Jonathan McFadden: Inclusive Content Design – Episode 137

Content Strategy Insights

Jonathan McFadden The benefits of inclusive design practices are clear: better business results and more satisfied users of our digital products. Our task now is to sharpen our focus on inclusion in our content-design craft. We also need to get better at convincing leadership to support this work. Jonathan McFadden has been practicing inclusive design for years and gets better every year at persuading executives and managers to support this important work. We talked about: his work on the "Shop" app at Shopify the impact of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs the current round of tech layoffs the improvement in representation of diverse employees at Shopify the importance of gaining the attention of leadership to advance DEI initiatives, and how to do it how he builds inclusive and diverse teams the benefits of having a diverse design team, so that the full range of human experience is included in the design process how reaching out to universities may be a good way to cope with the current scarcity around resourcing inclusion and diversity programs how setting the stage for diversity and inclusion during lean times might magnify the work when times are good again how to account for age and ageism along with other kinds of inclusion his charge to content designers to remember that we're on the front lines of inclusion work and to keep the advocacy going Jonathan's bio Jonathan McFadden is a senior content designer at Shopify, where he partners with a team of designers to create better experiences for users on the Shop app. Outside of his daytime gig, he runs his own content writing business, Jon Writes, and teaches a weekly Bible study. He enjoys spending time with his lyrically-gifted wife, reading comic books, and bingeing reruns of his favorite cult classic, Xena: Warrior Princess. Connect with Jonathan online LinkedIn Instagram Facebook JohnWrites Video Here’s the video version of our conversation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g1cwu6b7sX4 Podcast intro transcript This is the Content Strategy Insights podcast, episode number 137. At this point, it's clear that when you include in your design process as many different kinds of folks as possible, you realize many business and social benefits. We're at a juncture now where the main challenges for designers doing inclusion work are in gaining the support of leadership and cultivating the practice skills that promote inclusion. Jonathan McFadden has years of experience doing this work, and in convincing executives and managers to support it. Interview transcript Larry: Hey, everyone. Welcome to episode number 137 of the Content Strategy Insights podcast. I am super delighted today to have with us Jonathan McFadden. Jon is a senior content designer at Shopify. And welcome to the show, Jon. Tell the folks a little bit more about what you're up to at Shopify these days. Jonathan: Hi, Larry. Thank you so much for having me. I'm so happy to be here. Like Larry said, I'm a senior content designer at Shopify, and what that means is in the context of my day-to-day, I work on a product known as Shop. And Shop is an order tracking and shopping app that is powered by Shopify. And so I am responsible for the core shopping experience. I partner with product designers, with our engineers, with our product managers and our UX researcher to really help people shop on the app. Jonathan: And so some of those surfaces I work on include the home feed, our product display pages, the bag, which is basically a cart where you can continue to check out, and also responsible for activities such as activation; helping activate new users and help them acclimate to the actual app and onboard within the first 30 days or so of their app usage or app download. Yeah, that's what I do as part of my job. Jonathan: And what I do a little bit on this side also in tandem with work is I work with our craft lead,...