Marketing? CRO? UX? Design? Copywriting? What do you do, exactly?

In an environment that so often pushes specialization, the breadth of my skillset often raises a few eyebrows. People want to classify me as “a designer”, “a writer”, or “a marketer” but I never seem to fit just one of those categories.

That’s because I am, first, a communicator. Second, I am a scientist. My passion and my background lies in understanding our behavior, particularly around decision making, and experimenting with influencing it. I graduated from the University of Chapel Hill with degrees in Cognitive Psychology (Philosophy of the Mind) and English. Cognitive Psychology is essentially understanding how the mind works. The structure and its quirks.

But before I even went to college, I was interested in Behavioral Economics, a new method of understanding how decisions are made. You’re probably familiar with “Predictably Irrational”. That and “Freakonomics” were the first books I ever read about Behavioral Economics.

The study of how we think and make decisions is a core part of design, copywriting, marketing, and pretty much anything else digital. A digital interface acts as a substitute for a conversation. Through design and copy, I’m telling the other person what they need to know and how to use the tool in front of them. I’m directing them on how to achieve their goals. Often, I’m persuading them to give me their time, attention, or money.

To support that, I had to learn analytics, experimentation, and statistics. Afterall, if you aren’t measuring, you’re just blindly putting things on a screen. If you don’t understand why something was a best practice or understand the particulars of an experiment, then you are just blindly following. It’s nearly impossible to innovate or apply knowledge to a new situation if you don’t understand the reasons and analysis behind best practices.