Senior UX Writer Angela Sylcott, joins Media Producer, Justin James Lopez for a discussion around balance proficiency and passion in your life. Let’s hear her story!
Angela Sylcott is Sr. UX Writer for Amazon Global Talent Management & Compensation (word salad for “manager tools”; aka GTMC). She’s been with GTMC for 2 years and is closing in on 4 years with Amazon. (She hired into the company as Sr. UX Writer for AWS Training & Certification.) Prior to Amazon, Angela spentmumblemumble years as a professional writer (marketing, technical, and UX), copy editor, and proofreader in industries including entertainment, education, and biotech. She’s a customer-obsessed “fixer” and word nerd who’s been told she thinks like a designer—a combo that merges quite nicely for using content to give customers effective, efficient experiences that won’t make them contact support or curse us. She’s also an active member of Amazon’s small but mighty UX writing community, teaching trainings and trying to spread the gospel of UX writing to the far corners of Amazon so that the community can someday be large and mighty.
When she’s not using her words for the good of Amazon employees, she enjoys hanging with family and friends, doing “outsidey” things, puzzles of every type, LEGO, and spending an embarrassing amount of time on TikTok.
Angela Sylcott:
If I were to be sitting in a job that I took just to have something to do, or because I was trying to figure it out and it didn’t feel right, it would immediately be obvious and I would feel it in my bones, and people would see it written all over my face all day every day.
Justin James Lopez:
Hey everyone, welcome to another episode of Amazon’s Black Stories, where we highlight the stories of Black designers, researchers, and creative minds from all around the world. I’m your host, Justin James Lopez, and today we’re joined by Angela Sylcott as we discuss the importance of balancing proficiency and passion in the work that you do. Let’s hear her story. Well, thanks again for joining us, Angela. I wanted to start by just giving you a chance to introduce yourself to the audience.
Angela Sylcott:
Sure. Thanks for having me. My name is Angela Sylcott. I am senior UX writer at Amazon in their global HR department, working on basically manager tools. Let’s see, what can I tell you about myself? I’ve been a professional writer, copy editor, and proofreader for a little over 20 years. I’ve been in UX. I like to tell people I’ve been in UX since before it was called UX, we used to just call it writing the site, so.
Justin James Lopez:
Yeah.
Angela Sylcott:
Dating myself severely there.
Justin James Lopez:
Perfect. Perfect. So, I know for a fact that you are the first UX writer, copy editor, proofreader, any of all of the titles that you have that I’ve had on the show, so that’s really cool. And so, you do this for HR?
Angela Sylcott:
Yes.
Justin James Lopez:
At Amazon.
Angela Sylcott:
Yes.
Justin James Lopez:
What does that mean? You teach human resources how to write or you teach them how to use their tools. What does that entail when it comes to your work?
Angela Sylcott:
So, what my writing does is helps our customers, which are managers, and sometimes employees get through an experience or do a task, and my role with the content I write is to make sure that what we’re telling them is accurate, that it’s going to help them be successful in whatever it is we’re having them do. So, a distinction that I like to make that I have found is very helpful for people is the distinction between marketing writing and UX writing, and just for the audience, some of you out there may know it as UX writing. Some of you out there may know it as content design. There’s been this whole hub-bub over the past three to four years about what do we call it, and Meta calls it this and Apple calls it that. The distinction I like to make, there’s marketing, writing, and that is to get the customer to the experience to tell them why they want to do the thing.
UX writing or content design is to tell them how to do the thing. So, that’s what I do. It’s everything from our customers land on a page and I’m telling them why they’re there, what they’re there to do. I’m explaining how to do that task. Let’s say that they’re there to give feedback on an experience that they had as an employee. I’m explaining to them, here’s what you can do here. Here are the steps that are involved in it, and here’s this form that you’re going to fill out. And every piece of that form needs to have the correct explanation of what’s going to happen. So, we’re asking you for your name, then you’re going to give a little description. Please try to be specific, use specific examples. And then nine times out of 10, there’s a button, we call it a CTA, a call to action. That button is going to do something, right? Every time you click a button on a site, if it’s set up right, it’ll do something. So, we’re not just going to say, “Get started, click here. That’s
Justin James Lopez:
Yeah.
