New content standards
Atlassian voice & tone guide
As a content designer for Atlassian’s public website, I helped create our new design system, leading the creation of a voice & tone guide.
My role:
Audience:
Challenge:
Solution:
Content designers, product designers, and marketers who create content for the Atlassian website
As a cross-functional team, we’re struggling to write consistent, high quality content.
Create updated content standards for my cross-functional team
Team leader, content strategist
My process
Kickoff & prioritization
The Atlassian website is the source of truth for prospective customers. It’s where they go to discover our products, learn about pricing, and create an account. Our content was disjointed and countless user interviews showed that our language didn’t resonate with customers.
To get started, I led a prioritization session with the other content designers on my team. As the workshop facilitator, I started by compiling the team’s ideas onto one whiteboard. Then we discussed the impact and effort for each idea. Once we came up with our top ideas, I worked with the team to assign everyone a deliverable. My deliverable was a voice and tone guide.
Desk research
To get started, I read existing research and completed a competitive analysis of other companies’ content standards.
From my research, one key learning was that customers come to our website with very different mindsets; some are ready to go down the information rabbit hole while others are looking for a quick snippet. Another learning was that we need to strike the right balance between “marketing fluff” and “technical information.” While we do want to inspire customers, people intuitively know when they’re being marketed to.
Big thank you to Zendesk’s Garden design system for the inspiration!
Workshops and iteration
Next, I got to work creating the voice and tone guide. I focused on creating guidelines that reflected Atlassian’s company-wide voice and tone, while accounting for the key differences when writing for our public website. Primarily, I added a fourth personality trait: trustworthy. Trust is key for Atlassian’s customers, especially when they’re evaluating our products. To me, trust means transparent communication, easy-to-find information, and keeping our content up-to-date.
Addition to Atlassian’s brand guidelines
A year after I created the voice and tone guide, I was part of a working group for Atlassian’s brand refresh. I ideated on how we might rethink our company-wide voice and tone guidelines, and created a matrix similar to the one I made for the Atlassian website. I was very proud to see my idea be added to our new brand guidelines earlier this year!
After creating a V1 for the new voice & tone matrix, I brought it to my design team’s critique session for feedback. I also held a workshop with a few product marketing managers to ensure that they were on board with the changes. Between these two groups, I got great feedback that I used to revise my thinking and create a new version.
Creating the final version
After going through another round of edits and reviews, I landed on the final iteration of the voice and tone guide. I created an updated matrix, detailed information about our personality traits and tone dimensions, and examples of do’s and don’ts. In addition to being added as a permanent part of the design system, it was shared with the design team, marketing team, and brand team.
