• Content Design System

  • Operationalizing clarity, accessibility, and content patterns across uwmedicine.org

Quick snapshot

  • Role: Lead Content Strategist

  • Team: Digital Experience, Marketing, WebOps, SEO

  • Duration: May 2023 – Ongoing

Summary

A scalable, embedded content system that brings consistency, accessibility, and strategy to every component across UW Medicine’s digital ecosystem — reducing confusion, design debt, and rework across teams.

Key impact

  • Standardized 45+ components across design and CMS

  • Resolved 75+ inconsistencies in structure, labels, and tone

  • Enabled faster builds and reduced content-related dev questions

  • Formed the foundation for content governance, training, and templates

Overview

As UW Medicine scaled its site and design system, the lack of a content layer created growing risks: inconsistent tone, inaccessible labels, and a high reliance on UX writers for repetitive guidance. I led the creation of a Content Design System — a structured layer of documentation, usage guidance, and accessibility standards integrated directly into Figma and CMS tooling.


This work became the foundation for our content governance model and enabled faster, more confident work across UX, WebOps, and clinic-facing teams.

The Challenge

01

No source of truth for content usage across components

02

Tone, voice, and structure varied by author or implementation

03

UX content team was overloaded with repeat QA and guidance requests

My Role

  • Audited 50+ live and design system components

  • Standardized 45+ high-use modules with consistent, accessible guidance

  • Authored component-level usage rules, tone standards, and real content examples

  • Integrated accessibility best practices (WCAG 2.1) into naming, labeling, and structure

  • Embedded guidance into Figma (component descriptions, do/don’t usage blocks)

  • Partnered with WebOps to align CMS configurations with design logic

Process

1. Audit & Prioritize

Reviewed design system, CMS modules, and live pages to catalog inconsistencies in headings, labels, tone, hierarchy, and accessibility. Prioritized high-traffic or high-friction components first.


2. Standardize Content Patterns

For each component, I defined:

  • Usage purpose

  • Recommended tone/voice

  • Word count or character limits

  • Label vs. heading guidance

  • Accessibility considerations (e.g., alt text, semantic structure)


3. Build Measurement Models

Wrote documentation directly inside Figma components and mirrored in Confluence. Shared guidance with UX, WebOps, and SEO teams. Provided examples and editable starter blocks to support reuse.


3. Embed & Distribute

Wrote documentation directly inside Figma components and mirrored in the organization's online internal design system site. Shared guidance with UX, WebOps, and SEO teams. Provided examples and editable starter blocks to support reuse.


4. Extend into Systems

Aligned with CMS team to bake content rules into component configurations (e.g., required fields, max length). Guidance became part of governance, onboarding, and QA workflows.

Results

Outcome

Detail

Components with standardized guidance

Components with

standardized guidance

45+

45+

Inconsistencies resolved

Inconsistencies resolved

75+ across design and CMS

75+ across design and CMS

Accessibility fixes implemented

Accessibility fixes implemented

20+ (e.g., headings, labels, alt text)

20+ (e.g., headings, labels, alt text)

Pages/projects referencing shared guidance

Pages/projects referencing

shared guidance

30+ and growing

30+ and growing

“Before this, every new page felt like starting over. Now it feels like we’re building on something solid.” — Web Content Writer

Takeaways

01

A content design system is what makes voice, tone, and clarity repeatable at scale

02

Guidance must live where people work — not in PDFs, but inside tools

03

Operationalizing content standards gives teams autonomy, clarity, and confidence

alix.medler@gmail.com

Alix Medler © 2025 All rights reserved.

alix.medler@gmail.com

Alix Medler © 2025 All rights reserved.

alix.medler@gmail.com

Alix Medler © 2025 All rights reserved.