I have some very exciting news!

I’ve joined 10up as a Senior Content Designer.

10up is a leading web agency offering consultative creative and engineering services. Here’s an excerpt from the About Us page:

With ~200 experts in digital strategy and management, software engineering, user experience and interactive design, cloud infrastructure, and audience and revenue optimization, we’re big enough to conquer any challenge, and small enough to care.

10up has an exciting diverse client roster that includes Fortune 500 companies, influential content publishers, and impactful nonprofits: The White House, Time, Google, Microsoft, California DMV, Politico, and many more wonderful clients.

We call ourselves 10uppers and we’re a fully remote globally distributed team. Last year, our team grew to 270 full time employees, we earned 7 recognitions in the Annual Webby Awards and contributed more than 8,000 hours to the open source ecosystem.

I’m the first Albanian on the team. I think I’m also the first Albanian content designer in general, but happy to be proven wrong.

[Further reading: What is open source and why does it matter?]

What’s content design, again?

In the last few years, 10up’s UX practice—including the brilliant Melissa Vander Wilt, Nicole Beckerman, ​and Taylor Dewey—codified content design as a subspeciality.

10up offers amazing opportunities to work on publishers’ large-scale content projects (and to solve problems with content).

Here’s how I describe my job on LinkedIn:

I’m passionate about connecting the dots across complex ecosystems & thrilled to work with 10up, crafting accessible experiences and human-centered content solutions.

If you’re familiar with content design, you might find it ironic that I used buzzwords to explain what I do when clear, simple language stands at the core of content design.

A decade ago, Sarah Winters (was Richards) created the content discipline when she was working at GOV.UK. She forever changed content management and the way we think of content. Her content design work was so revolutionary that it made the news: ‘Only pizzas are delivered’: Public sector jargon banned in first style guide for Government announcements.

It’s a new discipline and I only first heard about it last year. When I came across it and read the book, like many others, I realized it’s what I had been doing for years, I just hadn’t known of the term.

What does this mean for The Inner Dolphin? Am I still going to write?

I vividly remember a co-working session with a friend last year. I had just asked her about something, doing the classic “solve a complex problem by breaking it down to others.” After our conversation, we went back to work on our respective laptops. She looked up. “You’re not just a writer, you know? Your work entails so much more.”

She explained how I had a great grasp of strategy beyond “just writing” and while I was a little offended (What’s wrong with “just writing”?), I agreed with her. I’m thrilled to have come across the content design community and I happily identify with my job title.

[Further reading: What is content design?]

Work is an important part of my life and so is The Inner Dolphin. I intend to write more frequently about content design, what it is, and why I love it so much, but today I just wanted to share the news with you all.

I doubt this will change anything around here. Well, I took down my Services page since I’m no longer available for freelance opportunities. Yes, breaking up with my lovely freelance clients was hard. I’ll need to write a new Now page.

Otherwise, though, I’m excited about this journey and to share bits and pieces of it with you. This should be FUN.

Let me know if you have any questions (and if you know any great Senior or Lead-level UX designers, we’re hiring).

In the meantime, here’s my introductory post on 10up’s internal blog (some info redacted):

Senior Content Designer, Delfina Hoxha, has been contracting with 10up since August of 2021 but on Monday, January 10 she officially becomes a 10upper! Delfina (she/her) will join us from her office in Tirana, Albania.

Delfina started playing around with WordPress back in 2015 and never stopped. From working as a Content Strategist for the #1 Food & Drink App in Albania to being the Head Writer of a leading solution provider for the information sector, to then quitting to work freelance for global clients, Delfina loves connecting the dots across complex ecosystems, whether that entails puns or content models.

Despite what that 54-word sentence would have you believe, Delfina is actually an avid fan of plain language Lack of clear information is a barrier for many, especially marginalized groups, and Delfina is proud to be part of the UX movement, advocating for users and clarity. Delfina has been contracting with 10up since August 2021 and loved the strong UX-centric culture and the team so much she decided to transition to a full-time Senior Content Designer position.

She has worked both in-house and agency side, always intertwining storytelling, behavioral psychology, and best UX practices on a wide range of tasks and topics like designing user research studies, making credit analysis copywriting fun (yes, it’s doable), working with Relationship Designers on a dating guidance app, and writing a musician bio.

During her Psychology studies, she researched the halo effect and prosocial behavior. She interned at a psychiatric center and volunteered as a mental health aide in Sri Lanka.

Back in 2010, she was an Activities Coordinator Volunteer at the local animal rights center. She also volunteered with the NED foundation during the 2017 election, tackling women’s underrepresentation in Albanian politics, and later helped out the National Alliance of Mental Illness, the nation’s largest grassroots mental health organization, as a Communications Coordinator.

The Inner Dolphin is her old-school blog dedicated to using stories mindfully, trying to eradicate the feeling that no one else feels the way you do. She publishes a new article on the first Sunday of every month.