AI Agents, Custom GPTs, and Content Design

Introduction

The intersection of AI and content design is reshaping how UX writers and content designers approach their craft. At the UX Writing Hub, we’re thrilled to shine a spotlight on professionals who are embracing AI to streamline workflows, elevate creativity, and tackle complex challenges.

In this first installment of our new series, we’re featuring Sarah Kessler, a UX Writing Hub alum and a trailblazer in using AI tools like custom GPTs to transform her content design process. From crafting high-fidelity UX copy to automating tedious audit tasks, Sarah’s innovative approach offers valuable lessons for anyone looking to integrate AI into their workflow.

Curious how Sarah uses AI to save time, simplify complex tasks, and maintain brand consistency? Keep reading to discover her strategies and insights!

 

1. You’ve created custom GPTs to help with your work. What kinds of tasks do these tools handle, and how have they changed the way you work?

I have 2 custom GPTs that I use on a fairly regular basis. The first is a writing assistant which is trained to write pretty high fidelity UX copy with our company voice and style in mind. The second is a transactional email generator. I haven’t devoted as much time to training that one, so the copy is often fairly low fidelity, but it will do a very good job of structuring the email according to our company’s design patterns. Then I can take that first draft of the email and edit it myself or run it through the writing assistant depending on how much help it needs.

The writing assistant has been totally transformative for my work processes. I can paste in microcopy or whole paragraphs of protocopy (stuff that someone else on the team wrote as a placeholder) and instantly get a clearer, more concise draft to work from. It saves me a ton of time, which is HUGE since I work with 13 product designers and am often juggling multiple priorities.

2. What was your process for designing a custom GPT? Did you need technical skills, or is it something most content designers can learn?

For the two GPTs I just mentioned it was a little time consuming, but easy to train them. You definitely don’t need to have technical skills to work with ChatGPT—if you can write a prompt to ChatGPT then you can train a custom GPT.

One thing to keep in mind for training a writing assistant is that it gets a bit confused if you give it too many directions at a time. I had really terrible results when I gave it our entire style guide at once. But when I broke it into individual topics like, brand voice, how we play with tone, when to use commas, and how we format dates and times etc., then it started to have much better outputs.

3. What’s one specific example of how a custom GPT helped you meet a deadline or solve a tricky problem?

I’ll give you two! 

  1. I use my writing assistant all the time when I collaborate with legal to write disclosures or other regulatory language. Sometimes it’s tough to understand what those long legal paragraphs even mean, but the writing assistant is really good at translating them into plain language.
  2. Another AI agent I created, but don’t need to use anymore, was for content collection for an audit. Before we could audit any of the hundreds of screens we needed to go through, we needed to gather the text strings into a spreadsheet. When we started that project it was a completely manual process where we were either copy/pasting or typing it into a Google Sheet. It took a lot of time, was incredibly boring, and required a lot of clicks. We were progressing too slowly, and we hated doing it.

To automate the process I trained a GPT so that we could input a screenshot and it would return a table with each text string in its own row with a descriptive label. A process that took dozens of clicks over several minutes was now more like 4 clicks in a matter of seconds.

4. When working with AI tools, do you ever run into challenges, like inaccuracies or limitations? How do you handle those?

Sure. AI tools are not a replacement for a human operator. They’re a tool that someone who is already a good writer can use to get things done quicker.

When I used the content collecting AI agent it did a great job with mobile screens, but desktop screens with a lot of content often led to significant inaccuracies. It was also terrible at noticing when multiple screens had repeating content, like a footer, that I asked it to only record once. I’d say it had about a 30% success rate of omitting duplicated content. 

The key is to be aware of those issues and make sure you’re double checking any AI generated content. It’s rare that I end up actually using unedited AI generated copy for anything.

5. How do you make sure your AI tools align with your style guide and maintain brand consistency?

It helps that I have an AI agent that’s exactly for this purpose. I mentioned the email generator is not great at writing and is more for structuring the content. But I can take the output from the email generator and paste that into the writing assistant and voila!

But really the answer to this question is that I review everything carefully, and often end up tweaking the AI generated copy until it fits our house style.

 

6. What advice would you give to other content designers who want to start using AI tools in their work?

Do it! It’s fun, and you might find a way to streamline your workflows.

Unless you have access to a company account that’s been approved by your privacy and security team, be very careful about what you’re using AI tools for and what information you’re feeding them. There are loads of legal implications, and you should never give it any proprietary information or ask it for content that you’d want to copyright.

7. What excites you most about how AI is evolving for content design? Are there trends or tools you’re particularly interested in right now?

What excites me the most about AI in my current role is rapid iteration. A lot of content designers I know struggle to be seen as designers rather than copywriters or editors within the design team. Having tools to simplify the writing part allows me to focus on more strategic, higher leverage projects, and feels like a huge step toward realizing the promise of content design as a design discipline. I also love using the Figjam AI as a starting point for things like creating a board for a monthly retro or a brainstorm with stakeholders.

I am skeptical about a lot of AI tools though. I see a lot of stuff out there that looks like folks are trying to fit a purpose to a tool rather than design a tool to solve real problems that actual people are having. As a designer, that really bugs me.

8. Do you think AI will ever replace certain parts of content design, or will it always be more of a supporting tool?

Never say never… but no, never. Will some people lose their jobs to a bot? Of course! That’s already happened, unfortunately. But there’s no substitution for the human touch when it comes to design. 

Generative AI is as good at content design as a human who is not really that good at content design. The human who isn’t that good at it probably won’t be able to use the AI tool effectively either, because you need writing skills and UX knowledge to know how much of the AI copy to keep and what you need to edit or throw away. 

So I think what will happen is that there will be a higher barrier to entry into the field, but the people who are here doing the work will be more highly skilled.

9. What’s one AI-related skill or habit you’d recommend every content designer learn to stay ahead?

Get better at prompting. An issue I had with AI when I was getting started was how long it would take me to write a prompt that would get me the kind of output I was looking for. By the time I got the AI to do what I wanted, I could have written it myself 10 times. It felt like a novelty that was mostly a waste of time. Now that I’m more comfortable with writing prompts I get better results much faster and I can see the value in it.

 

Let’s recap

Sarah’s story is just the beginning. In the coming weeks, we’ll highlight more inspiring content designers and UX writers who are pushing the boundaries of what’s possible with AI. Stay tuned as we explore the tools, techniques, and strategies that are shaping the future of content design.

If you’re ready to dive into the world of AI and content design, we invite you to join the UX Writing Hub’s community, where innovation and collaboration thrive.

What’s your biggest takeaway from Sarah’s journey? Let us know on LinkedIn, and stay tuned for the next feature in our series!

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