Angela Sylcott:
It’s so bad. Don’t do that people please. If you take anything away from this conversation, stop using Get started and click here. So, that button’s going to tell them submit request, or it’s going to tell them go to step two, depending on what the process is, so that when that person clicks the button, they’re very clear what’s going to happen. That’s essentially UX writing in a nutshell.
Justin James Lopez:
Yeah. What comes to mind for me is that old adage where they say, “To truly understand something, you have to have the ability to explain it to a third-grader.”
Angela Sylcott:
Right.
Justin James Lopez:
So, we’re the third-graders for you.
Angela Sylcott:
You all are the third-graders.
Justin James Lopez:
Got you.
Angela Sylcott:
And to be fair, Amazon’s prescribed reading level, depending on the department, is anywhere from sixth grade to 10th grade. So, you’re-
Justin James Lopez:
Oh my goodness. I was not ready for that one. No. So, this is cool. So, when it comes to the work that you do currently, you’re working within that kind of HR management tool space because I imagine as we just kind of joked about, but you have to really, really understand what the tools are or what the function of the system is in order to be able to explain it because your metric is can other people do this thing effectively?
Angela Sylcott:
Right.
Justin James Lopez:
But in that, I imagine there still has to be some type of personal joy in the work that you’re doing. So, what’s maybe one of the coolest things that you’ve worked on and what’s maybe one of the things that you’re like, okay, I’m collecting a paycheck and doing this thing right now?
Angela Sylcott:
Well, before I answer that, I’m going to say that I’m going to duck back to touch on something that you mentioned about needing to know the content, needing to be really deep on it, that’s a yes and a no, actually. It’s surprisingly that’s a yes and a no. Yes, from the perspective of once I get going, it helps me to be able to explain the process better, but I actually like coming to a tool or a product or a project with zero knowledge because-
Justin James Lopez:
Interesting.
Angela Sylcott:
It helps me literally be in the shoes of that first time customer. If I’m going through an experience not knowing anything about it, and I’m like, “Well, I feel like I should be able to do this,” or “I want to do this instead, but it’s not telling me where and how to do that.” That’s information for me as the writer to be able to say, “We need to tell them this.” And obviously we use research as well to back a lot of that up, but it does help give me the initial inklings. Now to answer the question about projects that I have loved and ones that have made me want to claw my eyes out. I would say I was very fortunate a few years ago before my Amazon journey began, I worked for a startup that was in the biotechnology space. They had a wearable device for pregnant women, and it was to count contractions, read contractions, very fascinating technology.
And I loved, loved, loved working on that as far as it had an app, it had a website, and I was talking to customers almost daily and getting really deep into their experience with it. And as a mother, I’m a mother, I have an 11-year-old child. It was just something that felt like really good, meaningful work to do. So, that was great for a project that I just, I’m collecting a check. I will say that some of the more tactical dry managing tools that Amazon has, I don’t want to name any names, but I’ll put it this way as HR, not everything that we do is shiny, happy, great experiences, right? What? Get out of here.
Justin James Lopez:
Spoiler alert.
Angela Sylcott:
So, working in HR, one of the types of projects that I don’t particularly enjoy would definitely have to be the tools for times when an employee is maybe not having a really good experience or they’re not at a good place in their time at Amazon or in their career. I want to be as helpful as possible and make the experience simple and clean and not a burden for that specific reason, but it’s usually a sad situation. So, I don’t really enjoy those too much.
Justin James Lopez:
I imagine that’s probably something that, and it feels a bit like a thankless job in those spaces because I imagine as you were saying that I’m thinking sometimes when I’m having a pretty bad day and I’m frustrated and I have to go to a new tool that I haven’t learned, and then I’m getting instructions that can make or break your entire day, right?
Angela Sylcott:
Yes.
Justin James Lopez:
You go to the new tool and you’re like, all right, I’m already frustrated. I’m already in this heightened state. And then you have this experience where it’s like, oh, this is actually really simple. This is something that made solving my problem very easy. And in my mind, that’s something where the person instantly dropped in their overall stress level. Like, oh, this is simple. I just do this, that, and the third, and then I can solve my problem. But they’re not going to hit the thank you button of like, Hey, thank you for solving this problem for me.
