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I design and write products that convert and people love.

I’ve worked at Spotify, DoorDash, Miro, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative and more. I’ve helped them establish and scale strategy, UX, content, and AI. I teach at some of the world’s best design schools and host the Content Rookie Podcast. Download my CV.

Selected clients
Astrid.ai·BabyNaps·Berghs School of Communication·Biorecro·Business Sweden·Chan Zuckerberg Initiative·Coder Society·Doberman·DoorDash·Double Standards·Einride·Futurice·Gapminder·Hyper Island·In Parallel·Instantor·iZettle·Magine TV·Mentimeter·Miro·OTW·Pleo·Position Green·Referanza·SAS EuroBonus·Simployer·Sleep Cycle·SNASK·Spotify·SSAB·Technigo·Tibber·Vässla·Wolt·Astrid.ai·BabyNaps·Berghs School of Communication·Biorecro·Business Sweden·Chan Zuckerberg Initiative·Coder Society·Doberman·DoorDash·Double Standards·Einride·Futurice·Gapminder·Hyper Island·In Parallel·Instantor·iZettle·Magine TV·Mentimeter·Miro·OTW·Pleo·Position Green·Referanza·SAS EuroBonus·Simployer·Sleep Cycle·SNASK·Spotify·SSAB·Technigo·Tibber·Vässla·Wolt·

DoorDash (Wolt)

Leadership · Localization · Content design

Built and scaled a content design and localization team from scratch.

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CompanyDoorDash / Wolt
RoleContent Design Lead
ScopeSelf-serve onboarding, B2B content strategy
Timeline2023–2025

I owned content for Wolt’s first B2B self-serve experience.

The challenge

Aligning a team of stakeholders around the biggest company bet. Creating content that could scale to various markets and industries. Leading value proposition and tone and voice for B2B — and getting users excited about onboarding quickly, instead of relying on a dedicated account manager.

Wolt onboarding

Tone and voice had to match the look and feel of Wolt’s playful brand while remaining clear and trustworthy for a B2B audience.

What I did

Develop experience principles

Every user goal was geared towards a North Star. Metrics were defined from day one and reevaluated with every review. We used principles to align stakeholders and ensure consistency across key touchpoints.

User-test every detail

We wanted to understand how users experience each moment of the flow so we could optimise it to feel fast and familiar. We mixed quant and qual research across various markets to get a holistic picture.

Add personality with the right voice and tone

Wolt is famous for its playful brand. We wanted to ensure the experience felt on-brand while being trustworthy and clear enough for a B2B context — a balance that required constant iteration.

Wolt merchant dashboard

Merchant Dashboard on first sign in

The outcome

Self-serve replaced 100% of onboarding for small and medium-sized businesses.

What I learned

Working on the projects with the biggest impact is often a stretch goal. It means building strong relationships and pushing the boundaries of current design and ways of working every single day.

Spotify

Design systems · UX writing · AI

Scaled UX writing across markets and devices, and contributed to design systems.

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CompanySpotify
RoleSenior UX Writer
ScopeUX writing for design systems
Timeline2019–2023

I scaled UX writing to the entire design org and all devices.

The challenge

Developing and maintaining easy-to-use resources for 60+ UX writers and 200+ designers across products and devices. Bringing style guides to life in design system components. Making it all localizable.

Spotify UX writing across devices

UX writing guidance had to work everywhere — from the mobile app to Apple Watch and beyond.

What I did

Glossary, style guides, and components that scale

To create guidance that worked across the entire Spotify ecosystem and was scalable to all international markets, close collaboration with designers and researchers — as well as being in tune with culture — was key.

A tone and voice the entire world recognizes

Spotify is a brand people feel strongly about. We ensured its voice was strong across every surface, device, and market — creating components and resources that worked for writing, visuals, and audio. Everything had to be ready to localize.

Bring everything right where it’s needed with AI plugins

Fast sprints meant nothing could just live on a site somewhere. We worked with plugins to ensure components were right where the work was happening and seamlessly integrated in workflows.

The outcome

Design system adoption increased by 70% for 600+ designers and engineers. Monthly feedback calls ensured components and guidelines stayed up to date. Style guide compliance doubled while we achieved a 70% acceptance rate for suggestions.

What I learned

Scaling and maintaining design is hard work. It requires a deep understanding of all products across an ecosystem, market trends, and how people work. It’s about creating consensus and being a tastemaker.

