Carolyn
Coughlin
McDonough

Lead writer for Unity Authentication, Ad Tech, Programmatic, and Gaming Services — hundreds of customer-facing pages. Drove UX writers into Figma for dashboard copy, and built Data Studio analytics dashboards to inform content priorities.

I was the original author and information architect for these pages, creating most from scratch during 2018–2022. The structure, voice, and IA you see were established by me. Content may have been updated by others since my tenure.

Sole writer for the npm documentation set, read by 20,000 users per day. Covered the full package management lifecycle including security, two-factor authentication, and developer workflows for the world's largest JavaScript package registry.

I was the sole writer for the npm documentation set from 2017–2018. Every page you see was written and maintained by me. Content has since been maintained and expanded by others.

Discovered, researched, and wrote complex customer stories that made Splunk's features understandable to C-suite buyers. Stories were credited with accelerating the sales cycle for major opportunities across multiple industries.

I researched, wrote, and published every customer story on these pages during 2014–2015. Splunk had an existing customer stories function when I joined — I overhauled it, created contests to incentivize the sales team to submit story leads, and raised the quality and volume of stories significantly.

Redesigned the Dev Ops team's knowledge infrastructure, transforming thousands of disparate Confluence pages, Jira tickets, Slack messages, and internal blogs into a navigable, active resource. Validated the new structure through card sorting and 1:1 sessions.

Case Study

“The new documentation architecture will accelerate productivity across the board.”

The Challenge

ProbablyMonsters included independent game design studios with a best-of-breed but highly specialized IA. Valuable content was scattered across Slack, Atlassian Confluence, and SharePoint — difficult to find and often duplicated.

The Method

Used search analytics, tree testing, card sorting, and stakeholder interviews. Spent time understanding what ProbablyMonsters' goals required — predicting needs users didn't yet verbalize.

The Results

• Duplications eliminated
• Obsolete content clearly archived
• New information surfaced first
• Content "lost" in Slack organized intelligently in Confluence
• Templates with keyword fields built to sustain the new structure

Analytics screenshot: Top unsuccessful searches and IA best practice solutions applied

I designed this information architecture from the ground up in 2022–2023, starting with thousands of disorganized pages. The structure, templates, and navigation were created by me.

Designed and developed highly-rated instructor and student training guides for a custom OEM rail software deployment with cybersecurity components. Managed a challenging international schedule with SMEs in Italy, Pittsburgh, and the West Coast.

I was the sole instructional designer and writer for this courseware in 2024–2025. In keeping with standard NDA practice, certain technical details and system architecture have been deliberately obscured in the samples shown — this is intentional, not an oversight.

Wrote and maintained connector documentation for the Google Search Appliance — hardware and software that replicated internal Google search. Triaged Buganizer issues, launched test builds, and coordinated engineering meetings to resolve complex doc bugs.

I wrote and maintained the Google Search Appliance Connector documentation as a consulting writer in 2012–2013. The GSA product has since been discontinued; these pages capture the work as it stood during my tenure.

Conducted requirements gathering, stakeholder interviews, and user acceptance testing for a major immigration case-management software product used by paralegals, partners, and top client firms.

I conducted this UX firm evaluation independently in 2015–2017, interviewing all 10 firms and producing the final recommendation presented to the CIO. This is an original strategic deliverable.

Built Data Studio dashboards ingesting Google Analytics for doc performance monitoring. Trained engineering teams in a Lunch and Learn session; insights drove localization priorities and content revisions for both the Doc and MarCom teams.

I built and deployed these Data Studio dashboards at Unity during 2018–2022, and trained engineering teams in their use. This analytics infrastructure did not exist before I created it.