If you find something that you really love, get good at it

Career Spotlight: Leanne Tremblay, Technical Writer, UX Writer, and Content Designer

“The writing part–once you are good at writing–is really just a small part of your job,” Leanne Tremblay explained to me as we connected over a video call, during which I had the privilege of learning about her wealth of experience as a writer and her thoughts on the field.

Leanne has held many different writing personas throughout her career, though most of it, she noted, has been spent working in tech. Content design is currently Leanne’s primary interest, along with content strategy. As a content designer, Leanne influences product creation, which, she shared, “is really exciting,” and part of what drew her to the role.

Leanne spoke about her favourite parts of her work with passion: “I like getting into the weeds of products and seeing how they work. I’m super curious about how things are made and how products work, so that’s why I’ve been around so long . . . [When I’m] sitting and working with a developer or hardware designer, I’m really interested in what they do, how they do their job, and how they design their product.” This sense of curiosity not only means that Leanne enjoys her work, but it also helps her to be good at it: “I would think I’m pretty supportive of those people, so I guess that works in my favour.”

While Leanne enjoys her current work in user experience [UX] writing and content design, “it all started with technical writing,” she said. “Early in my career, I [worked with] a lot of hardware- and telecom-type applications and products, which are complex systems and essentially not consumer-based products at all. If you think of Telus—in their back offices [they have hardware] to run the internet and telephone network—all that stuff needs to be documented. How is it configured? How is it commissioned? How is it used?” Technical writers document the answers to such questions. While others, such as developers and software engineers, may sometimes write documentation, Leanne explained that these individuals often do not have enough time to write. “Companies like to use technical writers because they are writers first.” Work as a technical writer is multifaceted and often spans across different groups in a company, such as engineering, marketing, customer service and support. This means, Leanne noted, “that the technical writer is often one of the few people in an organization that has a really broad view of the product.” While other teams may work in silos, since each has a different focus and perspective, “the technical writer is really looking at the user.” Because of this, they must have inputs from many groups across an organization. “They work at the intersection of all these [groups] and that makes [the technical writer] a valuable asset to a company.” Leanne said this is part of what has made her career so interesting: “you’re not just siloed into one thing.”

A technical writer must, of course, be a good writer, but other “soft skills,” Leanne explained, are also essential. For instance, “being a good strategist, being able to manage stakeholders, and working with subject-matter experts [is important] . . . You have to be seen as a really trustworthy person in the organization: someone who is really going to help, not hinder, the project.” These are all skills, Leanne noted, outside of writing. “I would say that the writing part—once you get good at writing—is really just a small part of your job. A bigger part is communicating with technical people, understanding products, being curious, and diving into a prototype and asking lots of good questions to understand [it],” along with being able to plan and scope projects, manage deadlines, and manage stakeholder expectations.

Leanne’s career journey has not been without challenges: “I feel now that there is a bit of a glass ceiling on technical writing,” she said. This motivated Leanne to “push into these other areas of UX and content design,” which can make a technical writer even more valuable. However, Leanne noted that it can be difficult to decide what additional skills to learn because there are so many options. To help decide what skills to focus on, she asks herself, “What should I focus my time on? What’s worthwhile to do?” These are not necessarily easy questions to answer because it is possible that “what you thought [would be useful] five years ago is really not what’s hot right now.” Leanne believes “UX is a field that’s worth learning about for a writer,” since UX writers are people who can take writing off a UX designer’s plate, “own the words, and . . . make sure all of the screens in an app are going to be consistent.” “That’s huge value,” Leanne said.

A key difference between technical writing when compared to UX writing and content design, Leanne noted, is that UX writers and content designers are positioned “closer to product design and development . . . [and] can influence how a product is made,” whereas technical writers are closer to the customer and typically more removed from product design. Her experience in technical writing means she can consider a product “from the user’s point of view.” As a UX writer and content designer, she helps ensure that by the time a technical writer has to document the product, “there aren’t as many inconsistencies” between things such as buttons, features, fields, and configuration layouts, which “just make documenting [the product] so much harder.”

“I wish I’d done it sooner,” Leanne replied when I asked what advice would have been valuable when transitioning from technical writing into UX. Having a wide range of skills, Leanne noted, has advantages: she has a broad enough background that she can help a “strappy startup” with a wide range of tasks, such creating as a help centre, working with product designers, and creating technical marketing spec and info sheets. However, having a specialty “will differentiate you from lots of other technical writers who don’t have that [same specialty],” even if a writer ultimately decides not to be tied to one thing. “It’s good to be general and know how to do lots of stuff, but if you find something that you really love in the field, get good at it.”