Structure after the fact: Bringing content strategy to existing docs for a design system
summary
Joins a design system as the first content hire for a 700‑page Dev Portal built on Docsaurus and unifies work across ~60 developers and designers. Runs two‑week part‑time research — a content audit of top 20 pages, six user interviews, feedback categorization and competitor benchmarks — then fixes search, consolidates stable/preview components, moves Confluence guidance into Markdown, adds front‑matter metadata, card‑sorting + Figma workshops, contribution docs and an upcoming breaking changes template. Results: search and navigation improve, components are discoverable, Slack questions drop and traffic rises about 35%.
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chapters (14)
- 0:00Content strategy challenges
- 1:06Messy documentation project
- 5:26Research in content strategy
- 7:33Accountability for dev portal
- 9:23Existence or resistance
- 10:48Fixing release communication
- 13:37Discoverable content in design system
- 17:58Content ownership and placement
- 20:30Navigation redesign with Figma
- 22:00External content in dev portal
- 23:26Outcomes and improvements
- 26:18Cross-team collaboration
- 27:23Learning technical tools
- 28:27Q&A
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