A bit about me

I'm Michal Kessel Shitrit, a content designer and UX writer based in Israel. English and Hebrew are both my native languages, and I write in both. Right now I'm Head of English UX Writing at Draft, a UX writing studio.

How I got here

I started out teaching English while I was doing my BA in communications, and from there I moved into translation. Eventually I opened my own translation agency, and we worked with big global companies like Google and Microsoft.

During COVID I switched to UX writing. I freelanced for a while and built trainings, and then I joined Draft. I never really left localization behind, though, and I still teach it (more on that below).

What I work on

For as long as I've been at Draft, my main client has been bit, Bank Hapoalim's payment app and the most popular one in Israel. I'm the point person for all the Hebrew copy in its redesign, and it's where I developed the core term method that I now talk about at conferences.

I've also written a lot of structured bot replies, for Bank Hapoalim, Air Haifa, Astral Hotels and others. More recently, I wrote the website for the Weizmann Institute.

And I was the person behind Smart Draft, Draft's AI product. I took it from an idea to a working proof of concept and then to a full design in Figma. I wrote the specs and the prompts, tested models and settings, worked with the developer, and did all the QA. Around the same time, I also informally led the work of bringing AI into our team's day-to-day processes.

Teaching and speaking

Teaching has been part of my work since the beginning. Localization Station is my own training initiative, with courses that help localization and product teams work together and teach UX writing to localizers.

I run a content design masterclass in-house at companies, including Playtika, BigID, Healthee and AudioCodes, and I gave it at WebExpo in Prague in 2026. I speak at design conferences about testing UX content, writing with and for AI, and reducing cognitive load. Honestly, I started giving talks to get over my fear of public speaking, and I still count that as one of the things I'm proudest of.

I also run small, in-person AI workshops in Hebrew for beginners, called ה-AI ואני.

Ways to work with me

You can invite me to speak at your conference or run a workshop for your team. You can also reach out if you need help with product content in English or Hebrew, or if you're trying to figure out how AI fits into your content work.

You can see the full list of my talks on the homepage and on my Sessionize speaker profile. Most of my case studies are in a password-protected portfolio, so just ask and I'll send you the password.

The easiest way to reach me is by email at info@heymichal.com, or you can message me on LinkedIn.