Leading UX content strategy for Samsung’s native design system
In 2015, Samsung was the leading mobile device provider in the world. It was known for cutting-edge technology and beautiful designs. But, it had a problem. Its UX content was dry and technical.
I was approached to lead content strategy for Samsung’s UX Innovation Team and develop the design system guidelines that would be applied across all mobile devices and regions. This work was ultimately released to hundreds of millions of devices across globe.
Role: UX content strategy lead
Scope: Create a vision for Samsung’s mobile device content strategy, develop over 200 pages of design system documentation, and train/mentor a team of content strategists
Audience: Users of Samsung mobile devices across all regions
Constraints: Limited ability to influence visual designs, collaborators spread across time zones, and a rapidly changing team roster
Goal: Deliver a cohesive content strategy across all of Samsung’s devices, apps, and regions
Exploring the problem space
We started with a content audit. I worked with the project team to document all of Samsung’s content and identify opportunities for improvement.
Key findings
Inconsistent voice that didn’t speak directly to the user
Overly wordy and technical content
Design patterns that led to repetitive content
Poorly written empty and error states
Bland adjectives and verbs
The three keys for our strategy
For our strategy to succeed we couldn’t just iterate on the old way of doing things. We needed to look outward and inward to find a path to success.
Our users
We interviewed users across the United States, Latin America, and Asia to understand their attitudes toward mobile UX content. This allowed us to build empathy, confirm assumptions, and learn new lessons.
Our competitors
We performed an in-depth analysis of competitor UIs, design systems, and style guides. Through this exercise we identified how leading brands, like Apple, created such effective content.
Our differentiators
Finally, we reviewed Samsung’s customer research to understand why they were loyal to Samsung. These differentiators were critical for developing our design principles and strategic guidelines.
Creating our content strategy principles
Concise
Provide essential information in a few words, while avoiding repetition.
User-friendly
Use a conversational tone and relevant examples to clearly communicate concepts.
Engaging
Speak directly to the user and focus on their goals.
Intuitive
Communicate the right information, in the right place, at the right time.
Developing and testing our guidelines
After several months of work, we had developed over 200 pages of content strategy guidelines, but they were largely untested. I acted as UX writer for Samsung’s 20+ mobile apps and put our content strategy guidelines to the work in each one.
This was critical to our success. A calculator is wildly different from a health tracker, both in terms of subject matter and content, but the experiences had to feel cohesive. We quickly learned which ideas worked well across apps and which ones didn’t.
Being iterative made identifying the true opportunities for impact possible. This helped us to remove guidelines and patterns that didn’t improve the overall experience.
Settings menus
Before
Samsung’s settings menus tended to use very passive, technical sentences. In this particular case, the content could even be considered alarming.
After
We updated the style to focus on the actions each setting would help the user take and we simplified the overall content.
Confirmation modals
Before
The old confirmation modal style was difficult to scan, confusing, and used the passive voice.
After
The updated confirmation modal style uses a heading to enhance scannability and make the primary action clear.
Error states
Before
The original error modals used negative language and clunky instructions. They were informative, but didn’t enhance the user’s experience.
After
Our new error modal focuses on the solution and makes it the primary action. This empowers the user and reduces the friction they experience.
Progress indicators
Before
The original progress indicator including repetitive content and tended to be too technical.
After
Our updated progress indicator eliminated the unnecessary heading and used more conversational content.
Delivering a scalable design system for all Samsung devices
From start to finish, this project took nearly two years. But, it’s impact was huge. The Galaxy S6 proved to be one of Samsung’s best selling devices (exceeding 70 million units sold) and this was just one of the devices to carry our new content strategy.
My work on this project resulted in conversational content that aligned with Samsung’s brand and differentiated it from the competitors. By developing more concise content, I reduced the cognitive load and friction of billions of user interactions. Most importantly, I delivered a strategy that empowered Samsung’s entire UX team to deliver better experiences to its global customer base.
Key outcomes
Led research and synthesized results into personas and content strategy principles.
Developed UX content for all native Samsung apps.
Created 100+ pages of style guide documentation (content strategy principles, grammar and spelling, writing for each design pattern, localization, and references).
Wrote a 90+ page terminology guide to ensure terms are used consistently throughout the experience.
Trained a team of content strategists to effectively use these new guidelines.
Contact me
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I’m always interested in building my network, learning about projects, and exploring new opportunities.