So, simply we feel entitled to the solution and we feel entitled to the solution being simple that we don’t think sometimes that there’s a person responsible for solving this before we even interact. And I was thinking about your point earlier where you made the statement of walking into a scenario where you don’t really know much about the product or the tool or the system because then you’re basically walking the store, right? And you are interacting with all of the things that fall apart, all of the things that a person is going to experience. So, it’s like while it may be boring and it’s boring for us to have to go through it, but you’re solving this problem so that we don’t quit our jobs, right?
Angela Sylcott:
Exactly. Yeah, I want the experience to be boring. If I’m writing something and it’s going to make you frustrated, want to contact support, abandon the experience, then I haven’t done my job properly. I should be invisible.
Justin James Lopez:
Yeah.
Angela Sylcott:
We, as the product, as the makers of the product of the tool should be invisible. And I think you’re right. I do agree with you. I think there’s this expectation that things should work a certain way. They should be effortless, flawless, ready to help you right out of the box. And I like to take a farther step back when I think about my customers, yes, they are employees, but I often like to go into scenarios in my mind where it’s not just a software developer in Chicago who’s been at Amazon for four years.
It’s a software developer who’s a mom, and her kid was sick that morning and she’s got a lot on her mind and she’s got six projects that are hurdling toward launch. I want to cover as much ground as I can for my customers and make it so that that experience is as clean as it can be. Of course, obviously I can’t take into account every possible scenario, but I do find that by thinking about people as whole entities and not just the individual facets of how my tools interact with them just as Amazon employee, I do find that it does make a difference, it makes for better work.
Justin James Lopez:
You find all of these pockets, especially when you think of it at Amazon, when we talk about the idea of customer obsession, the level of customer obsession in the work that you do, I think is through the roof. Because you’re literally saying, “How do I preemptively solve problems,” that even the 1% problems where I understand, and I think it’s natural for you to say, “We’re never going to solve every.” There’s no way for one individual or even a group of individuals to look at every single perspective, or maybe I’m just that one person that will run into every wall and it’s like, well, you can’t always account for Justin breaking the system.
What I was thinking as you were kind of talking was how interesting it is to be in a space where all you’re thinking about is how do I lower the stress of another person, not just in the scenarios where they’re already having a bad day, but in some of these other scenarios where you talk about the tracker for pregnancy, where you really love that product. When you think about it, you’re thinking about how do I preemptively solve problems, so that other people don’t have to feel this level of stress? Where did that come from for you? And I’m trying to stretch back to how do we even get to being a UX writer to being this level of problem solver, this customer obsession? Where’s the root of that?
Angela Sylcott:
Justin, honestly I’m going to be a hundred percent honest with you, I was born this way. It’s really frightening to think about, and I’m sure some of it is like childhood trauma. There’s probably therapists out there listening that are like, oh, girl, you got to unpack that. I was always a fixer. I identify as a fixer, and I was always resourceful, helpful. I was a connector in the sense that, oh, if a friend said that they were interested in something and I knew I had another friend who was involved in that or had recently mentioned something about that, I would connect them. That to me, it comes from I am analytical and I solve puzzles and love, love resolving things, I always have. I was the person in my family who, if my mom needed to talk to the cable company and they were being stupid about the prices or that type of stuff, she’d put me on the phone.
I was the customer service person. I’ve been doing this forever. I was also essentially born a writer, wrote my first poem when I was five, wrote a play in sixth grade that ended up being produced as the school’s Christmas play. Now I say all of that, that’s my journey, my experience, but I want to be very, very, very clear to our audience out there that you do not need to be born a writer. You do not need to be born a fixer to do this. You do not. That just happened to be my path, my mix of elements. I know many, many UX writers who came into this from totally different experiences, realms weren’t writers to begin with, and they’re doing fine. So, I just want to clear that up.
Justin James Lopez:
Did you ever think about taking your writing, because you mentioned starting with poems and plays. Had you ever considered moving in a different direction with your writing and doing more of the entertainment based writing scripts, movies, sitcoms, any of this stuff? Where did that part of your dream go?
Angela Sylcott:
So, here’s the thing with that. One thing that I became very clear about early on, fortunately or unfortunately, depending on who you ask, I’m a horrible storyteller. I hear myself. I’m serious.
Justin James Lopez:
It’s kind of important for those other-
Angela Sylcott:
It’s kind of important.
