I’m a Content Model Designer at Thumbtack, helping people get answers that sound less like robots and more like good help. Before that, I designed content for edtech companies like BrainPOP. As a former school principal and English professor, I’m still a teacher at heart.
Content design is evolving. But writing is still at the heart of the practice.
When we design content with AI tools, we don’t have to lose our voice or our brand. We use these tools to push our thinking and build the structure behind every word. Then we hold AI to the same bar as any good writer: be honest, be clear, and know when to be quiet.
And every so often, when we want to ditch AI and write with pencils and paper, we do.
What do you do if you find a “small” privacy issue the day before a launch? Handle it. I owned the end-to-end prompt design for AI call summaries. When my engineering partners and I found the issue during a bug bash, I stopped the launch, connected with Legal, and fixed it before it went live. An unpopular but necessary decision.
Launched to all users · Customer and pro recaps tell the same story 90%+ of the time
How do you turn a flat request form into a dynamic conversation? Make it a smart conversation. With a small team, I took a first-draft prompt to launch. Learn how we did it and raised our answer rate, even while the AI asked more questions.
Answer rate up from 84% to 88%, even with more questions
What do you do when you launch a fancy new product but your customers miss it? Make it matter. Teachers were feature-fatigued after Covid and weren’t opening our BrainPOP Science announcements. So I revamped the messaging based on what we knew teachers wanted. Engagement went from 3% to 39%. Learn how I visited classrooms to increase engagement.
Pop-up engagement up from 3% to 39%
My work is password-protected. Email me for the password, and I’ll send it the same day.
The systems and ways of working I bring to a whole organization.
I revamped our company’s office hours into ongoing content research. We learn the pain points of our internal customers, and our AI tools keep teams organized, surveyed, and coming back.
Read how we did it →When BrainPOP’s content team went from six people to one, I was the one. I built the systems that got four products speaking in one voice, and content errors dropped 20%.
See the systems (password-protected) →I’m the design representative on our company’s AI Champions team, leading the charge on new AI initiatives. I host a design-organization-wide AI build time, and my Claude Design collaboration with a product designer landed us a presentation spot at a company-wide event.
I own our content design plugins for Figma, Claude, and ChatGPT. I keep them accurate, up to date, and useful by tracking usage and making changes as we learn.
See it in action (password-protected) →I made these bots to help you learn more about me and my work.
This is the voice I teach AI to unlearn.
As an educator, I’ve learned that being understood matters more than sounding smart. We don’t need fluffy language or corporate jargon. People crave simplicity. When we know what our audience needs, we can give them exactly that.
Every project starts with the problem, not the words. Research leads the way: leading and observing user interviews, watching people use the product, and digging into the data.
I work with teams to decide what the content needs to do, and what it shouldn’t. That’s where the hard calls get made, like what an AI should say and what it should leave out.
I make the content design last beyond me: voice and tone guides, content models, prompt rules, evals, and tools teams can use on their own.
[Sarah] had an excellent quarter. Call Summaries v2 stands out, both for the prompt work and for everything [she] put in place to support it: the eval workflow, the changelog, the prompt crits, and a handoff doc that makes it easier for others to carry the work forward.
Rae Broviak · Content Design Manager at Thumbtack
Sarah reshaped how we design with words. Her strategic approach to UX content design improved countless opportunities for conversion, feature adoption, and user task completion.
Stephanie Hom · VP of Product Design, BrainPOP