Three content strategy initiatives

I build content design practices from the inside out: scale, voice, and emotion.

THE CHALLENGE

Before this work, cross-functional partners came to content designers for everything from minor spelling conventions to complex content strategy questions. Tone wasn't meaningfully built out in Intuit's Content Design System, and there was no guidance on empathy.

Every content question, large or small, required a content designer. That's not a practice—that's dependency.

INITIATIVE 1: A SCALABLE OPERATING MODEL

I implemented a tiered operating model that allowed me to effectively support an entire team of product designers, without becoming a bottleneck. Projects were classified as low- or high-touch based on content complexity and risk.

Low-touch: after initial training, teammates would self-serve using AI-powered tools, Slack channel assistance, and content resources, enabling them to resolve the majority of their needs independently, with office hours for guidance.

High-touch: reserved for complex, high-impact content challenges. This was more of the traditional content design role in which I was embedded in the project team to provide deep design help where expertise was genuinely needed.

INITIATIVE 2: TONE

I led a team of content designers through workshops to define how tone should be understood and deployed across QuickBooks products. The output became the tone section of Intuit's Content Design System.

A central artifact was the Tone Spectrum, a visual framework I created that maps tone from emotional to functional across content types. It's a practical, at-a-glance tool for confident, consistent tone decisions.

INITIATIVE 3: EMOTIONAL DESIGN

I led the addition of an Emotional Design section to the Intuit Content Design System, a framework that foregrounds customer empathy and pushes back against corporate marketing-speak.

This wasn't just a style preference. It defined what kind of company Intuit wanted to be in its relationship with customers.

SELF-SUFFICIENCY AT SCALE

~75% of content needs were self-serve

INSTITUTIONAL INFLUENCE

Tone and Emotional Design sections are a part of Intuit’s Content Design System

UNIFIED VOICE

Built tone and emotional design language that unified content across cross-functional teams

REFLECTION

These three initiatives represent different expressions of the same belief. Content design's greatest impact doesn't come from the individual review—it comes from creating systems that make every review impactful.

Emotional Design gives the why. Defining tone gives the what. The operating model gives the how—and the confidence to act.