Learn@Lunch: How UX content strategy helped Google mobilise a global workforce
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Mobilising Google’s remote-work efforts during Covid-19
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When the Covid-19 pandemic hit, Google suddenly faced the need to enable tens of thousands of employees around the world. Suddenly, the company had to mobilise its global workforce to get up and running with the right equipment, remote access, and work setup—for a broad variety of employee types and roles, including engineers with sophisticated tech setups.
The Core UX content strategy team works on the user experience of Google’s employee tools, including the company’s internal search engine, tech support platforms, HR tools, and financial and legal systems. Content strategy, made up of UX writing and user documentation writing, is still a fledgling role on the UX team: there aren’t many of us, and we’re still educating partners on how to integrate our work into existing processes.
But when Covid-19 hit, content strategy was thrust into a prominent role when we had to quickly launch a major content program to communicate rapidly changing conditions, policies, and tips. We’ll share what we learned about maintaining content quality and governance, asserting influence and balancing political sensitivities, and trying to simplify and streamline information in a corporate culture where everyone overcommunicates.
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About Stacey
Stacey King Gordon has been a UX content strategy manager at Google for one year and manages a team of content strategists focused on building products for HR, finance, legal, marketing, data, facilities, and physical security. Before Google, she worked in content strategy at Facebook for four years, ran a content strategy consultancy called Suite Seven for seven years, and has worked as a marketer, brand manager, web creative, and journalist. She lives in Oakland, California, USA, with her husband, teenage daughter Maddie, and very fluffy black Lab puppy Winston.