Content-first design: building message before medium

Page last updated: 26 February 2026

Contents

Overview: the world we design in

In a perfect world, 'content-first design' wouldn’t be needed. We would begin our design process with content rather than add it at the end. We’d make our intentions clear and base our designs on meaning, not just looks. We would focus on the language in our systems before the interface, so content is not an afterthought or a superficial improvement.

But we do not live in that world—at least, not yet.

Today, UX can feel like completing checklist items, design is about chasing the latest tools, and content is reduced to patching up grammar after the real decisions are made—or worse, after the designs are finished.
"Most digital experiences don’t stumble due to poor design. Instead, they stumble because their meaning gets lost in the noise."
- Anupriy Kanti.
This sets off a cycle: when language is sidelined early, lucidity and understanding fade, leading to muddled messages and digital experiences that fall short or leave users confused.

Still, this does not stop tech teams from shipping products that appear polished—sleek transitions, bold layouts, eye-catching animations—yet users hesitate, stumble, or walk away. What feels smooth to creators can bewilder or distance real people. 
  • Support teams scramble to patch up the fallout. 
  • Edge cases quietly accumulate, chipping away trust. 
  • Instead of closing the divide between what’s built and what’s needed, the message is: Use us because the alternatives are WAY worse.
Even when teams anticipate edge cases, their responses can either earn trust or erode it. Too often, fixes are about appearances, not real help. Notifications, FAQs, and support messages end up defending the system rather than guiding users through challenges. Most teams design first, then scramble to fill in the crucial details.

Over time, all that organisations are interested in is creating what appears credible rather than what is actually correct. Teams aim to produce something that looks finished and complete and puts stakeholders at ease, but this can mean losing sight of real results: addressing users’ needs.

Most of the time, the measure of success is based on what was all done rather than what was improved. As Robert Duebelbeis says, “…the system can prove it acted; it cannot prove it helped.”

Any mistakes or failures are no longer data points to learn from. Instead, highlighting them often brings ridicule, dismissal, or career risk. Teams retreat into the safety of complying with requests rather than creating what is needed. It’s far simpler to make things look good than to make them truly good.

This habit has triggered a UX content crisis, leaving UX writers and content designers racing to catch up or demonstrate their value once the main work is already finalised.
"It’s tempting to see this as just a writing issue. But content is more than words on a page—it’s the engine of clarity and understanding. It powers how a product truly works."
- Anupriy Kanti.
When teams treat content as essential from the outset, not just a finishing touch, they unlock experiences that sincerely help users.

When writing is left for cleanup, we lose sight of the content’s proper role. Content is not window dressing. It reveals intent, clarifies outcomes, and captures judgment.

And now, AI has entered the scene (Cue the collective sigh).

Whether you see it as an era-defining boon or a disruptive beast released too quickly, AI is already embedded in how UX work gets done. Regardless of where you stand, its presence in design workflows is unmistakable. 

The real question is no longer whether AI should be used, but how its consequences reshape the way we design and whether we adapt thoughtfully.

AI enables teams to create content, screens, and even entire apps much faster. But moving faster does not fix confusion—it can actually make it worse. When goals are unclear in AI processes, they spread and become embedded throughout the system.

This can lead to 'AI inbreeding,' in which AI models start getting trained on AI-generated content, causing them to degrade and incur losses. For example, a chatbot might repeatedly give incorrect answers, learning from past mistakes and exacerbating the errors over time. This shows how AI can become stuck in a loop and how costly confusion can be if it is not addressed early.

After 14 years leading design and content teams across agencies and fast-growing companies in India, I’ve tried—sometimes succeeded, sometimes not—to shift the process: bringing content in sooner, rethinking reviews, and slowing teams just enough to ask sharper questions.

The resistance I faced wasn’t to content itself, but to what it exposed:
  • uncertainty
  • disagreement
  • tough choices.
Content highlights hidden decisions, and most systems are not designed for that kind of honesty.

