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Quit being a Cinderella

Standing up for yourself as a UX person and getting buy-in from senior management.

Rita Kind-Envy
UX Collective
7 min readMar 15, 2024

A sad blonde girl (Cinderella) in the clothing of a maid is sitting down by the locked door and holding on to the door knob. The door is locked.
from “Cinderella,” 1950, property of Disney

Once upon a time, there was a company without a content designer. All the texts on the company’s website were written by whoever was working with that bit of the platform at the time.

Time passed, and managers realized that something was wrong with their Kingdom:

  • Some links didn’t work.
  • Users complained they couldn’t find what they wanted.
  • People were leaving their website disappointed.

So, in their quest for a happy ever after, managers summoned a magical being — a content designer, the first of her kind in the realm.

To their surprise, this new creature said it wouldn’t be enough to “fix” the links or rewrite some texts on the platform. She said they needed… content transformation? Tone of voice? A/B testing texts?!

This sounded completely silly. And expensive. However, to not sadden the creature, managers promised that “maybe next year” they’ll have time for experiments. This year… can you please just fix the texts?

And, with time, the new member of the UX team accepted her fate. She was only there to answer the questions, not to ask them. The metrics didn’t…

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Written by Rita Kind-Envy

I'm a UX writer who mostly writes about writing. Sometimes I write about other things, though.

Responses (7)

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Great one! We all have to stop waiting for a fairy godmother. Just grab our own pens and write that happy ending; it's time to turn 'once upon a time' into 'let me show you how it's done!'

14

This story really hits home on how important UX researchers and content designers are, and how they often don't get the credit they deserve. They play a big role in making products great, but sometimes their hard work is overlooked. The story is…

17

These are such practical tips Rita. I'll definitely bear them in mind. Also love your comparison of the under appreciated UX roles to Cinderella, so apt and accurate!

32