Justin James Lopez:
You should have started with that.
Angela Sylcott:
I know. I know. It’s like I hear myself tell a story and I’m like, yeah, that was awful. Or I am not an idea person. I cannot come up with stories and engaging things. If you tell me what to talk about, I can find a way to talk about it. I can find a way to write about it, but I cannot, I’ve heard it called ideaphoria where I heard that term, there is aptitude testing given by a company called Johnson O’Connor Research Foundation. And what they do, and it’s not like one of these online, and you take the quiz type of things like it is heavy duty, two days going and sitting with a tester and doing physical tasks and stuff to figure out this type of stuff, and it costs some money.
But it was easily the best investment I ever made in my career because one thing that it did really well, first of all, it identified me as a fixer. It confirmed that, I knew that, but it was like, yes, you are, and here’s why. And here are are the things that point to that, and here are the things you should think about related to that. The other thing it did was it was like ideaphoria the ability to come up with creative ideas, that’s not your jam, sis. So, I was like, okay, good. I am very clear now that that’s how I’m built and that’s totally okay and I’m not going to write the Great American Novel because you all would fall asleep, so.
Justin James Lopez:
Yeah. This is something that’s always been interesting to me. I am the type of person that is motivated when people tell me that I can’t do things.
Angela Sylcott:
Hard headed.
Justin James Lopez:
Is the testing center would say that, “Oh, you are hardheaded.” There’s nothing else to your profile. And I will say that it has led me down paths where I get decent at things that I don’t really care about, just because I didn’t like the concept of saying that I’m not good at the thing. It sounds like you don’t suffer from that.
Angela Sylcott:
No.
Justin James Lopez:
Because I’ve always believed, well, it’s similar to your comment of you don’t have to be born a great writer to be a UX writer, but for me, I kind of extrapolate that in different spaces of there are limitations. Sure, if you are 4'11", you probably aren’t going to the NBA. It’s just the thing.
Angela Sylcott:
Tell that to Spud Webb.
Justin James Lopez:
Fair, fair, fair, fair. But I think that I’m one of those people, hardheaded is a way to describe it. Where if I were to have gotten that result of like, oh, you’re just not an idea person, then I would’ve spent the next year trying to come up with 10 new ideas every single day. And it was like, I got to come up with 10 new ideas every single day, and I would’ve just failed, failed, failed or maybe not. And I don’t know if that would’ve solved that or it would just been maybe it’s like, no, you can come up with ideas. It’s just going to be hell.
Angela Sylcott:
Yeah.
Justin James Lopez:
But that’s my personality.
Angela Sylcott:
I’m curious, where do you draw the line? Because you’re saying that it’s motivated by being told that you can’t, so you take it as a challenge instead of information, and you’re going to spend the next year doing that. Is there a point where you’re like, okay, I’ve kind of already proved one way or the other and now I’m just going to stop? Or are you one of those people who is also like, well, I started this, I got to see it through? Now I’ve had come up with 10 great ideas a day, and now I have to do something with those ideas and turn that into a thing, and then five years from now, you’re totally off on a different path.
Justin James Lopez:
A hundred percent. That’s how my life has been. Honestly, that is a hundred percent how my life has been. People tell me-
Angela Sylcott:
That’s awesome.
Justin James Lopez:
People go, this is not a thing. And it’s always random. What my brain clings onto. It could be, maybe you can’t run fast or maybe it’s like you’re not an idea person. And I’m like, you know what? I give up on running fast, but I am an idea person. Don’t like that you think I’m not now I’m going to be idea person. Then I’m working for, I don’t know, some Marvel coming up with their next movie and they’re like, “Oh, this guy couldn’t come up with an idea to save his life three years ago, and now he’s pitching all of these movies.” And then I go, “But I really don’t like this. I don’t like this. I’m going to go do something else.”
And I think that’s kind of what I’m getting at is when we get this information, and for one, I’m going to get more information on that center, I think I want to do that too, to just really get a deep dive into what’s going on with me. But when we get this information, we have these different ways to look at it, to interpret it, to consume it, and sometimes we have healthy approaches and sometimes we have unhealthy approaches. But what I find interesting is the root of it may not ever change, right? Say that example that we’re going through, and it’s happened to me where someone will say, “Hey, this just might not be your jam.” And then I go, “I’m going to make it my fucking jam. This is going to be my jam.” And then I get good at something that I hate.
