THE CHALLENGE
Nationwide brought me in to help build an in-house content design capability. When I left the organisation three years later, the team had grown tenfold.
I joined Nationwide Building Society as a Senior Content Designer in August 2016. At that time, its content design function consisted of just two writers – and I was one of them.
The organisation relied heavily on freelance resource, and ultimately needed a stable, scalable in-house team capable of supporting a building society that then served c.15 million members.
This meant establishing content design as a recognised discipline while also continuing to deliver BAU and special project work across a vast and varied array of products, services and complex financial customer journeys.
Whatever the work involved, my guiding decision needed to remain the same: put members first – even when that meant challenging internally focused thinking.
THE SOLUTION
Our Head of Service Design had strong GDS experience, and established its core principles across the content and visual design function. We deployed or adapted those standards wherever they served Nationwide’s members – giving our multidisciplinary teams a shared framework for making content decisions.
I began as a hands-on Senior Content Designer, but quickly became interim Content Design Manager with direct line-management responsibility for up to 18 people by the time I left.
I helped develop the content design team’s training, onboarding, guidance and working standards. I also devised its recruitment process and copy test, used to assess applicants before interview and identify those with the judgement and practical ability needed.
The work spanning near enough the whole organisation. Projects included a new mortgage product to help parents provide house deposits for their children, communications supporting new GDPR compliance, and messaging for the then upcoming 3D Secure payment systems.
THE OUTCOME
At the end of my three years, the mixed team of permanent and freelance content designers had grown from two writers to more than twenty. Nationwide had also moved significantly towards a stable, predominantly in-house model.
When a permanent Content Design Manager was appointed, I helped them get established in the role, continuing to support recruitment before moving on to my next assignment.
The content design function continued to expand after I left. No longer an experiment, its principles, standards and customer-first discipline had become embedded and accepted within and across the organisation.