I got the chance to chat with David Hamilton, Head of Content Design at General Motors. In this role, David has led the charge to establish a scalable content design standards program across mobile, web, and vehicle interfaces. In this massive initiative, David leads a team of 21 content design practitioners, partnering closely with Legal, Policy, and Product to deliver high-quality, compliant content across platforms.

David has long been a proponent of the unique cross-functional superpower of content designers:

“I believe there's one question that shapes whether content is design or is just decoration: Are Content Designers working directly with product and engineering, or always through product design to get to product? Working only through design inherently creates a cadencing issue where CDs perpetually get the beloved "can you edit this string now that I've designed it?"

Nuanced product and technical decisions dictate language flows and hierarchy. If you want the best return out of your CD practice, don't create barriers between product and engineering. Be the bridge between product positioning and design execution. That's the true power of our discipline at scale.”

Now, he has really gotten to put that opinion into practice at GM. In this role, David centralized the UX writing practice and delivered clear, documented standards specifically designed for highly regulated environments. As David explains, “Building a valuable content standards program requires deep collaboration and intentional simplicity.”

Let’s get into the conversation with David to cover how he built this content standards program at a massive organization like GM, and how it’s being used.

Why did you build a content standards program? What was the impetus?

When I joined GM, product writing was fragmented and managed primarily through multiple partners, resulting in vague and inconsistent product text. My goal was to mitigate risk, streamline compliance, and improve customer clarity—transforming how writing gets done at scale.

I also was noticing I was repeating the same feedback over and over. That meant it should be a standard. It’s not scalable for me to review everything nor be in every room. And I want my practice to inform the standards of our practice—not just me. That meant we needed documented standards.

What does a “content standards program” mean, in practice? What is actually in there?

An effective content standards program means a source of truth to answer the key question: “What does good writing mean in practice?”

These standards can take place in multiple different mediums, though we’ve made the decision to house them directly in Figma. They include everything from grammar usage to error states and lots of items in-between. They are a clear resource to help my discipline and others to align on the foundational content choices we are making in our work.

What were the steps to get to something usable?

A lot of thought. A single moment for me was very memorable: I was on a plane back from Detroit and realized we had to get our standards out of my own head. I was getting the same questions over and over. I also had (and still have) a very supportive leader who invited me to think about creating content policies.

So to get started, first and foremost, I led with core principles. These principles are a level above tone and voice. They are my foremost beliefs of what makes great content design. Once these were drafted they allowed natural standards to emerge.

I also stood up a small team and re-positioned some people on my staff to tackle this at a system level. I moved our standards into Figma, supported a template for all standards, and the team has done an incredible job driving this forward. Now, most of our new standards are not driven by me, which is exactly what I wanted when we started this initiative.

What do you think were the keys to success? What showed you that the standards you delivered were actually “valuable”?

Again, I thought success was consistency and me not repeating my feedback in different places in the company. And that started to happen as our standards emerged.

I stopped seeing the same questions being asked over and over. Instead of re-litigating sentence case or labels, we could just refer to our standards. This meant people were freed up to design with their language vs being relegated to a writing “cop.” It also has allowed people outside the CD org to craft great product experiences when our resources are tight or timing doesn’t allow an embedded person from my team to get involved.

We’re not finished building but we’ve made a lot of progress to where we were as a practice two years ago when I joined GM.

How does it get used in practice today? How is it shared, enforced (and reinforced), managed, iterated on?

Today, the standards live in accessible documentation via Figma shared widely across GM’s design and product teams. They’re enforced through structured content reviews embedded in the product development process.

I reinforce these standards by regularly engaging with teams, visibly participating in content reviews, and iterating based on real-world feedback and regulatory shifts. The standards are treated as living documents, flexible enough to adapt but firm enough to maintain clarity and consistency.

How do you welcome the disparate opinions from legal, policy, product into something as complex and far-reaching as product text?

I think debate is a sign of strength and a safe place to work.

I encourage my whole team to push back on me (and others) when they disagree. I hate the idea of bowing to someone based on seniority or title. And I don’t think good products are created without constructive dissent. At the same time, I embrace transparent framing—ensuring every partner sees their input reflected and valued. The complexity becomes manageable when everyone feels their voice is heard, even if the final decision differs from their initial input.

I’ve also recently welcomed a new content designer just focused on policy and regulation partnership. Shoutout, Wendy. Creating great content in this environment means having strong partnership with legal and policy professionals. Wendy’s been here less than a month and I can’t imagine our team without her now that she’s here.

Content standards and systems transform product text from an art to a science. What do you say to those who think it is “too hard” or “doesn’t work in practice”?

I believe the best writing is done under strict constraints. Without constraints, you can’t evaluate what is good or bad. And it’s also not the real world. Good writing or design, or really anything, is always under some level of constraints. The trick is making those constraints visible, shared, and understood. Good standards empower, not restrict, and they reduce guesswork.

How does AI factor into the way you think about content design standards? How are you thinking about AI at GM?

That’s the question, isn’t it?

AI is the future for our craft. I’m bold about that with my team and with partners. I believe content designers have the unique ability to lead the prompting work that must be in place for good AI systems. Because that’s the reality often missed in hot takes: AI still relies on the human and machine relationship.

Any good output is the result of great input. I believe prompting and training is both the most needed skill in our industry and yet most often neglected. While companies race towards deployment, the human interacting with the model is often left with a poor experience. I believe content designers play a critical role in the next evolution of our human and machine relationship to improve these modeling experiences.

As a result, I’m playing a lot with Copilot, Figma Make, and other tools. I’m fascinated at the possibility, and realistic about where we are in this evolution. We need humans to mitigate hallucinations, wrong outputs, and just weird phrasing. And I think our practice is uniquely positioned to do that extremely well.

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Note: These remarks are David's personal opinions and beliefs. They are not intended nor should be interpreted as General Motors' stance on any of the questions asked today.