Angela Sylcott:
Yeah, like why?
Justin James Lopez:
The thing is, there’s a proficiency thing. There’s a thing of you can be proficient at something, but that doesn’t mean you have passion for it. Proficiency versus passion, and where do you lie on that spectrum?
Angela Sylcott:
So, I am very much one of those people that I have to enjoy what I’m doing. I can’t fake the funk. I have done that at different points in my career and have just been like, I don’t care enough about this to fake this, so I need a certain amount of passion. And for me, I’ve been fortunate in that the passion part can be fed by just getting to write. Over the course of my career, I’ve written about a variety of topics that would bore the paint off the walls, and I don’t need the topic itself to be, I don’t need to be lit up by it. It’s helpful if it is, but just being able to write or being able to edit, proofread that generally is my passion, and I love it. So, yeah.
Justin James Lopez:
Yeah. So, we’re on different parts of the spectrum for sure.
Angela Sylcott:
Totally. I felt my chest get tight when you were talking about, I’m going to spend a year trying to do this thing. I’m like-
Justin James Lopez:
Locked in now.
Angela Sylcott:
That is nothing drives me crazier than investing time in something that is just not going to-
Justin James Lopez:
It’s not your jam.
Angela Sylcott:
Yeah. Yes, yes, that.
Justin James Lopez:
Not your thing. But you know what I think for me, where it’s rooted is I remember my first day of college, my father dropped me off, and I remember this is the first moment where me and my father, we were never really close. We love each other, we care about each other, but we never really had those moments where, let me ask you for advice. Can I ask you for advice, right? In those moments. So this was, I think the first time I had ever done it. And I’m a kid, 18 years old, going to college, getting dropped off. And I remember I was always that the person that came across as I know it, I know what I’m going to do, I’m just going to whatever. But then I turned, I remember we were putting my stuff in my dorm. I’m going back to the car to say goodbye to my mom and dad, and I just almost broke down.
And I was just like, “What do I do? Because I’m so lost and I have no idea. I didn’t think I was going to get here. Now I’m here and I have no idea what to do,” and it’s layered, right? I went to a predominantly white institution. It’s not where the area that I grew up. So, I grew up not around white people at all. So, it was just so much culture shock, all of this stuff just kind of colliding. And I think all the pressure finally got me to the point where I was like, “I don’t know what I’m supposed to do. I don’t know what I’m supposed to study. Everything was told to me up until this point, I have no idea.” And I remember his response, and at the time I hated it. And as I’ve gotten older, I realized it was the best advice I ever got. He said, “Why don’t you find something you love and go be great at it?”
Angela Sylcott:
There you go.
Justin James Lopez:
Again, I hated the advice. So, at the time-
Angela Sylcott:
Why did you hate it? Were you looking for him to say mechanical engineering, Justin?
Justin James Lopez:
Yeah, that’s exactly what it was.
Angela Sylcott:
Okay.
Justin James Lopez:
Again, at the time, I was in this space where all of the life was planned. You go to school, they tell you what to study, they tell you, you study what’s on the test, you answer the test. If you answer what’s on the test appropriately, then you’re smart. If not, you’re dumb. These are all of the things that I was raised with, especially growing up in the area that I grew up in, which was not a good area. It was all about these metrics. So, that’s all that mattered. And now I’m looking at this green space, and it was crippling to me. So, the advice was basically take the green space and run. And I was like, I don’t know how to do that.
Angela Sylcott:
That’s very hard. That’s very hard.
Justin James Lopez:
So, what I ended up doing was I translated the information to be, why don’t you find things that you’re good at and be great at them? And that translated to find things that you think you can be good at and go be great at them. And I completely lost the passion part of it, and that’s kind of what I’m talking about from the proficiency versus passion conversation. I focused solely on proficiency and I lost the passion.
Angela Sylcott:
Oh, no.
Justin James Lopez:
And that’s why I found myself going from position to position, trade to trade, skill to skill, company to company, trying to find out what was the thing for me, which is why I love these conversations for this series, because I meet people that are like, you know what? I just landed in the thing that I really like to do, man. That’s what I’m doing. Sometimes there’s boring parts of it, and that’s fine. Sometimes I’m living in my true self. But what never changes is that you are existing in that passion space, and I love that.
