Five years ago, I started this blog (turned portfolio) because it was a means of documenting my thoughts. It didn’t matter what I wrote about, as long as I did. One of the most powerful lessons I’ve learned as a writer is to not dwell on the topic, especially if it has been talked about by other people. Instead, there will always be someone out there who wants to hear it from you. Even if that person is myself. That’s why I write.

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UX writing is much more than filling in the blanks. Writers collaborate closely with design, product, business, data, research, marketing, compliance, and legal to address user pain points while simultaneously hitting business targets. In order to do so, writers ensure that customer-facing messaging meets the fundamentals of effective UX writing.
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I’ve been with American Express as a UX writer for six months. Being a UX writer has been both exciting and challenging. I love what I do because I’m working on interesting products with smart and supportive colleagues who help me grow. But advocating for a relatively new practice within design doesn’t come easy.

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I always say, “The less words you want, the more time I need.” This gets to the heart of user experience (UX) writing: in order to be thoughtful and provide value to users, words need careful attention from the very beginning of the product development process. The spotlight is shining brightly on UX writing as an important specialist skill and I’d like to share a glimpse of my process as an integral part of a design team. (more…)

When I moved to Southeast Asia in late 2012 to teach overseas, one of the requirements of my training program, LanguageCorps, was to learn the local language. I decided to base myself out of Vietnam so I spent two weeks learning Vietnamese to build empathy for the students I would be teaching. During this process, my teacher encouraged me to take notes and reflect on what I feel, what I learned, and surprising insights.
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Every couple of months, I do a “life audit” to check in with myself. I evaluate what’s working and what’s not and then reset. I’ve learned that integrating small habits have made the biggest impact over time. I used to think that in order to have major breakthroughs in life, I need to make big lifestyle changes. In reality, any attempt to do so has been more discouraging. I’d like to share how 10 small habitual changes have made a big impact on my life.

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