More Than Words: Designing Your Content for Headless UI

Content is far more than words. It’s at the heart of design, and very soon content will, in fact, be the designed user experience. Headless user interfaces, such as Siri and Amazon Echo, are the tip of the iceberg. Within a decade, most user interface design will have very little to do with pixels and will be about consistency, tone, context, and understanding. Moreover, the line between content and marketing is blurring by the minute, and we’re going to have to learn to balance giving people what they want, what they need, and what’s best for overall outcomes. We can do the right thing for our audience, clients, and the world at large if we get things right in the near future. In this talk, we’ll take a look at where UX & Content Strategy are headed and what we can learn from past mistakes, while sharing some practical tips and an actual research framework that will help you shape “designed content.”

About Brad:

Brad went to school to be a lawyer, then came to his senses and has spent the last 20 years making ideas happen through Branding, User Experience Design, Information Architecture, and Content Strategy. He is the author of Creative Truth: Start & Build a Profitable Design Business and a keynote speaker at conferences around the world.

Prior to forming The Banner Years, Brad served as Chief Experience Officer at Nine Labs where he worked with numerous Fortune 500s including IHG and UPS. Prior to Nine Labs, he served as Founder & Creative Director at Suckerpunch with clients including Disney, Bank of America, ESPN, AT&T, NATO, The PGA, Hard Rock Cafe, and Coca-Cola. He spent the prior decade in Digital Marketing and Merchandising at Verizon and American Eagle Outfitters working with chart-topping artists and major film studios. Not one to shy away from hard work or his blue collar upbringing, he’s also folded clothes, pumped gas, bagged groceries, sold cell phones, performed stunts in blockbuster films, and climbed The Great Wall of China.

Based in Atlanta, Brad lives loud and loves openly. He’s known for dark humor, random dance parties, an encyclopedic knowledge of film and music, his love of Jesus, a taste for expensive bourbon, a relentless spirit of adventure, his handsome kids, and the strict use of Oxford commas.