Project Details
Thrive: Wellness Tracker Mobile app
Thrive: Wellness Tracker Mobile app
Thrive: Wellness Tracker Mobile app
Thrive: Wellness Tracker Mobile app
Project Overview
I led content design for Beacon, an enterprise incident management platform that helps IT ops teams respond to critical system outages. My role focused on transforming technical jargon into clear, action-oriented copy that reduces cognitive load during high-stress incidents.
Client:
Client:
Beacon
Beacon
My Role:
My Role:
Lead Content Designer
Lead Content Designer
Year:
Year:
2025
2025
Services:
Services:
Website & Web Application Content Design/UX Writing
Website & Web Application Content Design/UX Writing
THE CHALLENGE
Engineers were spending 40% longer resolving P0 incidents because existing incident tools used corporate-speak and unclear severity labels. At 3 AM during a production outage, confusing UI copy was costing companies thousands per minute in downtime. Our user research showed that 73% of on-call engineers reported anxiety triggered by panic-inducing alert notifications, and new team members needed 2-3 weeks of training just to understand the interface.
"When I get paged at 3 AM, I shouldn't have to decode what the tool is telling me. I need to know what's broken and what to do next." — Senior SRE, Series B startup
RESEARCH & DISCOVERY
To understand the content design problem, I conducted comprehensive user research and competitive analysis.
USER RESEARCH
Created three detailed personas representing different user types:
• Sarah (On-call Engineer, 3 years experience): Needs to assess severity quickly
and take action.
Pain point: "Too many alerts use 'critical' when they mean 'worth checking.'"
• Marcus (Incident Commander, 7 years experience): Coordinates cross-team response.
Pain point: "I waste time translating technical alerts for executives."
• Jennifer (VP of Engineering): Needs business impact visibility.
Pain point: "I can't tell if 'P1' means customers are affected or just internal tools."
Mapped user journey from incident detection through post-mortem, identifying key pain points at each phase: unclear severity labels during triage, lack of context during response, no guidance for post-incident documentation.
RESEARCH & DISCOVERY
To understand the content design problem, I conducted comprehensive user research and competitive analysis.
USER RESEARCH
Created three detailed personas representing different user types:
• Sarah (On-call Engineer, 3 years experience): Needs to assess severity quickly
and take action.
Pain point: "Too many alerts use 'critical' when they mean 'worth checking.'"
• Marcus (Incident Commander, 7 years experience): Coordinates cross-team response.
Pain point: "I waste time translating technical alerts for executives."
• Jennifer (VP of Engineering): Needs business impact visibility.
Pain point: "I can't tell if 'P1' means customers are affected or just internal tools."
Mapped user journey from incident detection through post-mortem, identifying key pain points at each phase: unclear severity labels during triage, lack of context during response, no guidance for post-incident documentation.
RESEARCH & DISCOVERY
To understand the content design problem, I conducted comprehensive user research and competitive analysis.
USER RESEARCH
Created three detailed personas representing different user types:
• Sarah (On-call Engineer, 3 years experience): Needs to assess severity quickly
and take action.
Pain point: "Too many alerts use 'critical' when they mean 'worth checking.'"
• Marcus (Incident Commander, 7 years experience): Coordinates cross-team response.
Pain point: "I waste time translating technical alerts for executives."
• Jennifer (VP of Engineering): Needs business impact visibility.
Pain point: "I can't tell if 'P1' means customers are affected or just internal tools."
Mapped user journey from incident detection through post-mortem, identifying key pain points at each phase: unclear severity labels during triage, lack of context during response, no guidance for post-incident documentation.
RESEARCH & DISCOVERY
To understand the content design problem, I conducted comprehensive user research and competitive analysis.
USER RESEARCH
Created three detailed personas representing different user types:
• Sarah (On-call Engineer, 3 years experience): Needs to assess severity quickly
and take action.
Pain point: "Too many alerts use 'critical' when they mean 'worth checking.'"
• Marcus (Incident Commander, 7 years experience): Coordinates cross-team response.
Pain point: "I waste time translating technical alerts for executives."
• Jennifer (VP of Engineering): Needs business impact visibility.
Pain point: "I can't tell if 'P1' means customers are affected or just internal tools."
Mapped user journey from incident detection through post-mortem, identifying key pain points at each phase: unclear severity labels during triage, lack of context during response, no guidance for post-incident documentation.
DESIGN APPROACH
COMPETITIVE ANALYSIS
Analyzed PagerDuty, Opsgenie, and Incident.io:
• Common issue: Overly technical language assumes expert knowledge
• Gap identified: No tools adapt content to user role
• Opportunity: Human-centered copy that reduces cognitive load during stress
APPROACH
I developed a content strategy centered on three principles:
CALM URGENCY
Replaced panic-inducing language (ALL CAPS alerts, excessive exclamation marks) with direct, confidence-building copy.
