Hello, I'm

Connor Harrison

Content Designer Conversation Designer UX Strategist

Designing experiences that hold together across channels, systems, and the humans in between.

View My Work Download Resume
About

Full-stack content and conversation design

Connor Harrison

I'm a content and conversation design leader with 8+ years across the full product lifecycle. My focus is the orchestration era, where content becomes the connective tissue between channels, ensuring a fluid experience as users move between automated and human-led interactions. I'm drawn to the gaps between service design, traditional UI, and complex technical logic, and I design to close them.

My path here spans hospitality, journalism, and marketing, disciplines that shaped how I think about narrative, empathy, and systems. Beyond client work, I'm a practice builder: I grow design teams through internal playbooks, hiring, and partnering with commercial leads to translate design thinking into new business.

My Practice

That breadth translates into two interconnected disciplines. I partner with sprint teams across the full product lifecycle, from discovery and definition through design, research, launch, and scaling.

Content Design

The practice of shaping digital experiences through language, information architecture, and content governance, ensuring the right content reaches the right person at the right moment.

Product Lifecycle

Discover & Define
  • Content audits
  • Journey mapping
  • Competitive research
Design
  • Information architecture
  • UX writing
  • Wireframing
  • Content strategy
Evaluate
  • Content testing
Implement & Scale
  • Technical writing
  • Content governance

Conversation Design

The practice of creating natural, intuitive, and helpful interactions between humans and chatbots, voice assistants, and other conversational interfaces, orchestrating the full CX journey from entry point to resolution.

Product Lifecycle

Strategy & Scoping
  • AI Benchmarking
  • Conversational Scoping
  • CX Strategy
Prompt & Flow Design
  • Intent Mapping
  • Persona Design
  • Voice & Tone
  • Multimodal Dialogue Design
Train & Evaluate
  • Knowledge Engineering
  • Model Training
  • Bot Testing
Operations & Scaling
  • Agent Readiness
  • Bot Optimization
Case Studies

Selected Work

Conversation Design Service Design AI Integration Agent Enablement

TELUS Expert Messaging

Architected the cross-channel content strategy for the first asynchronous messaging app in Canadian Telecom, a product that lets customers describe their issue and go about their day while a human expert resolves it. My role spanned the entire stack: from IVR prompts and bot triage flows to agent training, marketing collateral, and future-state design.

What I solved

IVR drop-off → Replaced value-prop language with keyword-driven brevity, improving containment rate
Bot-to-expert handoff → Simplified transition language to reduce cognitive load at the handoff moment
Agent consistency → Built AWS content snippets and a printable rubric to standardize first message resolution
Content ecosystem → Served as primary DRI across hundreds of bilingual copy artifacts for dev handoff
$2.5M Projected annual call-offload savings
400K+ Conversations handled through messaging
6 min Reduction in average handling time vs. voice
+9 pts Lift in First Contact Resolution vs. voice
24/7 Support, with 30% of conversations outside business hours
5 pp Direct FCR increase from content strategy
View Full Case Study (PDF)

More case studies coming soon.

Thought Leadership

Speaking & Writing

Product Design & Strategy

  • 2026
    The Orchestration Era: Bridging Content and Conversation Design Growing In Content Conference

    Full-stack case study on TELUS Expert Messaging, making the case for going broad across the UX cycle, from omnichannel orchestration and IVR content strategy to agent training and future-state design.

  • 2026
    Mastering Conversation Design in the Age of AI-Powered CX TELUS Digital Insights

    Co-authored practitioner guide covering rules-based, generative, and agentic conversation design across four real client engagements.

  • 2025
    Building the Conversation Design Practice TELUS Digital (Internal)

    Covered conversation design strategy at TELUS Digital, including three client case studies spanning generative AI, agentic AI, and broader best practices.

  • 2025
    Making it Your Business: Creating & Extending Design Allocations TELUS Digital (Internal)

    Strategy for designers to partner with account leadership to drive revenue and extend client allocations.

  • 2022
    How Content Designers Can Expand Impact in Discovery UX Y'all Conference

    Shared frameworks for early-stage cross-functional collaboration and strategic discovery.

