Passionate about learning and teaching, Sarah organised education events at universities in North America before working in content. She led training alongside her content work at Expedia, Cazoo and the Financial Ombudsman. Sarah has extensive experience designing help centre content and a strong interest in accessibility. Jas Deogan The Readability project had regular in-person meetings in London. But finding ways to collaborate worldwide was still pretty new to us in 2018. Sitting next to the designers while at work one day, focusing on user needs, looking at the research and everything - and I was reminded of the conversation that I'd just had with Tom Loosemore where the words 'content design' had come up - and we were like, 'that's it!'" You need to be able to analyse data. You need to be able to go and do desk research, even if you're just looking on social media for language, sentiment, scoring, empathy mapping.

There we go. So that will come out. There's going to be one on research and content and how to do that directly. There's one on delivery and content. Consultancy, including Alpha/Beta consultancy (where a consultant from CDL is placed in a project to support) I think it is the people who are above that who, they're either super excited and attracted to bright shiny objects that design can create. They are looking for people that can point to very, very hard data, which can also be a difficult thing for content designers and content design leaders to grab onto and say, this is data that we impacted. Because of this thing that we did, these numbers shifted.

Watch Sarah Winters and Lizzie Bruce discuss the project

I feel like I've fallen into everything! I think there's a 'core', where there's my family and my kids - so 'I need to have this house', 'I need to have enough money to feed them' and 'I need to get them to school'. That's my core. Everything else is possible because it doesn't wobble my core; you get near that, and I come out fighting! Thanks to Rich Higgins for building and maintaining the Wiki, and to Dave Brayford for designing the book. So training is going very well. We have more and more people coming on, which is great. And we are expanding the courses that we're offering. So we have been doing an online course for, I don't know, five, six years. And we have never actually got to a point where we've recorded it and got it out and we have now, so that will be going before Christmas. So we have that and we have a pipeline of other courses that we want to do because we've got so much, but we just don't have the time as an agency, as a practice, we don't have the time to put them into a course format and get them out. But we are working on that. So stay tuned. We have some great people working with us now and we're creating good things. We have books coming out.

Yeah, that is actually very well put because I often will describe content design as coming at design challenges through a content lens. And that's exactly how you've just described it. So what's interesting about that explanation is it's not unlike how I describe how I first started talking about content strategy, which is that none of these were things that I made up. If anybody's like, here's Kristina, the inventor of content strategy, I'm like, no, no, no, no. These were all practices that were already in place and it was literally just a matter of assembling them underneath a tent that people then could enter and talk about all the things at the same time.

And then of course, being able to get to the crux of the information whilst retaining the tone. But most of our job, 80% of our job, is usually getting people on board in organisations." What's one piece of advice you'd give other content people who want to achieve similar accomplishments to yourself? A user story is an idea borrowed from agile software development. It’s a way of pinning down what the team need to do, without telling them how to do it. User stories help you narrow your focus. Each one describes a need, and they cover a wide range of audiences. A user story looks like this:

Interview: Talking content design with Sarah Winters This written interview dives into details such as why Sarah wanted to work for herself and how she started setting up CDL. Podcast: The Content Strategy Podcast (Episode #4) Sarah chats to Kristina Halvorson on her popular show. Not quite. Yeah. You're welcome. How are you all navigating what's happening over there as an organization? Are you changing the focus of your services? Are you steady on? Are you looking at growth? Talk to me about what Content Design London is doing in terms of services and activities and pursuits. Our content designers work directly with clients to create clear, accessible content that meets user needs. They are experienced trainers and regularly work with individuals and organisations to help them develop their content skills. Clare Reucroft

In the early 2010s, Sarah and her team at the Government Digital Service looked to user-centred design techniques to transform their content. We’d like to thank all of our contributors from that first alpha discussion to the moment we typed the last full stop. There’s too many to fit in but we really want to say: Sarah manages CDL’s training. She plans our courses and looks for ways to grow our training as the content design field evolves. So what's the danger then between just calling it user experience design and then working with UX writers on these teams to say, okay, here are the needs that need to be met, here are the scenarios you need to write for. Go do that. The winner of the #Diversity Category at the 2020 #ImpactAwards is..... @ContentDesignLN for their incredible work in progressing #accessibility 🏆 Congratulations!— DigitalAgenda #TechForGood (@DigitalAgenda_) June 16, 2020