Spotify UX writing questions answered How to nail remote onboarding and influence people

Chan Zuckerberg Initiative

Content design · User research · Content strategy

Led content design for an award-winning education platform.

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CompanyChan Zuckerberg Initiative
RoleContent Design Lead
ScopeAlong.org 0→1
Timeline2020–2023

I led content design for award-winning Along.org

The challenge

Creating a product attractive to educators and students of all ages to reinvent student-teacher relationships. Developing appropriate tone and voice. Launching in the midst of a global pandemic. Creating familiar digital features that mimic the live classroom.

Along onboarding

Onboarding, playful yet trustworthy

What I did

Developed and tested terminology and TOV

Speaking to both students and teachers in words they recognize and connect with was harder than expected. I conducted a lot of user interviews and A/B-tests to get the terminology and tone and voice exactly right.

Built onboarding with an 85% completion rate

The team spent months trying to nail the onboarding experience for both teachers and students. While teachers usually dropped off due to compliance concerns, students would drop off due to lack of interest in Along. We ended up designing heavily customized flows carried by a careful choice of words and visuals.

Along student setup

Getting students from different classes set up required some finesse

Rolled out a notification strategy built to scale

For most classrooms, going online was totally new. We wanted to ensure everyone stayed engaged without getting overwhelmed by emails, SMS, or notifications. I developed and tested a notification and comms strategy that ensured metrics were met without creating noise.

The outcome

Average click-through rate for emails 72% (students) and 81% (teachers). Onboarding completion rate 85% (if done in classroom).

Along won several top product awards, including Time’s best inventions, Gradient, and FETC.

ZOE

Conversation design · Prompt architecture · UX

Rebuilt the voice and prompt architecture for ZOE.

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CompanyZOE
RoleContent & Conversation Designer
ScopeZiggie prompt architecture, meal feedback, streak experience
Timeline3 months

I gave ZOE’s AI coach a voice it could actually keep.

The challenge

Ziggie’s outputs were inconsistent, with meal feedback swinging between clinical and hyperbolic depending on the prompt that generated it. The seven-day streak experience, meant to build momentum, went flat by day three because every frame used the same sentence structure and the same emotional pitch. Underneath both problems sat a prompt suite that had grown by addition, with new rules stacked on old ones and no order of precedence between them, so voice, safety, and format constraints regularly contradicted each other.

Ziggie meal feedback

Ziggie’s feedback had to feel personal and trustworthy, without slipping into either clinical score-speak or empty cheerleading.

What I did

Rebuilt the prompt architecture

I restructured Ziggie’s full prompt suite, seven prompts in total, around an explicit priority hierarchy: safety, then scope, then voice, then format. This resolved the recurring pattern where competing rules produced contradictory outputs, and gave the wider team a stable structure to write new prompts against instead of adding more rules on top.

Defined a voice: observational, not evaluative

Ziggie notices patterns and reflects them back. It doesn’t congratulate, judge, or moralize. I rewrote seventeen meal feedback entries from a hyperbolic, score-focused register to a grounded, observational one, and in the process flagged a data inconsistency and a wider pattern of overly clinical score framing that the team hadn’t caught.

Streak experience prototype

The D1-D7 streak arc, rebuilt as a sequence rather than seven disconnected screens.

Fixed the streak arc structurally

The flatness in the seven-day streak experience wasn’t a word-choice problem, it was a structural one. I rewrote all seven frames, including CTA copy, varying the opening structure and escalating the stakes day over day, then built an interactive HTML prototype to test the arc as a whole sequence rather than as individual screens.

The outcome

A prompt architecture the team can extend without reintroducing contradictions. A streak experience with a real emotional arc, prototyped and reviewed as a sequence. Seventeen meal feedback entries now speaking in one consistent, trustworthy voice, alongside a stakeholder-approved recommendation to remove Ziggie from the post-meal snap screen so the meal photo itself could be the visual hero.

What I learned

Voice and structure are two separate problems that look like one. You can fix every sentence in a sequence and it will still read flat if the underlying structure repeats. And in conversational AI, the prompt architecture is the thing that decides whether your voice guidelines survive contact with a hundred edge cases, or collapse the first time two rules disagree.

Pleo

Leadership · Product design · Agentic design

Launched the company-wide writer.md.

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CompanyPleo
RoleProduct Design Director
ScopeProduct design, Content design, User research, AI
Timeline2025–present

I lead agentic and content design at Pleo.

