Simone Williams | Your craft muscle feeds your judgement and taste

🎙️ ABOUT THIS EPISODE We spend an enormous amount of time talking about what digital products look like, but nowhere near enough talking about the words we're asking people to read, understand and act on. In this episode, I sit down with Simone Williams, a content designer at Microsoft whose career started in journalism before moving through agencies and into product design, to explore why content design is about so much more than simply writing the words that sit inside an interface. We get into language, influence and the role content designers play in shaping products. Simone explains why bringing content design in at the end of a project is already too late, why great content can almost disappear into an experience, and why content designers need to be comfortable challenging not just how an organisation says something, but sometimes what it's saying in the first place. We talk about journalism, critical thinking, user truth, earning a seat at the table and why the ability to articulate an opinion, back it up and occasionally be wrong is such an important part of the job. And, of course, we get into AI and what happens when machines become pretty good at writing. Simone argues that rather than making content designers less relevant, AI has created an entirely new opportunity for the discipline. We explore the difference between generating content and actually designing it, why taste, judgement, lived experience and intention still matter, and how content designers are increasingly becoming translators between humans and machines. Ultimately, it's a conversation about words, context and why, even in an AI-driven world, writing is still how we understand and express the world around us. 👋 MEET THE GUEST Simone Williams Simone is a content designer at Microsoft, working on Clipchamp and exploring the evolving intersection of language, product design and AI. Her career didn't begin in traditional UX or product design. Simone studied journalism and worked across journalism, native content and creative agencies before finding her way into content design. That background still heavily influences the way she works today, particularly her focus on critical thinking, questioning assumptions, finding the truth and being able to defend an idea with evidence. Today, her work is moving beyond traditional interface copy into areas like context engineering, helping shape the instructions, systems and context that influence what AI-powered products generate for users. For Simone, the role may be evolving, but the fundamental job hasn't changed all that much: understand people, understand language and translate what users need into better experiences. 🔗 Connect with Simone on LinkedIn:   / sim1williams   ❤️ ENJOYED THE CONVERSATION? If you enjoyed the episode, give it a like and subscribe to the channel. It’s completely free, takes about two seconds, and helps us keep bringing more great people and conversations to Not Just Pushing Pixels. 👀 FOLLOW NOT JUST PUSHING PIXELS Follow us on LinkedIn or Spotify for new episodes, upcoming guests and everything happening behind the scenes: 👉   / notjustpushingpixels   👉 https://open.spotify.com/show/4VZhbmc... 💬 WHO SHOULD WE TALK TO NEXT? Want to come on the podcast? Know someone with a great story to tell? Or is there someone you’ve always wanted to hear from? Let us know. We’re always looking for interesting people, different perspectives and conversations worth having. 🎧 ABOUT NOT JUST PUSHING PIXELS Not Just Pushing Pixels is a podcast about design, the people behind it, and the conversations that don’t always happen on stage or inside the workplace. Hosted by Mike Leigh, each episode is an honest, unscripted conversation with designers, researchers, leaders and people shaping the industry from all corners of the globe. Keep pushing beyond the pixels. ✨ 🎵 MUSIC Music licensed through Soundstripe. Code: H7RZAEFH78DPSRXL #NotJustPushingPixels #contentdesign #uxdesign #productdesign #uxwriting #designleadership #artificialintelligence