Dycom Product Content Strategy
Dycom is a telecommunications construction company that creates in-house applications to handle its business processes. The UX team and executive leadership wanted to address major discrepancies that appeared throughout their digital solutions and associated documentation. In the past, various teams and individuals made efforts to create templates for their content, but they were abandoned before catching on. During my first few months at the company, I was tasked with researching existing content practices and creating a voice for in-house products. Through that effort, I created and implemented a set of tools that would aid in the adoption of our overall content strategy:
Research process
Content audit
I started with a content audit to get a feel for the current state of Dycom’s writing. After collecting examples of in-app copy, technical documentation, and support materials, I looked for common genres, formatting, jargon, etc. The audit showed that writing style typically varied depending on product or function, with a standard set of document types that varied in name.
Surveys
Prior to my arrival, the UX team launched a survey that presented multiple writing style options to gauge what employees preferred. These results influenced some characteristics of the final voice, but I mainly leaned on them to create general boundaries for how conservative we needed to keep the content. Overall, I found out the following:
Users generally preferred more “conservative”
Users want context and potential solutions when dealing with errors
Messages need to be easily skimmable and point out the most relevant information at the beginning
Interviews
I conducted additional interviews with a set of Dycom employees to gauge general perceptions of the company. Since executive leadership wanted the product voice to serve as a reflection of the business, I wanted to know where the audience’s current opinion stood. When asked to describe Dycom, participants collectively generated these characteristics:
Robust
Energetic
Loyal
Quality
Casual
Unconstrained
Creative
Unfocused
Contemporary
Progressive
Supportive
Progressive
Flexible
Exacting
Imaginative
Old-fashioned
Challenging
Personable
Transparency
Straight-laced
Laid-back
Content strategy and design
Defining our voice
I selected a few adjectives to root our voice in, which developed over time to better fit our products. The first iteration of our voice was heavily influenced by what executive leadership wanted to portray. Over time, the adjectives transformed to better describe the experience provided by our products:
Straightforward - Our solutions should help people get through their workday, not add difficulty. That means writing should be simple and quick to read.
Conversational - Many of our core products are rooted in conversation design, and we like to echo the sentiment throughout our writing to create seamless back-and-forth with users.
Helpful - We want to provide background support to our employees, without being overbearing.
Setting the standard
After pitching ideas to our stakeholders and solidifying an approach, I documented content guidelines. These would serve as the new standard for creating product copy, documentation, and other supplemental materials. Alongside a formal breakdown of our product voice, I created a writing style guide that laid out rules for formatting, grammar, and punctuation. I stored the full versions of the documentation in our corporate Drive and hosted the most wanted information in our design system, Subframe.
Empowering users
Creating content standards is one thing, getting our product teams to leverage them was another. So, I decided to created pre-written templates to help employees infuse some Dycom-ness in their content. For designers creating in-app copy, I developed content patterns for major UI components. These laid out any specifications for component copy within our Figma library so designers could quickly draft as they design.
For other product content (like help or support), I created templates for major document types and paired them with strong examples for employees to reference while drafting their own materials.
Outcomes
My mission to define Dycom’s voice quickly transformed into a full content strategy revamp for in-house products. The tools created from this effort are routinely utilized by UX designers, developers, and business analysts to create Dycom’s in-house business solutions and supporting content. Through this effort, I was able to:
Set company-wide expectations for product content
Increase efficiency of content production
Attract additional users to our design system
