Erin Crews

Erin Crews

Principal content designer for hire

I'm a designer who uses language as load-bearing structure to hold products together and help users find their footing.

I've led content design work and teams at Cash App, Stripe, and Mailchimp, with a focus on establishing foundational standards that make good writing scalable.

I live in Atlanta with my husband, daughter, and our wild pup.

Sample project work

Writing OS
Block · Content Standards Lead

Writing OS

Created prioritized backlog of content standards, defined AI-ready templates for things like glossary terms entries, and filled gaps in UX component standards as part of Writing OS, an initiative to build AI tooling that accelerates content execution.

Style Guides Terminology Management Voice & Tone Model Training Agent Skills
Impact
  • Set the content quality bar across Block brands
  • Enabled creation of portable agent skills, custom writing agents, and linters that apply writing standards in design and prototyping workflows
Add account
Account linking
Cash App · Content Designer

Account model update

Defined experience principles, messaging framework, flow sequencing, and glossary for account linking and multi-account creation experiences to support a major account model re-architecture.

Messaging Channel Strategy Tone Calibration Content Standards
Impact
  • +10% increase in account activation rate under the new model
  • +3% new monthly actives
  • Improved risk exposure
  • Architecture now supports future account types (e.g., joint accounts)
Product messaging governance
Stripe · Head of Content Design

Product messaging governance

Shaped UX for a unified in-product messaging system, oversaw content discovery, and authored content quality checklists, channel-specific copy patterns, and decision trees for component selection.

Channel Strategy Design Systems Content Standards
Impact
  • Reduced banner volume by ~70%
  • Fixed hundreds of style errors — and prevented new ones automatically
  • Established observability into messaging volume and engagement
  • Short-term improvements made the case for investing in a holistic, long-term solution
Brand voice & tone
Mailchimp · Content Strategy Lead

Brand voice & tone

Redefined Mailchimp's verbal identity to reflect the brand's shift from an email service provider to an all-in-one marketing platform. Led IA and content strategy for a website redesign launched as part of the rebrand.

Voice & Tone Workshop Facilitation Narrative Development Content Strategy
Impact
  • Shift in NPS scores toward more trusted expertise
  • Industry recognition: One Club, Clio, Brand New
  • Writers and designers became effective brand stewards
  • Web content performance: 14% increase in new paid signups, 36% lift in session duration, 27% decrease in bounce rate
Commerce cloud launch
Mailchimp · Content Design Lead

Commerce cloud launch

Led IA, naming, and communications strategy for the launch of a suite of e-commerce tools (online stores and appointments), including pricing model updates.

Product Naming Information Architecture UX Strategy UX Research
Impact
  • Improved product comprehension and findability
  • 13-point increase in CSAT after nomenclature updates, driven by 89% wayfinding score
  • Informed scalable product naming guidelines

Tooling stack

Working with AI

Tools I use daily to research, build, and ship.

Claude

Claude Code

I search the codebase to find how terminology is actually used, surface undocumented copy patterns, and audit copy at scale. I also build UX writing skills that run inside Claude Code — embedding content standards directly into the dev environment.

Discovery Standards
Goose

Goose

I use Goose to interrogate internal datasets — e.g. which channels drive key user behaviors at the cohort level to shape onboarding strategy — and to understand conditional logic and product behavior directly from the codebase.

Strategy Data Analysis
Cursor

Cursor

I plan string updates, draft PRs that ship real copy to production, and prototype design ideas directly in code.

Execution Prototyping
Key use cases
Shipping string changes
Cursor GitHub Slack
Codebase copy audits
Claude Code
Customer data analysis
Goose
Design prototyping
Cursor Figma
Product behavior research
Goose
Creating writing agent skills
Claude Code GitHub Glean
Competitive analysis
Cursor Mobbin
Content & accessibility evals
Claude Code Figma

Communication and collaboration

How I work with teams and keep things moving.

Figma

Figma

Divergent exploration with design and XFN partners — going wide, weighing tradeoffs, and showing different states, edge cases, and forks in pathing.

GitHub

GitHub

Shipping string changes (via Cursor or Claude) and pushing prototypes to a design sandbox for weekly demos.

Linear

Linear

Project tracking and prioritization. Automated weekly updates to leadership keep stakeholders informed without manual overhead.

Slack

Async communication and video demos of work in progress. Integrated with GitHub and Goose to create tickets and PRs without leaving the conversation.

Automated workflows
Ticket creation Slack → Linear

Slack messages become tracked work items instantly.

PR creation Slack → Goose → GitHub

Triggered directly from Slack via Goose, without context-switching to a code editor.

Progress updates Linear

Weekly updates to leadership generated automatically — no manual reporting.

Contact

Get in touch