We Cracked the Future of Content Design

And as it turns out…

The future of content design is not one thing. Actually, it depends on a lot of things, doesn’t it?

Content design is not one way of working. It’s not one set of tools. It’s not one method of collaboration with cross-functional partners.

What content design looks like for you depends on a lot of factors beyond your AI tooling (or lack thereof). It depends on the company you’re at, the team you’re on, the goals of your business, and the needs of your customers.

I’ll illustrate.

In 2025, I was on a team of five content designers. We all worked in different product areas, on different teams, and with AI in different ways. Personally, I spent about 40% of my time in Figma doing good ol’ fashioned UX writing, and 60% in ChatGPT tweaking LLM prompts for in-product AI-generated content.

Jump to early 2026, and I joined a new organization as the lead (and sadly, only) UX writer. Now, I spend about 10% of my time in Figma, 90% in Claude creating content design systems, and literally 0% tweaking prompts for in-product AI-generated content.

In other words, how I do content design has changed. I don’t get to dive deep into every product flow. I’m seldom hands-on with customer-facing AI-generated content. My priorities (and time) have adjusted. And you know what? That’s okay.

No, really. It is.

The barrage of thought leadership we’ve all benefitted from (and sometimes, endured) over the past two years might make you think otherwise. You may be feeling that the future of content design will look a specific way, and that you’d better be quick to get aligned. But it’s okay that how I spend my time designing content is different from how you spend yours. “Okay” is actually underselling it. “To be expected and celebrated” would be more accurate.

An undefined future for our beloved discipline is scary. It’s a bit terrifying sometimes. We all want definition — it’s what we do. If you’re like me, you’ve flocked to content (driven by passion or panic or both) that promises, “Here’s what CONTENT DESIGN WILL BECOME and here’s what YOU NEED TO DO to be ready.” And to be fair, a lot of that content is well-founded and valuable. I’m often reminded how generous our content design community is. Given most of us don’t have an accredited 4-year degree in content design, we look to each other to learn and grow. That’s amazing.

But also, I’m a little fried.

Over the past year in particular, I’ve read and heard so much that essentially re-frames “Here’s our role in the age of AI” and argues “Here’s why content design (still!) matters.”

Explaining our value has always been a tricky part of the job—which is ironic, given “making complex concepts clear” is kind of our whole thing. Let’s be a bit self-deprecating here and recognize that we can’t even settle on a name. Our historic debate: “Are we UX writers or content designers?” has even evolved more recently into “Are we content modelers or context engineers? Or a third secret thing?” I get it. A single name for a clearly defined and hyper-specific discipline would be great. It would be so, so great.

As layoffs ramp up, as AI rolls out (or doesn’t), and as lines between disciplines blur, the pressure to define what we do and why it matters feels heavier than ever. There’s this sense that if we don’t nail it down right now, in this formative moment in time, we’ll get left out of the conversation entirely (and let’s be honest, we’ve got past trauma to fuel this fear). Many of us are not-so-secretly concerned that some company — probably Meta, cue eye roll — will decide what content design should be, update their job descriptions accordingly, and the rest of us will have to scramble to catch up.

To be fair, some of that totally made-up scenario may happen. BUT — and hopefully most of you aren’t hearing this for the first time — there are non-Meta-approved ways to be a content designer.

(Don’t tell them I said that though.)

Most of us won’t work for Meta or Google or Apple. And scrambling to lock down a single definition of content design — one that holds across every company, every team, every use case — isn’t going to save our discipline. The work has never been that uniform. We work in organizations with completely different goals, team structures, resources, and constraints. The needs of my team are not the needs of your team. And that’s great news, because content designers are damn good at adapting.

Content design has always been about context, and context is always unique. This isn’t a new idea — it’s basically the founding principle of the whole discipline. What’s useful at a scrappy startup is different from what’s useful at an enterprise company. The tools change. The workflows change. The titles change (sigh). What doesn’t change is the underlying skill: figuring out what people need to understand, and making that content as clear and useful as possible.

The circumstances of our work are shifting, there’s no ignoring that. The discipline has and will continue to be influenced by big players and AI. But let’s keep that in perspective, yes? Content design skills are evergreen. They don’t expire when circumstances shift.

Of course an exact map of what we do and how we do it would be great. And yet, nobody, nobody has an exact map. I guess it’s good news that content designers are so adept at navigating without one.

The future of content design for you will likely depend far more on the micro details (company, resources, and goals) rather than on whether you’re called a UX writer or context engineer. So keep learning and keep trying new things — just don’t assume that if you blink, the “right way” will pass you by.

Who knows? Next month you might spend all day chatting with Claude—or all day in meetings with humans. You might spend more of your time vibe-coding — or more time creating content-writing agents. You might not. I don’t know.

It just depends.