ROLE-BASED LANGUAGE
Created adaptive content that surfaces different information based on user role:
CONTEXTUAL HELP OVER DOCUMENTATION
Replaced "View documentation" links with inline help that appears exactly when needed. For severity selection, added embedded descriptions:
"P0 - Critical: Complete outage affecting customers. Response required within 15 minutes.
CONTENT AUDIT
Documented all existing microcopy touchpoints across the platform:
• 200+ UI strings using inconsistent terminology
• 15 different ways to describe incident severity
• Error messages that blamed users instead of guiding them
• No inline help—everything pointed to external documentation
KEY INSIGHT: Engineers don't have time to learn tool-specific jargon during a
production outage. Content needed to be immediately scannable and action-oriented.
DESIGN APPROACH
COMPETITIVE ANALYSIS
Analyzed PagerDuty, Opsgenie, and Incident.io:
• Common issue: Overly technical language assumes expert knowledge
• Gap identified: No tools adapt content to user role
• Opportunity: Human-centered copy that reduces cognitive load during stress
APPROACH
I developed a content strategy centered on three principles:
CALM URGENCY
Replaced panic-inducing language (ALL CAPS alerts, excessive exclamation marks) with direct, confidence-building copy.
ROLE-BASED LANGUAGE
Created adaptive content that surfaces different information based on user role:
CONTEXTUAL HELP OVER DOCUMENTATION
Replaced "View documentation" links with inline help that appears exactly when needed. For severity selection, added embedded descriptions:
"P0 - Critical: Complete outage affecting customers. Response required within 15 minutes.
CONTENT AUDIT
Documented all existing microcopy touchpoints across the platform:
• 200+ UI strings using inconsistent terminology
• 15 different ways to describe incident severity
• Error messages that blamed users instead of guiding them
• No inline help—everything pointed to external documentation
KEY INSIGHT: Engineers don't have time to learn tool-specific jargon during a
production outage. Content needed to be immediately scannable and action-oriented.
DESIGN APPROACH
COMPETITIVE ANALYSIS
Analyzed PagerDuty, Opsgenie, and Incident.io:
• Common issue: Overly technical language assumes expert knowledge
• Gap identified: No tools adapt content to user role
• Opportunity: Human-centered copy that reduces cognitive load during stress
APPROACH
I developed a content strategy centered on three principles:
CALM URGENCY
Replaced panic-inducing language (ALL CAPS alerts, excessive exclamation marks) with direct, confidence-building copy.
ROLE-BASED LANGUAGE
Created adaptive content that surfaces different information based on user role:
CONTEXTUAL HELP OVER DOCUMENTATION
Replaced "View documentation" links with inline help that appears exactly when needed. For severity selection, added embedded descriptions:
"P0 - Critical: Complete outage affecting customers. Response required within 15 minutes.
CONTENT AUDIT
Documented all existing microcopy touchpoints across the platform:
• 200+ UI strings using inconsistent terminology
• 15 different ways to describe incident severity
• Error messages that blamed users instead of guiding them
• No inline help—everything pointed to external documentation
KEY INSIGHT: Engineers don't have time to learn tool-specific jargon during a
production outage. Content needed to be immediately scannable and action-oriented.
DESIGN APPROACH
COMPETITIVE ANALYSIS
Analyzed PagerDuty, Opsgenie, and Incident.io:
• Common issue: Overly technical language assumes expert knowledge
• Gap identified: No tools adapt content to user role
• Opportunity: Human-centered copy that reduces cognitive load during stress
APPROACH
I developed a content strategy centered on three principles:
CALM URGENCY
Replaced panic-inducing language (ALL CAPS alerts, excessive exclamation marks) with direct, confidence-building copy.
ROLE-BASED LANGUAGE
Created adaptive content that surfaces different information based on user role:
CONTEXTUAL HELP OVER DOCUMENTATION
Replaced "View documentation" links with inline help that appears exactly when needed. For severity selection, added embedded descriptions:
"P0 - Critical: Complete outage affecting customers. Response required within 15 minutes.
CONTENT AUDIT
Documented all existing microcopy touchpoints across the platform:
• 200+ UI strings using inconsistent terminology
• 15 different ways to describe incident severity
• Error messages that blamed users instead of guiding them
• No inline help—everything pointed to external documentation
KEY INSIGHT: Engineers don't have time to learn tool-specific jargon during a
production outage. Content needed to be immediately scannable and action-oriented.
MY SOLUTION
I developed a content strategy centered on three principles:
CALM URGENCY
Replaced panic-inducing language (ALL CAPS alerts, excessive exclamation marks) with direct, confidence-building copy.
