James is a content designer, editor and writer. He is an advocate of Plain English standards and the GOV.UK Digital System (GDS) style guide with a focus on user journeys, accessibility and user centred design.
What does a Content Designer do?
In all cases the job of a content designer is to help audiences do what they need to, in the easiest, clearest, fastest and most accessible way as possible. The content must be consistent, appropriate, structured and precise. And above all, it must be wholly centred on the people who need to use that content.
Types of content include online guidance manuals, web pages, online forms, notifications such as letters, emails and SMS messages, style guides, tone-of-voice principles, reading age assessments and location assets such as posters and screens.
Methods
James uses iterative and agile methodologies supported by tools such as Confluence, Information Mapping®, Jira, Slack, Teams and Trello, as well as content management systems such as Jadu, WordPress/Gutenberg and GatherContent.
In the past
James began his career as a technical author, writing support documentation for air and sea radar systems. He worked on the internet backbone writing user content for Packet Assemblers Disassemblers (PADs) and was in the first cohort of writers to develop information on an HTTP server using the hypertext markup language (HTML) – the early World Wide Web.
He wrote content for SAS Airline’s aircraft handling procedures, and designed the information architecture for MyYahoo, Taste for Wine, World Wide Fund for Nature and the Chase Manhattan Bank. For two years he ran the Information Architecture practice for the Dot.Com consultancy, Vybe and for three years he ran a User Experience Engineering Practice.
For seven years, James was the Local Delivery Solution Director responsible for rolling out biometrically-enabled UK visa application centres across the world for the UK and Australian governments. He was directly responsible for deploying this service in Canada, Brazil, Jamaica, France, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, Serbia, Algeria, Libya, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, and Turkey. This responsibility included managing ministerial expectations, directing the teams in the countries and managing the local transition plans for each country – including acquiring premises, building construction, IT, legal entities, subcontracts, processes and procedures, training and the successful go-live of 33 facilities.
Before turning to full-time writing in 2016, James worked as an information consultant with the NHS, the Ministry of Defence, the Home Office and the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO).
You can find more information about his career by viewing his LinkedIn profile.
James Ellis in words 