Content designer & creative writer

Me

Content design for Skyscanner. I keep flights copy in the air and train messaging on the right tracks. (Yeah, we do trains too.)

Previously: UX writing for UserTesting.com, content design for Hilton Hotels, and specialist content for small businesses.

Fascinated by word play, doubly fascinated by playing with words for a living.

The real me

Fiction writer whose ego is kept in check by rejection letters from literary magazines.

Adult student of basic 4/4 punk drumming. Want to start a band?

Lapsed culture journalist with enough superficial knowledge of independent cinema to almost sound informed, about 15 years ago.

Very amateur knitter (don’t ask).

My journey so far

  • August 2022 - Present

    • Content lead and strategy on Skyscanner's first artificial intelligence POC—Savvy Search. Live in the app, if you need some travel inspiration!

    • Lead on accessibility improvements for flight search user journeys, including auditing screen reader material across core flows and moderating 1:1 research sessions with assistive tech users.

    • Content strategy, experimentation, and UX research for the organisation’s new rail offering.

    • Content architecture for an overhaul of product-wide IA, primarily focused on taxonomy and consistency across verticals.

    • Rapid iteration on Skyscanner’s sustainability and carbon emission content to meet new travel legislation in European markets.

    • Refinement of content design style guide and best practice documentation.

  • January 2021 - August 2022

    • UserTesting’s first UX writing hire in EMEA, covering the entire participant side of the product (50% of the platform’s UI).

    • UX writing lead for accessibility. Main writing point of contact for best practice guidance and ad hoc accessibility bugs and queries. Co-led efforts to widen the testing panel to users with assistive tech needs.

    • Part of a two-person team leading a platform-wide audit of all existing strings to ready the product for localisation into German.

    • Manager of UX writing team’s JIRA bug backlog, including regular collaboration with cross-platform engineering teams to eradicate UX debt.

    • BAU planning, researching, and designing content across complex end-to-end user flows, plus development of guides for style, inclusivity, and accessibility.

    • Panel interviewer and onboarding buddy for new hires to the UX writing team across my tenure.

  • August 2020 - December 2020

    • Content designer for bespoke and agnostic landing page content to generate new business leads across a wide-range of franchises.

    • Email strategy and content, focused on marketing campaigns, lead generation and customer follow-up.

    • Press release writing to announce new product offerings and business partnerships.

    • Content strategy and artefact creation, including webinar collateral, case studies, client interviews, and questionnaires for user across AnswerForce website and in-person expos.

    • Industry-facing and technical blog writing, managing content via WordPress.

    • SEO and UX copy creation to improve click-through rate for the AnswerForce website.

  • December 2016 - April 2020

    • UX content lead for the Digital Key feature of Hilton’s award-winning Honors app, publishing bespoke content for over 3,000 hotels worldwide.

    • Content audits, research, and design for Hilton’s largest ever web content overhaul. Content produced over a 10-month period drove growth in conversion and revenue for more than 4,400 hotels, achieving a 21.5% increase in click-through rate.

    • SEO content, product descriptions, and headline copy creation across Hilton’s portfolio of brands.

    • Content ideation and design for affiliated third-party organisations, in collaboration with web developers and UI designers.

  • June 2014 - July 2019

    • Editorial assistant for Arkbound Publishing’s 2019 manuscripts; proofreading, editing, and typesetting novel-length works later stocked in nationwide retailers.

    • Web copywriter and content editor for The Ransom Note. Rewriting UX content, editing audio and video scripts, creating SEO blog content, and managing associate copywriters’ work.

    • Deputy editor and co-creator of MiddleMusic.net, an independent culture magazine based in Glasgow. Twice nominated for the Scottish Student Journalism Awards’ Multimedia Publication Category—receiving a commendation in 2012. Runner up of NUS Scotland Awards for Best Student Media, and commended in Scottish Student Journalism Awards’ Student Publication category in 2013.