The challenge

Establishing and scaling content design from scratch, hands-on AI conversation design across key features, and leading a multi-disciplinary design team through digital transformation.

Introducing writer.md — Pleo’s first company-wide content design framework

I’m currently working on this case study. More details will be available soon.

More clients you might know

Astrid.ai · BabyNaps · Berghs School of Communication · Biorecro · Business Sweden · Coder Society · Doberman · Double Standards · Einride · Futurice · Gapminder · Health Integrator · Hyper Island · In Parallel · Instantor · iZettle · Magine TV · Mentimeter · Miro · OTW · Position Green · Referanza · SAS EuroBonus · Simployer · Sleep Cycle · SNASK · SSAB · Technigo · Tibber · Vässla · ZOE · and many more

Full case study details available on request — get in touch.

TypeEventTopicDate
PanelFuture Product Days Coming soonPanel: The agents are comingSep 2026 ↑
TalkHatch Conference Coming soonThe future of design in Europe is localSep 2026 ↑
TalkUX on the BeachDesign products that stickJun 2026
SessionProfessio UX Design DayDesign leadership is broader than everApr 2026
TalkFuture Product DaysHow to actually use AI in your content design practiceSep 2025
TalkButton ConferenceHow to fall back in love with content designSep 2025
PanelCreative Sessions, Stockholms KulturhusetPanel: How to stay creative in the age of AISep 2024
TalkGrowing in Content ConferencePanel: Recovering from layoffsAug 2024
TalkLead with Tempo ConferenceThe future of content design is not what you think it isJun 2024
TalkWebbdagarna StockholmIntroduction to content designMay 2023
TalkTempo ConferenceTaking care of your design teamDec 2022
TalkTechnigo UX WeekA day in the life of a UXerOct 2022
TalkPerspectives ConferenceFreelancing in content designMar 2022
TalkHyper IslandCreating authentic product narrativesMar 2022
TalkContent Strategy Insights PodcastContent design for design systemsJan 2022
TalkTechnigo BootcampWhat is UX writing and UX design for developersDec 2021
TalkFIS GlobalContent marketing best practicesDec 2021
TalkContent Ed ConferenceNailing your first 90 days on a new content jobNov 2021
WorkshopFuturice AgencyIntroduction to UX writing for designersOct 2021
TalkHyper IslandStorytelling and content design for design lead studentsSep 2021
SessionBerghs School of CommunicationFeedback session for brand and storytelling final projectsSep 2021
WorkshopStendahls AgencyIntroduction to UX writing for designersMay 2021
TalkHyper IslandIntroduction to brand storytelling and product writingMar 2021
TalkUX Writer ConferenceHow to nail tone and voice guidelinesOct 2020
WorkshopSpotify Design (internal)How to develop inclusive product narrativesJun 2019

Want to book me? I travel light and talk loud. Let’s talk.

Nicole Alexandra Michaelis

About me

Hello, is it Nicole
you’re looking for?

Born in Germany, my family moved to the US when I was a toddler. I was raised bilingually, went to a regular American school during the day and had private German lessons in the evening. This equipped me with full native proficiency in both languages. I loved growing up in New York and never quite felt at home again in Germany when I moved back many years later. It came as no surprise that in 2014, I decided to leave again and move to Sweden, where I have settled (for now).

Having my own business and working independently has always fascinated me. It was the main reason I decided to study something business-related. I could write already, time to learn something to turn it into a living. I believe I bring the perfect mix of storytelling and user-focus to the table. Yes, I’m dedicated to telling great stories, but being an analytical person, I never not kill my darlings to improve performance and usability.

All my work experience comes from an international environment. I’ve not only worked in different countries, but also with people from many different cultures. This helps me create relevant content for any target audience and lead with empathy.

I was the first kid that learned how to read in my class. I spent my weekends competing in reading competitions (it was cool in the 90s) and my summer holidays going through as many books as I possibly could. I wrote poems for my grandmas and short stories for my friends. I clearly remember when I first started writing, but I don’t remember ever stopping.

What I do

UX writingDesign leadershipContent designContent strategyConversation designCopywritingAI implementationLocalizationTeaching any of the above

I bring my own chair to the table, plus this

  • I dig languages.I’m native in English and German, and fluent in Swedish.
  • Creative.Born and raised. Published poet. I potter. I paint.
  • 15+ years.Designing and writing for marketing and product teams.
  • MSc Marketing.BA Business. Studied material engineering.
  • I give all the f*cks.Unafraid, disruptive, and never shy with ideas.