MERIAH DOTY TREVIÑO

Hi! I’m Meriah. I've delivered exceptional content design and editorial strategy to some of the world's largest digital brands and products. I optimize UX and editorial to achieve business goals.

Brands for which I have strategized, written, edited, content designed, and created style guides:

Content Design

Project 1

VadenArt Digital Presence Optimization (2024)

This consulting project aimed to optimize VadenArt.com through proven UX Design and Content Design practices. The end result was a proposal which contained supporting documents: Recommendations (main hub doc), VadenArt wireframe sketch (pdf), Competitive Analysis (tabbed sheet), Conceptual Grammar (tabbed sheet), Voice Chart (tabbed sheet), SEO article example. 

Before

My process

My proposal

Homepages Are (Sort of) Passé: Website homepage design isn’t as important as how your digital presence, ecosystem, is interconnected. Instead of a traditional “nav” I recommended the client opt for a programmable, update-able inline box that appears on every page on the site reflecting top-line conceptual grammar. That way, when users are driven from (for example) a social post to a blog post, they’ll immediately see the box featuring the product’s most important, up-to-date objects and actions. 

Reduce Friction for Users: The thrust of my site reorganization plan revolves around ushering users much more quickly and efficiently to their intended path of action – actions also prioritized by the client. People are in a rush, they scan (don’t read) in an F shape. The less words/reading required the faster they’ll arrive at their objective because we’ve lightened their cognitive load. And yes, it’s OK if their objective is to read and learn – but we want to get them there faster, with ease.

Impactful Imagery: Streamline homepage and make more visual impact with art/ less words.

Writing tips: I advised the client on writing in these areas: format, length, frequency, style and grammar — in addition to the guidance offered in the voice chart. Here's an example of my writing guidance: It's important to convey a sense of conversation and accessibility for experts and novices alike. Headlines and descriptions should drive at the thrust of a post. A standalone title of a new piece of art is meaningless without the artist’s explanation. So lead with the heart of the explanation: THAT’S  your headline. E.g. Instead of the existing “HEADWINDS” go with something like “How I used 100 test outputs to create Headwinds”. (The SEO-friendly version of that headline would be something like “Algorithmic Art: How I used 100 test outputs to create Headwinds”.) 

Proposal elements: Along with sharing the above wireframe sketch with the client, I shared all aforementioned supportive documents and a "main hub" six-page recommendations doc, which linked out to all docs in total. I presented my documented ideas and visuals to the client over Google Meet, also sharing additional ideas (e.g. Option 3: A vertical nav box). He was very pleased with my proposal and keen to use my UX and content designs and ideas to redesign his site and set forth with an improved content strategy. 

"Meriah provided me with outstanding advice regarding both
global design and detailed aspects of my artist webpage, and
valuable insights for my broader online presence as a visual artist.
I highly recommend working with her!"  
—Kenny Vaden (client)

Project 2

Retrofit guides with deep links to Facebook activity log from Privacy Center (2022)

This project allowed users to take direct action on behalf of their privacy-related matters, replacing an experience that relegated them to reading about the actions they could take. My contributions to this project introduced user education and tailored content for three separate user paths.

Before

THE PROBLEM: Meta's Privacy Center portal sent users to Facebook's Help Center from three separate sub-guides (above). They linked to Help Center articles about activity log, not activity log itself. This did not fall in line with Privacy Center's goals to be the known hub for people to make privacy decisions.

THE SOLUTION: Give users easy access to controls by rerouting them directly to activity log. Improve user experience through content design in these three user journeys.

After

For the three list cells here I focused on the user action and not the destination page name. So instead of “Activity log” as the header for all three (like it was before), each new list cell header speaks to the desired action for each of these three use cases. I landed on this north star to guide me, not only because it's more parallel with the other guide headings, but it’s quicker and easier for users to understand. A user can make a decision whether to click based on the heading alone, given the tendency for people to scan pages for important, actionable information. 

The subheadings for each further drive at this idea, suggesting and elaborating on specific actions users in each flow might want to take. I based suggested actions on data that shows where users navigate to the most on activity log e.g. "posts and photos." I used the same heading for the first two guides – “Review past activity” – because they both applied and followed existing patterns elsewhere in Privacy Center. But the subheadings are different, tailored to each use case. 

I also designed an educational banner (above) that appears on Facebook's activity log home page only when users navigate from the three aforementioned entry points. The banner explains that people can use controls here for their privacy matters. It offers instruction on how to use activity log, suggests actions, and links to a Help Center article to learn more. The banner offers a soft landing in these three user journeys, a quick guide for those seeking to keep moving in the flow, to help them decide quickly how to take action on behalf of their privacy. And the way education is progressively disclosed, they can get more information if they need it.

Members of my XFN team tested my design to see if visitations to activity log would increase enough to merit launching it. It did and subsequently launched globally on web and mobile.

Project 3

Deprecating Facebook automatic activity controls (2022)

I worked as the CD on an XFN team to deprecate automatic activity controls. 

THE PROBLEM(S): After two years live, UX research found people didn't even remember turning on automatic activity controls. Users were also surprised the feature didn't auto-hide some types of content from their profiles. Opt-in rate was low.

THE SOLUTION: Sunset the feature while maintaining, even strengthening, user trust and confidence. 

Why is a deprecation flow important, you ask? In this case, it involved removing a feature that allowed Facebook users to automatically hide activity from their profile page. Removing privacy controls is something I and my team took very seriously, taking care not to alarm users and continue to strengthen trust. (Imagine if the feature just stopped working, without any communication from Facebook, and, as a user, you didn't notice until after the fact.) It was important to 1) Alert users before the feature went away. 2) Give them options on how to handle it. 

I raised several considerations during the design process, and caught issues that significantly impacted design decisions. Most notably, the singular final design – and my strings in it – served two separate user groups who had been using two differing versions of the feature, including two different user-facing feature names.

Before my content strategy came together, I sought to deeply understand the existing feature in order to discover the project's demands and constraints. The project was more complicated than it first appeared because of the need to solve for two sets of users who would eventually experience one, unified deprecation flow. The existing product itself was also half-baked, meaning we were deprecating a feature that hadn't graduated to full functionality.

My eye for detail and quality control kept the naming, casing, phrasing and overall style of the content design consistent and easy for users to understand. Catching a naming inconsistency was key, as was solving for it.

In the end, my contributions to the design kept the user experience streamlined, simplified and clear. I iterated with the PD and my CD team several times before final internal reviews. My strings got the green light in final reviews (from product, legal and marketing). The design went live on desktop and mobile. 

Content Quality Example

Activity log style correction (2022)

I noticed and corrected the casing of the activity log homepage title on desktop. 

THE PROBLEM: Copy style was updated site-wide a year prior to my hire. Specifically, all headings and titles -- unless they were proper names -- had been updated from title casing to sentence casing. I noticed the updates in most areas of the UI, but, glaringly, not on the desktop version of the activity log homepage. This is where users see the title the most, aside from the main Facebook homepage nav. 

THE SOLUTION: I submitted the casing fix through our internal review tool and got the green light to update it.  My background as a copy editor and style guide writer makes me hypersensitive to copy style errors. I took it upon myself to fix it even though it was not part of my assigned projects or tasks. This is just one example of how my copy editing prowess ensures pro-level clarity and consistency throughout user-facing products. 

Case Study