Angela Sylcott:
Yeah. Yeah, I love it. I really need that. I am one of these emotional deep feeling people.
Justin James Lopez:
Yeah.
Angela Sylcott:
And I have no filter and no poker face. I was born without a poker face. So, if I were to be sitting in a job that I took just to have something to do, or because I was trying to figure it out and it didn’t feel right, it would immediately be obvious and I would feel it in my bones and people would see it written all over my face all day every day. So, I as a result, have to be very intentional about the work I do and the things that I choose to put my time in. It’s so interesting hearing your background because it’s very similar. I was a gate kid and in honors classes, and it was all very prescribed. It was like everything had a solution, everything had an answer. Every path had a step, and it was very clear to see what to do.
And I kind of ended up in a similar situation to what you described where went to a PWI, and it was culture shock for me. It was east coast versus west coast, not a rap battle, but I am from LA. I’m from LA and went back east to college, and it was just a totally different vibe. And everybody there at my school of 6,000 people, they were all the valedictorian, the really smart kid at their school. That gets stripped away. You have to really take a look at yourself and be like, okay, well, who am I beyond the SAT, beyond the scholarships, beyond the whatever metrics it is, who am I as the substance behind that? So, college for me as well was a very eye-opening experience.
Justin James Lopez:
Yeah, I love that. Who am I when I strip away all of these superficial titles?
Angela Sylcott:
Yeah.
Justin James Lopez:
Who am I? Because that’s a powerful, I don’t know. I spend most of my time on these calls interviewing people, asking questions. That is a very tough question to answer, right? If you put somebody on the spot and say, Hey, strip away all of these titles. Who are you? And it’s a very difficult thing. And I think that especially at as a college student being the first question to answer, I think it’s probably one of the most important questions to answer, but it’s definitely not the easiest. I wanted to ask this because you dropped a couple of gems, quite a few gems actually throughout this conversation, but what is one thing, or a few things, however many you have, that you know now that you think would’ve been important to learn as you were developing in your career to help you develop faster, or not even faster, but more proficiently or whether it’s from a professional lens or from a joy lens?
Angela Sylcott:
One thing that I was recently reflecting on was having an open mind and trusting that, yes, you know what, 21, 22-year-old, Ang. But there are people who know a lot more than you, and you should want to learn from those people and not feel challenged by them. See, in my first official, you were hired to be a writer job I was what was called a marketing communication specialist for Farmer’s Insurance at their headquarters. And in all of my abundant wisdom as a... Gosh, how old was I? I was like 23, 24, and was like, oh, these people, they are so outdated. They don’t know what they’re doing. They need to improve this process. I wrote up process guides and how to improve and blah, blah, blah. And I was surrounded by people. The VP of our department was a veteran newspaper editor and just had decades of good knowledge.
And my immediate manager with similar background had been a journalist for many years, and I could have been sitting there soaking up good knowledge about how to be a professional writer. But instead, I was on my I’m good at what I do. I know what I’m talking about. You guys are dinosaurs and there’s nothing I can learn from you. And I think that did me such a disservice. I ended up leaving that job without another job lined up. I was like, oh, this is terrible. And I’m looking back on it, it was like, oh, you were such a twit. You wasted, you were annoying. Stop it.
Justin James Lopez:
Yeah, so you can’t fill a cup that’s already full.
Angela Sylcott:
Right.
Justin James Lopez:
If you fill it with all of the things that you think you already know, then you’ll never be able to have a new perspective on those things.
Angela Sylcott:
Exactly.
Justin James Lopez:
Yeah, that’s a really good one. Well, Angela, thank you again for joining us on this show. Man, I think this has been really cool. Again, this year I feel like is going to be a lot of firsts. I’m meeting a lot of people in spaces that I’ve never actually interacted with. I’ve known about the spaces, so you’re the first. And I mean also for the audience of this show, you’re the first UX writer that has been on the show, and we got a couple other firsts coming up as well. So, I’m really excited. But thank you again.
Angela Sylcott:
Yeah, thank you so much for having me. It is always a pleasure just to talk to you. And to the audience, thank you. Thank you all. Love you.
