nicole leblanc is a Content design leader and strategic innovator. She’s currently Leading Content Design across buying, renting, and growth at zillow.

A selection of strategic efforts between 2022 — present

Building a Product Communications Strategy at Zillow

(IN PROGRESS)

Challenge
Zillow’s product communications (emails, app notifications, and other user messages) lack personalization, consistency, and strategic alignment. Customers receive fragmented messaging across different touchpoints, leading to missed information, confusion, and reduced engagement. Without a structured approach, messaging is often reactive rather than proactively designed to enhance the customer experience.

Solution
I’ve recently led the development of Zillow’s first-ever Product Comms Design Strategy, a structured framework to align, personalize, and optimize user communications across the Zillow ecosystem.

This initiative includes:

  • Customer journey mapping to identify communication gaps and redundancies

  • A cross-functional alignment strategy bringing together Product, Design, Marketing, and Engineering to create a shared vision for communications

  • A unified messaging framework with content principles, tone guidance, and personalization strategies

  • Data-driven testing and optimization through A/B and multivariate experiments to measure engagement, retention, and customer satisfaction

Key workstreams

  • Personalization strategy: Using customer data to create more relevant, timely, and contextualized communications

  • End-to-end messaging consistency: Standardizing voice, tone, and content strategy across emails, push notifications, and in-app messaging

Impact

  • Improved cross-team collaboration by aligning multiple teams around a centralized content strategy

  • Established Zillow’s first Product Comms Design Strategy, creating a foundation for future scalability and continuous improvement

This work has positioned Content Design as a key strategic partner in customer communication, influencing how Zillow interacts with millions of users daily.

Driving AI Innovation in Content Design: Implementing writer.ai

Challenge

Content designers were spending a lot of time updating content and making their own copy. This made it hard for them to focus on more important strategic work.

Solution

I piloted and implemented Writer.ai, an AI-powered content tool, to increase efficiency and standardization. My approach included:

  • Leading a structured pilot, measuring effectiveness in real workflows

  • Creating a best practices guide to ensure quality and governance

  • Running training and change management sessions to drive adoption

Impact

  • Reduced content creation time by up to 50% for routine tasks

  • Estimated $85K+ in cost savings within the first year

  • Increased content quality scores by 71.5% based on heuristic evaluations

Dynamic governance has positioned Zillow as an early adopter of AI in UX writing, influencing leadership buy-in for future tooling investments.

Creating Levels of Engagement For content design

Challenge
As Zillow’s Content Design team expanded, managing workload distribution and setting clear expectations for engagement became increasingly complex. Content designers were stretched across multiple projects, often without clear alignment on how deeply they should be involved. This led to misaligned expectations with partners, unclear prioritization, and inefficient resource allocation.

Solution
I developed the Content Design Levels of Engagement, a scalable framework that clarified how and when content designers should engage in projects based on scope and strategic impact. This model created a shared language between Content Design and cross-functional partners, helping teams:

  • Prioritize competing demands and allocate resources efficiently

  • Set clear expectations for content involvement at project kickoff

  • Align engagement levels with business priorities

The framework outlined four levels of engagement:

  1. Leading – Content Design owns the strategic direction and is the primary stakeholder

  2. Co-designing – Content Design partners closely with UX and research to shape solutions

  3. Standard Practice – Content Design provides limited, targeted support

  4. Unsupported – Content Design does ’t engage due to capacity constraints

To ensure adoption, I:

  • Piloted the model with Rentals Design in Q1 2024, refining it based on feedback

  • Rolled it out across all Zillow product verticals in Q2 2024

  • Integrated it into DesignOps programs for standardized working norms

  • Created training materials and roadshow presentations to align partners

Impact

  • Content Design now prioritizes high-impact projects without overextending

  • The framework made project intake and planning discussions streamlined and faster

  • Product and design teams now understand what level of support to expect from Content Design

  • Stronger influence for Content Design: By structuring involvement strategically, the team secured a seat at the table for key product decisions

This framework operationalized content design engagement at scale, ensuring the team could focus on the highest-impact work while maintaining sustainable workloads. It also strengthened Content Design’s role as a strategic function within Zillow’s UX organization.