James Parry
ABOUT ME
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My career has taken quite a natural progression, with the user experience being the constant focus through all the different roles and experiences I've had. I studied Journalism at university because I had a knack for taking a complex topic and breaking it down into something easier to understand.
I love building a narrative and context around a problem to find the most approachable solution – one with the least friction, the most engagement, and maybe even a bit of entertainment along the way.
I have always been passionate about words and their power. It might not always be in writing either – over the years, both in and outside of work, I've made videos, presented podcasts, and conducted live Q&As with senior leadership teams on stage – but there is something special about words and how they can illustrate, critique or even reinvent.
Something I learned from my journalistic roots is asking the right question can prompt the subject, or even the audience, to discover something unexpected. There's something almost magical about that moment.
Often I'll seek it out, and, when getting into a new topic, strive to find the place most people can relate to, before taking them somewhere new. I find this not only helps inform my worldview, it also allows me to put myself in the audience's shoes, whatever their perspective.
Part of the metadata generation workflow
An automation evolution
This desire to find frictionless solutions eventually led me beyond the copy itself. During a project at Quantexa, I needed to generate metadata for our entire documentation site across around 20 components, some 3,500 pages, and scaling to potentially 60 supported versions. It was clear that doing this manually would take far too long, so I began investigating LLMs and automation.
The complexity of the project led to an extremely advanced solution: a generator that not only creates metadata but does so as part of a CI/CD workflow, auto-regenerating if search performance issues are raised to perform targeted fixes. It became an entirely automated search performance enhancement.
Around the same time, I began using Cline powered by Claude in VS Code to experiment. I'll try out a simple version of a feature, get it working first, and then iterate on it. I employed what I’d learned to kick off a new project, bringing a working Python bot to a large Discord community just a few months later. The experience was hugely transformative in illustrating the benefits of AI as a tool and an enabler when used in a considered way.
Building ideas
I use these tools to enhance and extend my capacity. I'm often given creative problems to solve, and I'll use AI to quickly experiment and prove or disprove a concept. Just the other day, I created a prototype for a documentation REST API that would be used to serve LLMs with data directly from a huge repository of information.
I'm definitely ambitious when it comes to taking on these sorts of projects, and I lean into that to find the best solution, which isn't always the easiest one. I'm learning all the time about what works for me, and what solves the problem I'm up against.
I'll try out a simple version of a feature, get it working first, and then iterate on it.
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But the potential AI brings can be a bit of a double-edged sword. Projects can scope creep, and it's tempting to overextend yourself – it can be easy to take on too much or go down a rabbit hole in search of the answer.
I try to keep a close eye on the balance between human and generative solutions, and there are plenty of tasks I would never outsource, such as user testing, creative analysis, and ideation. Not just because it keeps the human element driving the project, but because that's where a lot of the fun of Content Design is.
This user-focused, multi-discipline approach has always been there. Back in 2015, I founded Pass the Controller, a gaming site that served as the proving ground for all sorts of creative ideas, from podcasts to live events coverage.
When an official magazine forum was shut down, it proved to be the catalyst to bring that site into being, to give a community a new home. Today, I carry that exact same sense of community and seizing opportunities into managing the digital infrastructure for Jonesy Space Cat's Discord server.
James Presenting a video from a live event
Over time, the technology, the medium, and even the methodologies have changed, but the goal – asking the right questions to build the right content experience for the audience – remains exactly the same.
