Andrew Stein: Content Design and AI Leadership – Episode 34

Andrew Stein Like many content designers in the fall of 2022, Andrew Stein was concerned about the possible negative impact of generative AI on content and design practice. And his concern was heightened by the large number of content designers on his team. Since then, Andrew has discovered many ways to apply AI in his content design work, both in conventional digital-product design and in content work on AI products. He has also discovered a happy additional benefit of taking the lead on AI. His expertise has led to exciting new collaborations and leadership opportunities. We talked about: his work as a content design and AI leader his take on the best ways to use AI in content-design practice how to maintain focus on the fundamentals of content as you work with AI to create new content or manage and validate existing content, and a tool he is developing to automate this new content-employment opportunities that he sees emerging the clean slate on which content people can create their new AI roles and responsibilities some of his techniques for demonstrating how your content skills can help your AI collaborators: find opportunities to serve adopt a learner's mindset "just do" - experiment with tools on your own some of the people he follows and resources he has consulted as he has developed his AI expertise: Noz Urbina Leah Krauss the conversation design community, in particular Maaike Groenewege his encouragement for all content designers to find a balanced approach to incorporating AI into their career Andrew's bio Andrew is a Director and Principal Content Designer at a financial services company. He’s led content in smart home, social media, AI robotics, and FinTech. Andrew’s experience includes both consulting, and companies like Lowe’s, Wells Fargo, Truist Bank, and Meta. Andrew is currently focused on the way AI tools serve the content design process, and bringing a content-first approach to the development of new AI products and services. Connect with Andrew online LinkedIn ADPList Video Here’s the video version of our conversation: https://youtu.be/hxoMSzyDCFk Podcast intro transcript This is the Content and AI podcast, episode number 34. When generative AI burst onto the scene there were plenty of reasons for content designers to be anxious. Andrew Stein channeled his concern into a deep exploration of AI tech and how it might be applied in content work. As a design leader, he has discovered a number of ways that content designers can use AI tools, and build AI products. As an advocate for content practice, he has found that his AI expertise opens many new doors for influencing his business collaborators. Interview transcript Larry: Hi everyone, welcome to episode number 34 of the Content and AI Podcast. I am really happy today to welcome to the show, Andrew Stein. Andrew is an independent content design leader. He works currently for a big financial services firm. He also has his own consultancy on the side, does various content things including AI stuff for folks. So welcome, Andrew. Tell the folks a little bit more about what you're up to these days. Andrew: Yeah, very cool. Well Larry, super-happy to be here and as I mentioned earlier, I've seen all the episodes and get so much out of them every time, so really happy to be here. Yeah, right now, like you mentioned, I'm doing quite a bit of work both for the company I work for and on the side, working in both AI projects and traditional content design projects and really where those two merge together, both helping to build teams and build structure around how we approach AI from a content perspective, which I think is really key with all of this. And also how to bring AI into the work that we do as well as content designers working on traditional products and services as well. Larry: Yeah, I think that latter is probably the more familiar scenario for most of my listeners, I guess. I do know a number of people who are working on AI products, but I think the more common use case for many people is using AI in their day-to-day, just good old-fashioned content design work. Especially as a leader, how are you implementing that and encouraging your folks and just tell me a little bit about that. Andrew: Yeah, well I think at first, all of us were wondering does this do the writing for us? Does this replace us? There was quite a bit of fear and trepidation or looking at it very cynically like, "Oh, this thing can't do anything for me. It's not a writer, I'm the writer in the room." I think there's been a spectrum of views on it, but all looking at it as the writer. Is it going to be the writer? Can it replace the writer? No, it can't. And what I've really landed on, or at least at this point in time is that, no, it's not the writer, but it's a really great assistant to the writer. And so that's really the perspective that I'm coming at it from with the teams that I work on, with my own personal work is really seeing it as a really powerful tool. Andrew: Noz Urbina, I think he said, and maybe I've inflated the number, maybe it was 100 and now I've made it 1,000, but I believe he said, "Think of AI not as your superhero that's going to do everything and the magic bullet. But think of it as like 1,000 interns that can do way more than you can, but they can also do way more than you can really poorly with poor instructions or really great as long as you give them great instructions." And so that's really the area where I think AI fits in as a tool for content designers. It's definitely not replacing you, it's not going out ahead of you and doing all the work and then you're wondering where you fit into the picture. Andrew: It's very much human in the loop before, during, and after, and it's kind of like a companion or a sidekick that can help you do things, can serve as another person in the room or a lot of other people in the room to give you feedback on ideas. But very much from that perspective and not nearly as much as, "Oh, it can go out and do it for me. I don't really have to think about it." I think you have to think even more now to use AI well, but if you do that, it can be a really powerful tool and that's kind of the spot where I think we're coming- Larry: ...I don't know, I've managed as many as 15 people at a time, but that's only 15. And I've also done a lot of volunteer wrangling at work conferences and things like that. And that notion of managing enthusiastic and pretty knowledgeable, but really just not as far along in their professional development as you are, managing all that requires a lot of guardrails. How do you manage that? Everybody would love to have 1,000 precocious, brilliant people ready to help them, but they just don't know as much as you do about the job. How do you constrain that enthusiastic creative energy that LLMs bring to the game? Andrew: They're definitely way too enthusiastic most of the time, and I think if you try and just generate some content without a lot of structure to what you're trying to generate, you get that way over enthusiastic, too many words, too many repeated words, that young person that's learning a lot of cool words and wants to use them all. I think that's what we see a lot of times. It really is about, and I want this to be an encouragement to all content people out there, is that really the fundamentals of content creation are still there and if you bring those into the scenario, you'll have a much better experience with them. But it really is about diving into those core principles. Andrew: So when thinking about creating content or checking your content, being able to connect whatever AI tool you're using to really good sources and good existing content, so like a style guide or a content design system, having that built in and really fine-tuned so that anything you're doing is within those guardrails is really important. And obviously you can expand out from there. I think that's the base. So if you're using something like ChatGPT to help you ideate or to check your work, it's really about, okay, again, like you said, guardrails, what are the guardrails that keep that content generation or that content check or that brainstorming companion within the scope of whatever you're working on? So if you're in an organization, making sure that your LRC guidelines are built into that. That's another way to have checks and balances on the content you're creating. Andrew: Even tying into research and personas and having all these different pieces of data that can create this world that LLM or that ChatGPT tool can live within and work through is really important. But you can come at it from a few different angles. So you can think about it like that content creation and you're generating new ideas and new concepts or new content ideas and it's coming to you already within that framework, or you can take existing content and check it against those things as well. Does this match those guidelines? And that's where I think if you're using a tool, you want to build that tool in such a way that it's giving you the reasons that it's making decisions or the pieces of data that's factoring into what it's giving you. Andrew: I think that's been a really key thing for us, for the projects I've worked on is having that validation that, "Oh yeah, this made that decision considering this piece of information." Because not only does that give you a reassurance that yes, I'm within the guardrails. It also tells you where it's getting it wrong and where you can go update those guardrails to get better outputs. And then the more people that use it, you know that they're all working in the same frame ... It is just like your style guide. You want everybody to be referencing it. Well, it's the same thing now, but now you've got a tool that's also referencing it.