Defining content design at the fastest growing startup of all time
November 2023 – Present
I joined the Deel team as their very first UX copywriter back in winter 2023. This leadership position is split 50-50 between day-to-day content design, and bigger picture content and operational strategy.
Particular resources I’ve defined and executed include:
– Our overall content design strategy
– Methodology, pillars and principles
– UX writing guidelines
– UX writing cheatsheet
– Word bank
– Design system/component-level guidelines
– Ongoing workshops, mentoring and onboarding sessions
– AI-empowered resources and tools (see below)
Particular metrics/successes have included:
– 97% CTA consistency across product
– 78 hardcoded UI components
– Halving title/subtitle inconsistencies from 32% to 14%
– 12 workshops hosted with peer content design evaluation achieving 87%
– 65 screens across payroll product updated, covering 432 individual strings
Watching our tone
Alongside the foundations of the department, I have driven for more accessible, customer-facing content that speaks to and for the user. Rather than at them.
Colloquial tone, action-orientated language, simple and straightforward vocabulary, questions instead of directions, tooltips that support rather than distract. These are the foundations of our new product language, and have marked an instrumental shift in our content and user experience over the last two years.
Particular metrics/successes have included:
– CSAT score increase from 72% to 86% when asked ‘do you find Deel’s content easy to understand?’
– 90% of users found our content to be informed and knowledgable
– 88% of users found our content to be universal and accessible
– 74% of users found our content to be inviting and encouraging
In my time at Deel I’ve delivered on a number of landmark projects and releases. These have included our mobile app, Anytime Pay feature, vendor management system, expense cards launch, client onboarding journeys, performance management platform and Deel IT.
Particular metrics/successes have included:
– Increased adoption of Anytime Pay by 34%
– Reduced expense related customer support tickets by 23%
– Improved onboarding task completion by 29% and reduced average time to complete by 1.4 weeks
AI-empowered workflows
Most recently I’ve designed and built a number of AI-powered content design tools, to better serve our product design teams, drive efficiency and improve overall quality and output. This initially started with a Gemini Gem with specially tested and designed prompt and guidelines, as well as a Claude skill.
We also designed and built a dedicated AI copywriting assistant, a Figma plugin that slots seamlessly into Product Designers’ existing workflows.
Particular metrics/successes have included:
– Increased content design reviews by 96%
– Completely automated correcting of everyday copy errors (capital letters, punctuation, grammar), saving hours of manual intervention
– Reduced time spent on manual content design reviews by 30%
– Resulting in 88% content quality across Deel IT (up 21% from 67%)
Smarter notifications
At the end of 2025 I transitioned into the Growth team as part of a newly-formed Growth-led design squad. Here I defined and built our notifications content strategy, across email, push, Slack and other communication channels.
A landmark project from this time is Smarter Notifications, a more powerful, intelligent take on notifications. This project was built on preemptive insights, before-it-happens insights and tangible data, rather than typical, reactive updates.
Joe West Stevens 