Darci Groves
My Work as an Individual Contributor
As a writer, I've handled just about every type of content imaginable, and I've owned the language for the full life cycle of products used by billions of people. At Apple, I've created everything from on-screen help systems and in-box product manuals to social media posts and robust UX, marketing, and instructional copy. I also spent time at Intuit, where I wrote the UI copy for an unreleased consumer finance product. As an Information Architect at Walmart.com, I made complex UIs approachable to a wide range of people and crafted wireframes to help simplify flows. As a freelancer, I worked on the API documentation for AOL Instant Messenger. More recently I've been consulting with startups to launch and iterate on products and establish their writing and UX practices.
Below are some examples of the many types of projects I've delivered. Tap or click on each image to see a larger version.
Renting and Buying Movies
When movie rentals launched on the iTunes Store, digital rentals were a relatively new concept. To address this, I wrote an informational page explaining movie rentals and purchases. I also worked on copy for the product page, which concisely explained how rentals work.
Removing Songs of Innocence
When the free copy of U2's newest album showed up in users' iTunes libraries, some of them weren't happy. I worked with our execs and design team to quickly come up with a simple UI that allowed users to remove the album from their account. I also needed to explain the repercussions of removing it and how to get it back again if they changed their mind later.
Automatic Downloads
With the launch of Automatic Downloads, I needed to introduce our users to the feature and make its value clear in a small amount of space. I also developed clear preference copy that fit a very limited character count across multiple platforms.
iTunes Match
iTunes Match was a complicated concept to explain when it was introduced. I worked to clearly explain the feature up front, then walked users through signing up, which made the process transparent.
Ping
Apple's foray into a music-based social network was an ambitious undertaking, and required marketing language as well as a significant amount of new UI copy. It also presented a new challenge when I needed to craft copy explaining that the service was shutting down.
Genius
People today are asked to share information and personal data all the time. While it can still be a controversial thing to request from users, Genius launched at a time when it was still a fairly new proposition. So, while Genius was complicated to explain in general, the truly tricky part was writing about it transparently in a way that made users feel comfortable and safe.
App Store
When the App Store launched, I needed to write an entire UI from scratch. While I was able to leverage some of the UI copy standards from the iTunes Store, I also had new considerations, such as app categories, developer pages, system and hardware requirements, app versions and updates, and app ratings. To implement app ratings, I first had to work with our legal and business teams to create a UI in iTunes Connect where developers could indicate what sort of content their app had. I then created a consumer-facing description of each rating.
Emails
I've written countless consumer-facing emails in my time with Apple and other companies. The first one below is an email we developed to alert users when a download is made using their account on a device they haven’t used before. I'm named as an inventor on US Patent #US20130305335 for this email. The second email below is sent when a user’s pre-order becomes available. And the third email is an example of what is sent to our content providers to inform them about a holiday shutdown of iTunes Connect.
.Mac Marketing Pages
These pages were created to introduce the seven main features of the .Mac service. At the time, many of these concepts were tricky for users to understand, and I needed to create accessible, conversational explanations for each feature. These pages lived on the main Apple.com website and were the primary location for users to learn about the service.
.Mac Tips
For this feature, I aimed to create tips that were no longer than three paragraphs, and used simple, friendly language.
.Mac Webmail
My time at .Mac included writing the UI copy for a robust webmail redesign. The preferences section was the meatiest in terms of copy, and you'll see four of those screens below.
Walmart.com FTD FAQ
While most of my work at Walmart.com focused on their Digital Life products (which included their online photo and music offerings), I also covered other projects as needed. One of those was the introduction of a partnership with FTD, and I created a FAQ from scratch for that service.
Hardware Manuals
I spent several years in Apple's hardware organization in the early '00s, and was responsible for the company's laptop print manuals, which described and instructed users on both the hardware and its included software. Along with those manuals, which shipped in the box with every iBook and Powerbook, I also wrote the on-screen help systems for the entire laptop line. I saw these products through the shift from OS 9 to OS X, which meant entirely new manuals and help content. I was also responsible for all manuals and instructional sheets for our hardware peripherals, which included displays, mice, adapters, and more.