Coming soon:

• Button watch party, May 8: Hosting Storytelling in content design by Alli Mooney

• UX Lisbon, May 20-23: Leading the Product Voice workshop and speaking: Patterns for Faster, Cheaper, Better UX Text

Finds

Do you worry about AI? I keep telling you not to, but I don’t mean “nothing’s going to change.” Change has even been good: 10 years ago, content design didn’t exist as a career path (even though some of us were doing it already.)

What I mean is much closer to the viewpoint in this article: Stop Pretending AI Won’t Replace Your Content Work: It Already Has by Adrie van der Luijt.

You probably already use LLM-based features if you write documents, emails, or message with your friends. Autocorrect is AI. Grammar check is AI.

And now, AI is available to speed up our first drafts and our repetitive work. But I love that part! Writing that first draft is where most of my thinking gets done. I like to think that I’ve burned out my ability to fear the blank page; the blank page should fear me! 🤣

Which is to say: The tool’s existence doesn’t mean we have to use it all the time. Nor do we have to use it the same way. I am learning how it can enhance my work (in balance with the exorbitant resources it uses), and the many ways in which it can’t.

I hope this article helps you, too. If you’re struggling with adapting to the pervasive changes that LLMs are making in our professional lives, you’re not alone.

I’m not saying “get over it.” Instead, I’m saying the earth has shifted, and we will still dance upon it.

Flexes and fumbles

I’m so thrilled that registration is open for Button 2025. This isn’t my flex—I’m not involved in programming—but WOW, what a lineup this is. I can’t wait to see these talks and participate with the community, discussing these ideas.

And honestly, for once I don’t have much to report from either the flex or fumble extremes. I’m working with a few terrific clients. My co-authors and I turned in the draft of the first half of UX Skills for Business Strategy, and I’m working through technical review comments and suggestions for the second edition of Strategic Writing for UX.

Which reminds me to say out loud: I am booking new work to start in September (when the majority of book work is complete)! If you can use my expertise, I’m here to provide it. Email me or set up a 30-minute meeting, and we’ll discuss what I can do for you.

Philosophy

In a recent mentoring session, I brought up the idea that being a fellow traveler is one of the fundamental good things we humans can do.

I’ve been musing on this a lot lately. We go through our lives in our separate bodies and minds. When we focus on that separation, it’s easy to get lonely.

There’s a lot of money to be made in getting people to focus on their separate bodies and minds, and then capitalizing on the loneliness it helps to create.

Advertising has played on this for years, getting us to buy products and services to make our individual bodies more healthy, pure, and attractive.

Social media took it even further, not only with the focus on the individual body but on our minds: making each of us smarter than the other, according to our own individualized, algorithmically governed feeds.

I’m a lot happier when I remember that I’m only alone in this one body, in this one mind. Everywhere else, I’m in close community with the people nearest me in time, space, and internet.

I can choose to ignore that I am together with all these other people (and corporations would love me to do that, and spend more money to compensate), or I can recognize that I am always traveling my own path in the company of others.

And when I’m too tired to travel, or have too much work to do by myself, I can still be a friend to [hu]man[kind].

Hire Catbird Content

When I can help you or your team, please get in touch.  

• Design consulting: Solve problems with adoption, onboarding, usage for products and services, and design process and skill alignment for teams.

• Training & facilitation: Keynotes and other presentations, plus hands-on workshops in UX content, visioning, naming, and team building.

• Mentoring: I work with individuals to focus their own career development, including navigating change, constraints, careers, and more.

• Open office hours (free!) I hold 2 hours a week open on my calendar to connect with people who don’t have business with me, but just want to talk.

I write these newsletters myself, and I stand by what’s in them. If you have kudos, concerns, or questions, please tell me. —Torrey