A few highlights. For more in-depth case studies, please reach out.
Content design & strategy
UX content design, Quest for Business
Meta | 2023 - now
I’m designing content for web & in-headset experiences that make it easy for organizations to use AR & VR for training and education.
UX content design, Messenger app
Meta | 2020 - 2023
I led UX content for multiple teams reimagining core mobile app surfaces & experimenting with new ways to chat across Messenger, Instagram, and other Meta products — reaching billions of active users around the world.
Working closely with PMs, designers, researchers, engineers, lawyers, marketers, and translators, I got to promote features, educate users, label tabs, establish terminology, test messages, update styles, protect integrity, align stakeholders, and even name a few ringtones.
UX writing & content strategy for brand systems
Indeed | 2017 - 2020
As a content strategist on the centralized brand systems team for the world’s #1 job site, I focused on brand expression across the in-product experience.
I led the development of voice & tone guidelines and the first UX content style guide in support of a major brand refresh. I provided content strategy for Indeed's first design system, developed foundational strategy for the Indeed.Design brand site, and led a collaborative process to craft Indeed’s first design principles with input from nearly 100 UX team members across offices in Austin, San Francisco, Seattle, and Tokyo.
eBay billboard campaign
eBay | 2017
An unexpected twist left the Global Brand team at eBay with just a couple of weeks to deliver in-house creative for a nationwide billboard campaign celebrating the things people most love about online shopping.
I partnered with a copywriter and visual designer to create a flexible content system that could scale across hundreds of placements, from skinny subway-car placards to massive vertical billboards.
The final product appeared on hundreds of surfaces across the country, from San Francisco to Times Square.
Design research & strategy for a community nonprofit
Experience Institute & Sweet Water Foundation | 2017
As a fellow with the Experience Institute, I joined a design team to consult with the Sweet Water Foundation in Chicago.
Over the course of a 2-day design sprint, we interviewed staff and stakeholders at this incredible community-based urban agriculture facility to understand key pain points and ares for improvement.
We learned that powerful stories of transformation — the kind that inspire donors to give — were getting lost. We prototyped tools to help members of the community more effectively capture and share their stories in support of fundraising, and delivered strategic recommendations for improving messaging and outreach.
Naming a storytelling startup
Naming for Earshot | 2016
Rebecca and Vince launched their startup with a powerful vision: build community and change lives through storytelling. What they didn’t have? A name.
After a summer of conversations and brainstorms, we landed on a name that speaks to the magic of people gathering close to one another to share what makes them human.
Speaking, writing, and teaching
Gen AI & the Question of Human Creativity
University teaching for University of San Francisco | Spring 2024
I’m currently co-teaching a 15-week interdisciplinary seminar for students in the USF Honors College. The students and I are experimenting with new AI tools and polishing our prompting skills — while also unpacking the contemporary media hype cycle and asking some big philosophical questions. We’re engaging critically with the history of the idea of creativity, learning to recognize recurring patterns in media discourse about new technology, and poking holes in big question: Will the robots take our jobs?
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Crafting Design Principles
Workshop design & facilitation for Button conference | October 2023
Great product design work is rooted in strong principles, clearly articulated. Creating those principles is a challenging process that calls for expertise in design, writing, and facilitation. I believe content designers are perfectly suited to lead this impactful work, so I developed a 3-hour workshop for Button, a flagship content design conference, and had a blast leading 2 sold-out sessions at their 2023 event.
Testimonials
“Michael was fabulous. So prepared with his Figma stuff. I really enjoyed the mix of theoretical/exploratory discussion alongside hands-on experience in break-out groups. Extremely helpful! I know I will refer back to these materials again.”
“Michael was fantastic and I am really glad I attended this Workshop… This workshop has clarified a lot of things I wish I knew sooner in my career.”
Content Design in, for, and of Design Systems
Blogging & speaking for Indeed.Design | 2019
Working with Indeed’s Design System team, I mapped out various ways content design could support the goals of a new system site — and how the design system could promote quality content across company products. This thinking helped us internally, so we decided to share it publicly. The article received more than 8,000 views, becoming one of the most successful posts on Indeed.Design and leading to a conference presentation at Content Strategy Applied.
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