ROLE-BASED LANGUAGE
Created adaptive content that surfaces different information based on user role:
CONTEXTUAL HELP OVER DOCUMENTATION
Replaced "View documentation" links with inline help that appears exactly when needed. For severity selection, added embedded descriptions:
"P0 - Critical: Complete outage affecting customers. Response required within 15 minutes.
KEY DECISIONS:
1. Button label testing: "Acknowledge" vs "Accept" vs "I'm on it". Chose "Acknowledge" based on 94% comprehension vs 68-71% for alternatives.
2. Severity hierarchy redesign: Combined approach using "P0 - Critical" instead of numbers alone or vague labels. Result: 40% faster severity identification, 62% drop in misclassification.
3. 50-word message limit: Enforced brevity for all system notifications to respect engineers' time during crises.
MY SOLUTION
I developed a content strategy centered on three principles:
CALM URGENCY
Replaced panic-inducing language (ALL CAPS alerts, excessive exclamation marks) with direct, confidence-building copy.
ROLE-BASED LANGUAGE
Created adaptive content that surfaces different information based on user role:
CONTEXTUAL HELP OVER DOCUMENTATION
Replaced "View documentation" links with inline help that appears exactly when needed. For severity selection, added embedded descriptions:
"P0 - Critical: Complete outage affecting customers. Response required within 15 minutes.
KEY DECISIONS:
1. Button label testing: "Acknowledge" vs "Accept" vs "I'm on it". Chose "Acknowledge" based on 94% comprehension vs 68-71% for alternatives.
2. Severity hierarchy redesign: Combined approach using "P0 - Critical" instead of numbers alone or vague labels. Result: 40% faster severity identification, 62% drop in misclassification.
3. 50-word message limit: Enforced brevity for all system notifications to respect engineers' time during crises.
MY SOLUTION
I developed a content strategy centered on three principles:
CALM URGENCY
Replaced panic-inducing language (ALL CAPS alerts, excessive exclamation marks) with direct, confidence-building copy.
ROLE-BASED LANGUAGE
Created adaptive content that surfaces different information based on user role:
CONTEXTUAL HELP OVER DOCUMENTATION
Replaced "View documentation" links with inline help that appears exactly when needed. For severity selection, added embedded descriptions:
"P0 - Critical: Complete outage affecting customers. Response required within 15 minutes.
KEY DECISIONS:
1. Button label testing: "Acknowledge" vs "Accept" vs "I'm on it". Chose "Acknowledge" based on 94% comprehension vs 68-71% for alternatives.
2. Severity hierarchy redesign: Combined approach using "P0 - Critical" instead of numbers alone or vague labels. Result: 40% faster severity identification, 62% drop in misclassification.
3. 50-word message limit: Enforced brevity for all system notifications to respect engineers' time during crises.
MY SOLUTION
I developed a content strategy centered on three principles:
CALM URGENCY
Replaced panic-inducing language (ALL CAPS alerts, excessive exclamation marks) with direct, confidence-building copy.
ROLE-BASED LANGUAGE
Created adaptive content that surfaces different information based on user role:
CONTEXTUAL HELP OVER DOCUMENTATION
Replaced "View documentation" links with inline help that appears exactly when needed. For severity selection, added embedded descriptions:
"P0 - Critical: Complete outage affecting customers. Response required within 15 minutes.
KEY DECISIONS:
1. Button label testing: "Acknowledge" vs "Accept" vs "I'm on it". Chose "Acknowledge" based on 94% comprehension vs 68-71% for alternatives.
2. Severity hierarchy redesign: Combined approach using "P0 - Critical" instead of numbers alone or vague labels. Result: 40% faster severity identification, 62% drop in misclassification.
3. 50-word message limit: Enforced brevity for all system notifications to respect engineers' time during crises.
I LOVE MAUTEEN LIKE MAD!
I led content design for Beacon, an enterprise incident management platform that helps IT ops teams respond to critical system outages. My role focused on transforming technical jargon into clear, action-oriented copy that reduces cognitive load during high-stress incidents.
I LOVE MAUTEEN LIKE MAD!
I led content design for Beacon, an enterprise incident management platform that helps IT ops teams respond to critical system outages. My role focused on transforming technical jargon into clear, action-oriented copy that reduces cognitive load during high-stress incidents.
I LOVE MAUTEEN LIKE MAD!
I led content design for Beacon, an enterprise incident management platform that helps IT ops teams respond to critical system outages. My role focused on transforming technical jargon into clear, action-oriented copy that reduces cognitive load during high-stress incidents.
I LOVE MAUTEEN LIKE MAD!
I led content design for Beacon, an enterprise incident management platform that helps IT ops teams respond to critical system outages. My role focused on transforming technical jargon into clear, action-oriented copy that reduces cognitive load during high-stress incidents.