This is why content-first design matters more than ever—not as a passing trend, but as a reliable way to anchor meaning before costly changes set in.

That’s why a straightforward, step-by-step approach is required.

I call it content-informed design: a steady practice that keeps content front and centre, helping teams build the skills, systems, and habits to reach the content-first ideal.

Even when the final words aren’t ready, content ideas can still steer design in the right direction.

How did we end up here? A brief history of content and design relationship

Content-first design didn’t start as a trendy idea. It began as a way to address a design problem.

2000s

In the early days of the web, designers often used placeholder text such as the well-known 'lorem ipsum', assuming real content and comprehension would come later. Design experts such as Jeff Zeldman pushed back against this, arguing that design without substantive content risks becoming mere decoration rather than accurate communication.

Late 2008

Kristina Halvorson further developed this idea by establishing content strategy as a formal discipline. She asserted that, in the absence of planning, structure, and rules, organisations repeatedly create unclear experiences and end up paying for them later.

2010s

The content-design principle has been demonstrated at scale by the UK Government Digital Service. Sarah Winters, having coined the term ‘content design’, placed content designers directly within product teams and ensured they began by focusing on user needs in plain language. Content-first practice proved to be not only good UX but also good governance.

Onwards

On a practical level, Steph Hay, now Senior Director of UX at Google, redefined UX as a conversation. She described words as 'our lowest-cost, lowest-risk way to design.' Her work on narrative prototyping showed that user flows are more honest when teams decide what they want to say before deciding how it should look.

More recently, leaders such as Sarah Johnson, author of the book ‘Content-First Design’, have broadened the discussion to include systems, leadership, and AI-era practices. She explains that content is no longer merely what users read but also what the system requires.

Upwards

Over the years and in many situations, the main lesson stays the same: if you haven’t decided what you’re saying and why you are saying it, then your design choices are just guesses. As Dan Whiting beautifully put it, way back in 2015, "Content is your cake; design is your frosting."

Even with this history, many organisations treat content as a reactive response rather than as a driver of the process. The gap between principle and practice is where things start to drift. AI didn’t create this drift, but it is accelerating it.

Content-informed design: making content-first more approachable

On paper, content-first design sounds straightforward. In practice, most teams jump in halfway.
  • Roadmaps are already underway.
  • Prototypes appear complete.
  • And research may be ongoing.
Acknowledging these realities can open teams to new ways of working. AI-powered prototyping often delivers polished results before anyone has nailed down the intent.

This is where what I call content-informed design becomes essential.

Stages of Content Design

How to get there...

Content-as-an-Afterthought Design Practice
Content-Aligned Design Principle
Content-First Design Principle
Content-Informed Design Principle

What I am going for...

Framework by Anupriy Kanti. 
This idea came to me from working in the trenches rather than textbooks (although reading about content dsign helped a lot). Leading teams that launched product after product—even as ambiguity sneaked in—I realised the answer wasn’t just writing earlier, but making decisions sooner.

Tip

Small steps—such as early content reviews to agree on goals and workshops to surface misunderstandings—changed how teams viewed the experience before it was locked into design and code. 

In practice, early content reviews bring together people from every role to hash out first drafts and check whether they correspond to the project’s goals.
  • Writers, designers, developers, and product managers all contribute to shaping the plan.
  • Intent-mapping workshops zero in on the core purpose of each feature.
  • Teams use real-world examples and user scenarios to identify false assumptions and refine content or design as needed.

Tip

By bringing everyone in early, these sessions identify misalignments before they become costly errors.

Content-informed design is a way for teams to move toward content-first design. It introduces content decisions at points where meaning is most likely to be lost, early enough to make a difference, even if it can’t fix everything. In many ways, it’s like trauma-informed design thinking: it assumes confusion can cause harm and sets up steps to find it early.

But what does content-informed design look like in daily life?

