling a decade of lessons into a new strategy course. What actually works when leading content change (and what doesn't).
The messy middle is where real work happens. Maybe I can save you some three-hour meetings.
contentdesign.london/shop/content...
#ContentStrategy #ContentOps #Content
Most content strategies fail because documentation can't change how organisations create content.
The problem: we focus on describing good content rather than creating the conditions to make it.
sensemakers.xyz/why-content-...
#ContentStrategy #ContentOps #Content
BTS:
I designed the original Content Strategy Boy character. GenAI helped me bring the idea to life by allowing me to take the character and rapidly generate a world around him to tell stories. Work that would normally have taken at least a week.
Panel 2: Meeting room at TrunQd Inc. Content Strategy Boy presents a content strategy to an enthusiastic team around a conference table. Team members exclaim: 'Brilliant!', 'Finally!', 'This is exactly what we need!', 'Brilliant!
Panel 3: Open-plan office. A colleague sits at their desk thinking, 'The website is a mess. No one knows what they're doing' whilst Content Strategy Boy and other colleagues work around them, unaware of this concern.
Panel 4: Six months later. Someone pulls a dusty, cobweb-covered 'Content Strategy' binder from a neglected shelf, saying 'Oh yeah, we had a strategy...' as colleagues work nearby.
Panel 5: The same meeting room. Content Strategy Boy stands at the front, face-palming in frustration. Behind him, the presentation screen displays an elephant logo. The team talks around the table: 'We really should create a content strategy', 'This is a mess!', 'I thought we had a strategy?' Content Strategy Boy responds sarcastically: 'Yeah, we really need one of those...
I created Content Strategy Boy a while back, and this morning I finally gave him a story to tell. If you've ever worked on a content strategy, you might recognise this one. Hope it brightens your Tuesday!
#ContentStrategy #ContentDesign #ContentOps
Most designers ask: should I push back or let it go? Better question: which disagreements actually serve users? New essay with 3 questions to help you decide when to disagree, when to test, and when to concede.
sensemakers.xyz/knowing-whic...
#ContentDesign #StakeholderManagement #UX
I recently spoke about the importance of involving domain experts. This MIT report calls it the "GenAI Divide"—95% failure rate when you build without the people who understand the work. The fix? Stop treating AI like a tech project.
mlq.ai/media/quarte...
#ContentDesign #ContentStrategy #GenAI
Excited to be running our Working with GenAI course this Wednesday alongside Clare Reucroft. A few last-minute places still available – join us!
A graphic with the words "Build skills in content design and UX writing, content strategy and GenAI."
The secret’s out — our Winter Content Design Academy starts in January! Early bird pricing is live (but you didn’t hear that from me). 😉 contentdesign.london/courses
#GenAI #ContentDesign #UXWriting #ContentStrategy #ContentOps #MIMO
Still time to register for Digital Leaders AI Week! I’ll be speaking at 3:30 pm (UK time) about why your content team is the key to GenAI success.
aiweek.digileaders.com/talks/why-yo...
#ContentDesign #ContentStrategy #GenAI
We've built the Content Design Academy - a pathway from fundamentals to leadership. Standalone courses that stack as you grow. GenAI woven throughout. Small groups, hands-on practice, no videos.
More: contentdesign.london/blog/introducing-the-content-design-academy
#ContentDesign #GenAI
Content designers aren't writers. They can spot when a process needs redesigning—not just better copy. If we only ask them to write, we’ll miss these solutions.
sensemakers.xyz/content-desi...
#ContentDesign #ContentStrategy #UXWriting
Adrián Ortega stands at a wooden podium with vertical slats, holding a microphone and speaking to an audience. Behind him is a large screen displaying "Small actions, long ripples: Design as care and quiet change" along with speaker details. The audience members are seated at tables, with several people visible from behind listening to the presentation.
Yesterday's first Content Conversation in Cardiff was brilliant! Amazing to see so many passionate about the messy middle to create products that work for people. Big thanks to our speakers, attendees, and my team who organised it. Can't wait for next! 🎉 #ContentDesign #ContentStrategy #UXWriting
A view from the roadway of a cable-stayed bridge with two tall concrete towers and numerous white suspension cables radiating outward against a cloudy grey sky. The road stretches ahead with white lane markings and metal barriers on either side.
On my way to @contentdesign.london’s first Content Conversations in Cardiff.
Excellent lineup of speakers. Looking forward to some honest talk.
(And yes, that’s the Prince of Wales Bridge. Sometimes the journey to events is worth documenting too.)
#ContentDesign #ContentStrategy #UX #UXWriting
Content problems are organisational problems in disguise.
To fix bad content, don't start with the content.
sensemakers.xyz/the-worst-ke...
#ContentStrategy #SystemsThinking #UserExperience
We've turned GenAI into the ultimate binary debate.
While we're shouting about extremes. The real work— thoughtful implementation, actual user impact— gets drowned out.
My latest essay explores why binary thinking is dangerous and offers a way.
sensemakers.xyz/the-battle-o...
"Here's to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They're not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can't do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do." — Steve Jobs
I've been thinking about this quote today. Sometimes when the work feels hard, it's worth remembering you're in good company.
Just launched Sensemakers, a new essay series on Medium.
If you work in the messy middle (between what organisations think their users want and what they actually need), this is for you.
medium.com/sensemakers/...
#Leadership #UX #ContentStrategy #ContentDesign #UXWriting