Writer. Strategist. Chocolate Lab Owner.

Welcome to my portfolio!

Take your shoes off, stay awhile.

Tom Burnham with Chocolate Lab

The Work

Strings. Design. Strategy.

As a UX Writer & Content Strategist at Google I worked on dozens of high impact projects both internal and external.

Style. Creation. Adoption.

In my startup days, I worked on content design projects and aided in our brand’s acquisition by Google.

… and the rest!

From personal writing to my early steps into the world of strategy and writing, here are some deep cuts.

UX Content Collective

Certified by the UX Content Collective as a UX Writer

  • My certification as a UX Writer

  • Onboarding screens for the fictional JobPay app. Items in magenta were edited by me

  • Project creation screen for freelancers.

  • Invoice cancellation interstitial

Google notes

Notes are a Search Labs feature which lets users comment on Google result links, below is some of the work I contributed to

  • Relevant information about a Search Result Page or SRP on Google is often buried or nonexistent. On top of this, users often don’t trust results given by a cold algorithm

  • Introduce: notes. A community based commenting option for users to give helpful insight for SRP. I was brought on to refine the original placeholder writing and audit the end to end onboarding process, among other tasks you’ll see below

  • 80% user retention for onboarded advocates. (Retention defined as posting one or more note after the initial post)

In the beginning…

To kick off the UX writing for this project I began by naming the themes which would be the basis of each note created. This involved creating a deck outlining the brand motives and then of course some creative thinking

The bold entries are ones which made it to the review/approval round

I next designed the asset selection process for notes. Here are a few concept prototypes which eventually launched with the feature

  • Add

  • Create the first note for this result

  • Stock Images

  • Stickers Tap

  • Stickers

  • AI Select

  • AI Prompt

  • Create the first note for this result

  • Any tips or insights for others who view this result? Keep it friendly and helpful

  • Once you post, your profile picture and name will be visible to other Google users. Personal details like your email address won't be public.

  • Share your note with a friend

Tenor Style Guide

Defining how visual elements look and what shares best was a unique opportunity and one which saw great success across overall share metrics.

  • What makes a piece of content shareable? Tenor or GIF Keyboard is in the unique business of creating GIFs, stickers and memes to be shared from one user to another

  • As a lead strategist and writer on the team I was tasked with creating a brand style guide for successful GIF usage. Through user research, aesthetic review, and design refinements I was able to create a final brand style guide. This guide took many forms. From GIF creation, to brand voice, it was a far reaching exhaustive process

  • GIFs created by our agents were around 200% more likely to be shared

  • A style guide for business partners and our contractors

  • Watermark guidance

  • Tenor's wide array of emotions

SONIC Connected Drive-In

As an assistant account manager I took my first steps into strategy and writing with my colleagues at Goodby Silverstein & Partners.

  • Getting adoption from SONIC customers within the SONIC App

  • Research what consumers look for at a SONIC Drive-In and would need in an app. Put payment on the app to ease consumers into the process

  • Over 20m app downloads (as of Q1 2016)

  • At SONIC, you're always in the driver seat.

  • Strategy

  • (Continued)

Personal Writing

In 2023, I wrote about my nearly 300 vinyl records as often as I could!

Here is one of my favorite pieces I wrote. Click here to see my other posts

Social Links