Example 1: Payment nudges in a consumer banking app

Intent before information

When I led the product and content design team for a consumer payments app at one of India's largest banks, we introduced homepage nudges for both first-time and existing users.

The UI layout was already locked in. The goal seemed simple: highlight the right offers. However, examining the content raised a larger question—not just what to say, but what the system wanted users actually to do. Was it about teaching, reassuring, influencing action, or building habits?

By decomposing the interface into Intent, Information, and Inducement, we identified implicit assumptions. Some phrases—especially for newcomers—came off as pushy rather than helpful. The problem wasn’t some evil intent, but that the real goal had never been clearly named. We didn’t overhaul the design or throw out the roadmap. Instead, we quietly stopped a trust-eroding pattern from spreading further.

Example 2: A blue-collar loyalty digital program in construction

Meaning over mechanics

While building content design processes at a construction-tech unicorn, we created a loyalty program for painters and electricians who were required to share personal information. Few completed the process. Design tweaks targeted friction points. Writing tweaks aimed for simplicity. Both helped, but neither solved it. Content-informed design revealed the real issue: the system was asking for trust it hadn’t earned.

Instead of only tweaking words or layouts, we changed the meaning itself. We broke down information into smaller, more precise steps. The experience explained what was being asked and why, using language rooted in real situations rather than ambiguous commitments of rewards.

Participation rose without adding mental strain. No sweeping redesign—just clarity, delivered sooner. In both cases, content served as a system check, catching problems before they became costly. Teams should prioritise early content reviews and intent-mapping workshops. These steps help address misalignments quickly and translate insights into measurable improvements that build end-user trust.

From conviction to conditions: how to make content-first design sustainable

By now, it’s clear what’s lost when design starts with structure instead of substance—and how content-first design offers a way forward. Once you see the gap, the first instinct is to advocate: 
  • explain the value
  • make the case
  • persuade with logic and stories.
I’ve done this more times than I can count. It feels principled. Sometimes it works, sometimes it fails.

But content-first design rarely fails because people disagree with it. Most teams already understand that clarity matters and that language shapes experience. Where it falters is not belief, but conditions. Goodwill alone cannot override systems designed to keep moving without pausing for intent.

Content-first design isn’t a quick fix—it’s a steady shift in the whole system. Resistance to it rarely comes in the form of a flat 'no.' It’s subtler: the effort is acknowledged but sidelined, time is 'temporarily' unavailable, training is postponed, and content talks occur too late to steer the direction. These minor delays pile up. The impact shrinks. Content is pushed to the end, seen as polish rather than a guide, and is asked to support decisions it should have helped shape.

Content-first thinking asks teams to pause just long enough to name their goals before jumping to solutions. It invites us to address uncertainty rather than conceal it behind a polished product. But most workplaces are built for speed, visible progress, and confident delivery. In that rush, unclear ideas get swept under the rug. Content becomes a way to dress up decisions, not to question if they make sense.

This is why trying to 'convert' an organisation to content-first design by persuasion alone often leads to frustration—or even burnout. You can push harder, speak louder, and still see content appear late or be ignored entirely. The longer-lasting move isn’t to fight the system head-on, but to work differently within it and help it grow.

That’s where content-informed design comes in—not as a compromise, but as a practical path to content-first results that can actually last in real organisations.
"Content-informed design begins with a simple truth: influence isn’t equal everywhere. Progress comes from weaving content judgment into the workflow you have—not the one you wish you had."
- Anupriy Kanti.

If you're starting your career

You might not set the roadmap—but you can still define what information an experience must deliver before exploring layouts. Even with AI churning out near-finished prototypes, a few minutes allocated to crafting prompts around intent—what the user must know and what the system enables—quietly restores meaning to the process.

