Meet the Ripplers: Ginger is a mover and a shaker in content design
Name: Ginger Shaker
Role: Content Design Lead
Location: Saint James City, Florida
Rippler since: May 2022
Meet Ginger, she’s a mover and a Shaker (but really, that’s her last name)
Meet Ginger. After graduating from law school and deciding to take a different route, she started a big tech career and moved all over the Bay Area and to a couple of European countries. She currently leads the Content Design team, where she’s proven to be such a mover and shaker that her last name literally changed to Shaker since joining Rippling.
Content Design: Small Team, BIG Impact
In May 2022, I joined Rippling to found the Content Design program. Content Design is formerly known as UX writing. You can think of it as product writing, like product design. Content Designers are responsible for in-product language—the actual words users read on a screen. We work with Product Designers, Product Researchers, Product Managers, Engineers, Product Documentation Writers, Product Marketers, and Product Counsel to shape how products feel and guide people through the intended user experience.
Early adaptations
Many Content Designers feel like they need to teach people about what they do and how to work with them. I knew immediately that insisting on being in every meeting and on every message thread wouldn’t work at Rippling. The teams move too fast, and there are so many products. It’s not possible to cover everything. So, I started experimenting with ways to scale writing guidance, learn the product, and be in service of the product. I immediately implemented and championed 5 product writing rules in an attempt to increase scannability and reduce cognitive load. I joined as many user research sessions as I could. I was available for people to reach out to me on any channel, tag me on designs and documents, and set up time with me. And I offered training on how and when to write questions in product and how to write better body copy.
Facing the riptide
My approach was working for a while, but the Rippling riptide was pulling me. The cost of context switching was too high. From copy that helps admins set up permissions for viewing dashboards to tooltips explaining deductions in employees’ paychecks to guidance on hiring best practices, I was fatigued from jumping across a lot of nuanced HR, IT, and Finance topics. And our offerings were continuing to expand across product areas and countries. So I established office hours a few days a week to compartmentalize context switching into shorter chunks of time. People across the organization (including engineers and lawyers!) came to talk to me about what they work on, and I was soon making connections between people and patterns and helping balance in-product and Help Center content for more products than I ever thought possible. I’m not a subject matter expert on any one product area, but I can see how all our products fit together.
Put the product first
I was, and still am, given the autonomy to prioritize what to focus on, when, and how. And that’s what I told Rippling’s second Content Designer she’d be able to do. Between the two of us, we support 39 Product Designers, 7 Product Researchers, … and I don’t even want to count how many Product Managers and Engineers. We don’t make decks about content strategy or set up meetings to defend word choice. There are no roadshows celebrating how we implemented a language system or updated metadata for the object graph. We dive into the products. We align people on what words to use. We communicate changes thoughtfully. Then we move on to supporting the next product. There’s no end goal—it’s all impact.
Growth at Rippling
During my interview process, the best recruiter I’ve ever worked with, Amber Appleby, promised me the team would guide me as I became a first-time manager at Rippling. And she kept her promise! This past spring, she helped me through every step of the recruiting and hiring process. The Director of Product Research, Jennie Doberne, also coached me through doubling the size of the Content Design team (to 2!). The Design leadership team is seasoned and always available to answer my questions about growing and managing a team.
Tips for Future Ripplers
We don’t coast here. The work ebbs and flows, but it’s manageable and you can find the right balance. And you’ll be supported as you figure out how to face the Rippling riptide.
Memorable Rippling moments
This past spring, I traveled to the awe-inspiring New York office to brainstorm with a Product Researcher and Product Designer on a payroll product. This was the first in-person jam session with representation from all functions of the Design team at Rippling. And it won’t be the last!
When I’m not building Rippling, I’m…
Spending time with my Great Dane, out on the water, or daydreaming about my next trip. I’ve moved around a lot while working in tech, including 4 years in the San Francisco Bay Area, 1 year in Amsterdam, and 2 years in Zurich. I haven’t traveled much since relocating to Southwest Florida 3 years ago, and I have the travel and expat itch again.
