On designing a document at Apple
For nontechnical people in the tech world, we’re only as useful as the documents we create
During my time at Apple I helped design iTunes Connect, the back-end website that developers, labels, publishers, and other media providers use to sell their products on the iTunes and app stores.

Nowadays it looks like this:
iTunes Connect app for iOS (circa 2018)
But back when I worked on it, in the skeuomorphic days of yore (aka 2010), it looked like this:
iTunes Connect app for iOS (circa 2010)
In my role as content strategist, my primary job was writing thousands of lines of UI copy and then handing them off to the developers in a massive Excel document. Initially, I used the template my manager had given me:

original Excel template

One day, however, my manager mentioned how frustrating it was that our copy did not always get used in the final product. Asking around — talking to designers, developers, and product managers — I learned that many people found the document hard to read. And, as a consequence, it was occasionally being ignored.

Taking a closer look, I could begin to see why:

• The division between pages was barely discernible
• The column order was odd and the headers were imprecise
• The visual comps were buried on other tabs

. . . 

So I addressed just those issues:

• I made the division between pages obvious
• I reordered and renamed the columns
• I put the copy and the visual comps on the same tab

revised Excel template

And the response was enthusiastic. As such:

• The new template was quickly adopted
• Morale improved
• Apple got the full value out of their investment in our content strategy team
• And—most crucially—the revised template helped to ensure that our product would continue to treat customers like this:

Apple help

Rather than this:

Microsoft help

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