Trevor Zelman
Writing Portfolio
No topic is so complex it cannot be
made comprehensible, nothing so
familiar it cannot be refreshed.
UX
Length: Short form (64 words)
Audience: Western Union app users
Aim: Explain new app feature
Format: In-app popup
It's easy:
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1. Be sure your WU profile name matches the name on your bank account.
2. Have your transit number and account number ready.
3. Enter your bank username and password when prompted.
4. Approve the payment.
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All communication to your bank is encrypted for your security. We do not store your username or password.
The client introduced this popup into its old money transfer flow. Using few words, the copy needed to:
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Encourage customers to try a then-new service
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Ensure a seamless experience when opted into, by showing exactly how to complete the task
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Adhere to the unique financial regulations of each country (above sample was for Canada).
(world's highest unclimbed mountain)​
As in many other things, Bhutan has gone its own way with this prohibition on climbing. For Bhutan partisans, foreigners included, it's just one more thing that makes the country special. Some things are more important than the money they would bring in. Some things are sacred.
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Ever wonder how on earth a mountain can still be unclimbed in 2024 — and sure to stay that way? This short piece tells the story and explains why. I wrote it in 2016 while working as a travel writer in Bhutan's capital city.
Content Marketing
Length: Long form (2,074 words)
Audience: All pre-ChatGPT recruiters
Aim: Encourage adoption of AI app
Format: White paper / blog post
It was a series of board games between a champion Go player and an AI that woke us all up to a new and astonishing reality: AI is going to change everything. ... ​
Before long, every recruiter will need to partner with an AI to find and connect with candidates. It will become as unthinkable not to [adopt AI] as it would be today to try their next search on a typewriter or to drive a Model T to work. Adopt AI and stay in the game.
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I wrote this piece in June 2019 for a Silicon Valley startup that had built a revolutionary AI-based recruiting software.
The ChatGPT earthquake was still three years off, but already this startup's product was proving out AI's astonishing capabilities — helping recruiters to identify top-tier candidates far faster,
with much less effort.
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The assignment: jolt recruiters out of their habit of not adopting AI in their work.
on my LinkedIn profile
Email Marketing
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2
B
We also keep the acceptance procedure to a minimum. No more endless hours of filling out paperwork. No waiting for weeks to hear whether your loan got approved. And no finding out — as nearly three-quarters of small business applicants do — that your loan application got rejected and the bank does not in fact have your back.
Audience: Small/medium size business owners needing tide-over loans
Aim:
Prompt merchants to contact
sales department of client
B
2
B
As the speed of change increases, evolution is inevitable. Survival isn’t. ​
Choose [client name] for your ecommerce needs.
Aim:
Audience:
Prompt readers to consider switching to client's microservices product
Technologists in small/midsize ecommerce businesses
B
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C
Western Union customers
Audience:
Aim:
Review benefits/rewards of having joined the client's loyalty program
I write copy that prompts action — whether B2B email outreach persuasively relaying facts or B2C articles painting a picture the reader wants to inhabit.
In any format: emails, blog posts, web pages, apps. Whatever works best for the need.
All marketing copy samples here are short form (<500 words).
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2
C
I wrote dozens of articles about the Kingdom of Bhutan to pique travelers' interest in seeing it with MyBhutan.com.​
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(800-year-old temple in
the heart of the capital city)​
Visitors in a quiet state may be able to feel the vibe of compassion that permeates the place. Winds blowing up from the valley below tauten prayer flags to send these blessings onwards.
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More often than not, his movements seem to have little discernible effect on how traffic would flow without him. But that's just part of the charm. As are the dogs lying on the part of the circle leading to the National Memorial Chorten, sleeping the day away as cars whiz past.
(in a country with no traffic lights)​
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With its inconspicuous location behind the long row of handicrafts stalls that line Norzin Lam from the Three Offering Goddesses traffic circle on down, Tarayana Rural Crafts may look like any other retail shop. But its mission is big: helping the women and children of Bhutan's most marginalized communities to become self-reliant.