As your influence grows

So does your leverage. At mid to senior levels, content-informed design shapes how work is framed and sequenced: collaborating on content early, coordinating on copy before polishing layouts, and pulling insights from research, support, sales, and business teams while there’s still time to steer direction. Here, content ceases to be an output and becomes a planning tool.

At the leadership level within organisations

This work becomes infrastructural. Content design systems can no longer sit alongside or be tucked inside design systems as optional add-ons; they must form the foundation. Components shouldn’t exist independently of the kinds of messages they are meant to carry.

For instance, a UI component, such as a user notification banner, might now include specific content constraints in its specification, including approved phrasing for error messages that alert users to critical information while maintaining a reassuring tone.

Influence at this level comes from demonstrating cumulative wins, such as: 
  • less rework
  • clearer decisions
  • a lighter support burden, which justify deeper investment. 
This isn’t about building content-heavy teams. It’s about creating content-literate systems in which everyone involved in developing the experience engages with meaning as part of their role.

This difference becomes increasingly complex to ignore as organisations adopt AI. Content is no longer simply what users see—it now shapes what systems create, select, judge, and repeat. At this stage, content-first design isn’t merely a skill; it’s a necessity.

Without shared truths, clear rules, and current content guides, AI doesn’t bring order—it accelerates confusion. One outdated guide can quickly multiply problems, as AI spreads any errors it finds.

Unlock more with AI

Learn how to optimise and innovate your content, frameworks and workflows with AI.

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A content-informed design approach establishes conditions for practical impact while leveraging AI to achieve scale. Intercom’s VERBI, an AI content design agent, exemplifies this clearly. What makes VERBI instructive isn’t just the presence of AI but the foundation that preceded it.

Months of human effort went into defining and maintaining content systems—style rules, product glossaries, research insights, and component-level guidance embedded directly into the design system. Only then was AI introduced, not to invent language, but to retrieve, apply, and enforce decisions that had already been made. The outcome wasn’t simply faster output—it provided earlier clarity and a more meaningful review while change remained possible. Judgment wasn’t replaced; it was operationalised.

That’s the real takeaway. Content-first design doesn’t thrive on conviction alone. It endures when the right conditions are in place to carry meaning forward—across teams, tools, and now, across machines.

Takeaway: content brings clarity

People often conflate content-first design with writing first, designing second.

But at its core, it asks teams and organisations to treat meaning as something that must be shaped deliberately, early, and collectively—before structure hardens, before output reassures, before systems begin repeating decisions at scale.

This isn’t just a workflow change—It’s a paradigm shift.

Content-informed design exists because most teams never start with a blank slate. Roadmaps are already moving, interfaces half-built. With AI churning out finished-looking artefacts before intent is clear, the real job isn’t to chase purity—it’s to inject judgment where it still counts. Do what is needed to surface assumptions, clarify purpose, and prevent ambiguity from taking root.

What fundamentally stands in the way of content-first design isn’t a lack of skill or belief. It’s the absence of conditions that allows teams to confront ambiguity rather than avoid it. As systems automate and language becomes code, these conditions matter more than ever. Without shared truths, clear content rules, and early review habits, meaning can’t survive at scale. It splinters, mutates, and quietly erodes trust.

So, the most crucial question at the start of any project isn’t just, “What are we building?” It’s deeper: “What are we genuinely trying to communicate—and why?”

If that answer isn’t clear, no amount of design polish or AI magic will fix it later.
"Content isn’t a finishing touch. It’s the foundation. In the world we’re designing for now, designing through content is one of the most reliable ways to achieve it."
- Anupriy Kanti.
Anupriy Kanti

Author bio

Anupriy Kanti is a UX and Content Design Leader with over 14 years of experience shaping product experiences across design agencies and unicorn product companies. Alongside leading end-to-end UX, he has built and scaled content design practices into independent yet integrated functions, advocating for content as a strategic force within product teams.

His work has led to the creation of tested frameworks, processes, and rituals, many of which now live on as adaptable playbooks for organisations.
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