  • 2022
    Introduction to UX and Content Design Boston University, Guest Lecture (COM 523)

    Covered product lifecycles, role collaboration, and professional career pathways.

  • 2021
    When Worlds Collide: The Intersection of UX and Journalism Wayfair XD Blog

    Published analysis on applying journalistic fundamentals to UX curricula and professional practice.

Journalism

Articles & Publications

Freelance Writing

  • Treasure: The Big Reveal
    Boston Magazine Mar 2018

    Shop owner Lana Barakat finds meaning in two mysterious artworks, a profile exploring identity, memory, and the stories objects carry.

  • The Voice of Julian Edelman
    Boston Magazine Jan 2018

    How marketing strategist Assaf Swissa turned the Patriots' wide receiver into a bigger social media star than Tom Brady.

  • Childish Gambino's Funky, Flawed "Awaken, My Love!"
    Boston University News Service Dec 2016

    Donald Glover's genre-shifting departure from rap rewards patient listeners, a review examining the album's thematic depth around fatherhood and vulnerability beneath its experimental production.

  • The College Era Lyrics and Ego of Kanye West
    The Artifice Jul 2017

    Tracing Kanye West's evolution from celebrated superstar to scrutinized cultural figure, examining how his lyrics and persona transformed across one of hip-hop's most debated arcs.

Academic & Research Publications

  • The Tom Wolfe Papers at The New York Public Library
    American Journalism (Taylor & Francis) 2021

    Digital media review and UX audit of the NYPL's online Tom Wolfe exhibit, examining how the institution's digital experience supports its archival mission.

  • Literary Journalism & UX Strategy
    AEJMC Conference, IALJS Panel 2020

    Presented on applying UX best practices to help long-form journalists design more immersive settings and reader experiences.

  • A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood
    American Journalism (Taylor & Francis) 2020

    Published review of the 2019 film focused on interviewer ethics and narrative structure, examining Fred Rogers' approach as a model for ethical, empathetic journalism.

  • Joseph Pulitzer: Voice of the People
    American Journalism (Taylor & Francis) 2019

    Digital media review of the 2018 documentary, tracing Pulitzer's legacy through the lens of modern journalism's accountability challenges.

  • A Student's View of How Digital Media and Higher Education Collided
    AEJMC: Media Ethics Division Newsletter 2019

    Summary of master's thesis exploring digital media's impact on higher education from 2015 to 2017, focusing on PR challenges, campus protests, and social biases in classroom discourse.

  • Bill Simmons and the New Journalism Tradition
    AJHA Convention 2018

    Research on the evolution of long-form digital media, internet culture, and media ethics, using Simmons as a case study in how sports journalism pioneered digital-native narrative forms.

Journalism school gave me the foundational instincts I bring to UX writing and discovery: asking the right questions, synthesizing information fast, and writing for a specific reader under constraint. The ACL work, designing competitions, building curricula, and creating assessment frameworks, was content architecture and systems thinking before I had words for it.

Service

15 years with the American Classical League

American Classical League

Hamilton, Ohio, May 2011 to July 2025

🏛
Maxima Cum Laude Chaperone Award

Recognized for 15 years of sustained service and leadership

Founding Lead, Agon (Greek Certamen)

Co-founded the Agon competition, establishing the national curriculum from scratch, authoring primary question banks, and managing the program from initial launch through sustained growth across national chapters.

Content Architecture

Led question design and syllabus development for the National Certamen Committee, overseeing high-scale academic content standards for national competitions across thousands of student participants annually.

Assessment Design

Developed and curated the National Roman & Hellenic Civilization Exams, standardized study frameworks and examinations distributed to thousands of students and educators nationwide.

Mentorship & Coaching

Coached state-level competitive teams and authored historical research guides distributed to hundreds of educators and students nationwide, building lasting resources for Classics education across the country.

Resume

Want the full picture?

My resume covers 8+ years of experience across content design, conversation design, and practice leadership, including full work history, education, and skills.

Download Full Resume (PDF)
Contact

Let's work together

Open to principal, staff, and director-level roles in content design, conversation design, and UX strategy.

connorharrison19@gmail.com LinkedIn