(written in support of local
Bhutanese craftspeople)​
I led a team of writers at the leading healthcare group in northern Minnesota and solely wrote dozens of patient-friendly promotional articles for their website.
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(Text-only links, not live: The original website where these articles were posted is no longer extant after a merger.)
Our surgeons also offer something less tangible than sheer skill but no less vital to your health: a commitment to putting the needs of their patients first.
Exceptional turnaround times. More than two million tests are processed by the SMDC Clinical Laboratory and its affiliated labs each year — and 90% of them are turned around within 24 hours!
As important as anything else may be the small things, like being able to play with your kids again, or simply being able to bend over and tie your shoes again. To join in life again.
To date I have specialized in UX writing for the financial services industry, delivering concise copy to drive seamless transactions (for app, mobile web, and desktop).
Task: Transfer money via bank account
Audience: Western Union app customers
Aim: Make adopting new product easy
Format: In-app popups introduced into end-to-end money transfer flows
Note: From the same country-specific series as
the Canada sample at top left of portfolio.
Audience: Western Union website users
Provide brief, clear guidance on next steps when completing tasks
Aim:
Format: Modal in-flow popups
(first screen of loan end-to-end flow)
Aim:
Make process of starting loan application simple and clear
Audience: Small businesses seeking loans
Background: The bank client wanted more small business customers. Small business customers wanted loans. The first step, per regulations: register their business entity.
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The early mock-up above aimed to keep the barrier to entrance low by demonstrating how easy the process would be.
Format: Website interstitial
These are among the many documents I wrote for Wells Fargo recruiters and full-time employees, communicating in clear, succinct language how various software updates and policy changes would affect them.
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All documents adhered strictly to Wells Fargo's rigorous brand standards.
Audience: Wells Fargo's 500+ recruiters
Provide concise, easy-to-reference information for using and optimizing their daily driver software
Aim:
Format: 60-page indexed PDF
This user guide proved exceptionally popular with recruiters, who often referred to it multiple times daily.
Audience: Wells Fargo's 500+ recruiters
Aim:
Inform recruiters about key updates to Wells Fargo's recruiting policies
Format: 7-page PDF
I developed its unique side-by-side format to make it easy for recruiters to see which policies had changed and how.
Audience: Wells Fargo's 500+ recruiters
Aim:
Help recruiters understand what changes to expect after their daily driver software got a major update.
Format: 4-page PDF
Audience:
Wells Fargo's 265,000
full-time employees (in 2015)
Aim:
Explain to employees a key section on the Careers site (new options for self-identification) that required their attention
​
Format: 7-page Word document
This document was posted to Wells Fargo's Careers intranet site.
(I wrote this speech for a teacher friend, aiming to encourage ethical behavior among Bhutanese 12 & 13 year olds.)
Guru Rinpoche once said, 'Though my view is as vast as the sky, my actions are as fine as barley flour.' If Guru Rinpoche could say this — he who could pierce through seven doors with the force of his arrow, who could subdue demons, who could turn fire into water at Tsho Pema — if he paid such close attention to the cause and effect of karmic deeds, then so should we.
(I wrote this paper to explain a prediction tool I created that was inspired by biomimicry. Based on this paper, I was invited to speak on the model at a World Future Society annual conference.)
It is obvious that many of today’s governing paradigms are indiscernible to most of us; we are all creatures of our time to some degree. With the global media matrix acting as a paradigm assimilator — more people than ever across the planet are on the same page — the challenge remains to see outside of outside the box. The most enveloping paradigms are the most intransigent to penetration: even the freethinking heretics of ancient Greece were a-polytheists, not a-monotheists.
(I developed the Balance Model using this article as a basis.)
It is tempting to imagine that humanity has entered a post-natural age. Armed with the capacity to alter the genetic code of every thing on earth and clone ourselves, the potential to create anything from the atom up and merge with massively intelligent sentient machines, and the freedom to utterly destroy remaining ecosystems if we so choose and head for space, we seem to be breaking free of nature and the constraints that bind it:
disease, aging, death.
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So then: Is nature still useful to us? Aside from resources, what does it give us? Do we really need it anymore?