Stewarding a Company-Wide Content System
Disciplines: Design systems · Content governance · Cross-functional leadership · Information architecture
Thousands of people rely on Intuit’s content design system, internal employees and external admirers alike. Like any best-in-class system, it only stays valuable if someone tends to it: making judgement calls, evolving the standards, and inviting new voices.
I went from contributor, to co-chair, to the person holding institutional knowledge for the whole system. Along the way I redefined how content decisions get made at scale and served as a custodian of legacy knowledge. I did this in addition to my primary TurboTax responsibilities because I care about great content standards beyond my own radius.
Content design isn’t just about the words on one screen; it’s about the systems and standards that make every screen consistent. Stewarding a company-wide system taught me to lead through influence rather than authority, to treat governance as a design problem, and to care about craft at scale.
My role
My scope grew every year:
- Council member—I started by contributing to content-standards decisions and proposal reviews.
- Co-chair—I stepped up to co-lead the governing council, setting agendas and driving the decisions that shape how Intuit content looks and sounds.
- Steward—I became the person with the most institutional knowledge of the system. I onboarded new contributors, questioned old processes, and published new guidance.
My approach
1. I redefined how decisions get made. In response to a shrinking team of content designers, I overhauled how we think about governance so we could scale larger and quicker. I rebuilt the council’s core machinery including the way proposals are submitted, how we prioritize what to tackle, and how we communicate decisions to the community. I shifted our focus to solve for the most urgent customer problems.
2. I drove alignment on key language. I contributed to a terminology audit that aligned the company on dozens of contested terms. I leaned on my deep knowledge of the site’s architecture to get updates published quickly.
3. I scaled the voice across the company. I onboarded new site stewards and brought representatives from other Intuit products into the fold, advancing the same voice across products so customers have a consistent experience.
My impact
- A design system that stayed best-in-class through changing hands, recognized by industry voices in the UX community.
- Clear decision making based on impact—I rebuilt our governance and intake to start with customer problems.
- One voice across more of the company—shepherded efforts to democratize content design across multiple job functions so that every employee is empowered to write excellent content.
Elisse Miller 