Melinda Belcher and Robin Wellington define themselves as content experience designers. A shared vocabulary includes content strategy, which includes content design, which includes UX writing.
Content design is based on research and empathy.
What happens when content isn't included in the design process? Understand what different teams care about. Make sure other teams are set up for success with content.
If you can create a style guide and socialize it, that's helpful. It helps to start relationships. Helpful also when working with designers.OTOH, it helps to understand the systems that designers work in. We invited ourselves to design review meetings.
Make the case for clarity of content as a great way to not get sued, when legal starts getting in the way.
Wednesday, October 30, 2019
Building the Next Generation Tech Docs Portal
Jim Edmunds and Jerry Thorner brought a case study about how to build a unified documentation portal. A portal is an entryway. Tech doc portals need to be more than just connecting users to information.
Current generation portal tend to have monolithic content. Modern portals have modular content. Can use the latter in multiple ways for multiple purposes. They are structured and tagged.
We're seeing a proliferation of content and applications that create that content, further expanding siloing of content. We even see silos within departments.
The Internet is a hungry beast. It wants more and more content.
A unified content portal is about bridging silos. Can use existing tools and processes.
Content aggregation is about identifying and mapping all the sources of content in the enterprise.
Current generation portal tend to have monolithic content. Modern portals have modular content. Can use the latter in multiple ways for multiple purposes. They are structured and tagged.
We're seeing a proliferation of content and applications that create that content, further expanding siloing of content. We even see silos within departments.
The Internet is a hungry beast. It wants more and more content.
A unified content portal is about bridging silos. Can use existing tools and processes.
Content aggregation is about identifying and mapping all the sources of content in the enterprise.
Using Style Guides to Achieve Content Collaboration and Consistency
Liz Fraley began the last day of LavaCon 2019 talking about style guides. Style guides are to create consistent experiences for end-users, no matter where the content is delivered or who wrote it. Also, style guides are an offloaded effort, institutional memory, and good for onboarding. Documentation on how we write our content. If something is never written down, it does not get reported.
How you write tells people what community you belong to.
Style guides are references for writing style. Included writing practices, writing usage, terminology, and voice/tone. Your corporate voice. Include guidelines that are unique to you, that fit your context. List company/product specific issues, such as proper/improper use of your product names.
Not only do you need to include rules, but include examples. And not only good examples, but bad examples. With both, it makes the rules easier to interpret.
If you have teams contributing content in different languages, then it's good to have the style guide in those languages.
Formatting style guides describe the official look and feel of your output. Defines the implementation of your templates, CSS, XML transforms, and more. A format style guide is a specification.
In XML environments, there's another style guide: XML style. What tags to use and their context. Here it's extra-important to have examples. And if you're a DITA shop, you want to add your DITA rules.
How you write tells people what community you belong to.
Style guides are references for writing style. Included writing practices, writing usage, terminology, and voice/tone. Your corporate voice. Include guidelines that are unique to you, that fit your context. List company/product specific issues, such as proper/improper use of your product names.
Not only do you need to include rules, but include examples. And not only good examples, but bad examples. With both, it makes the rules easier to interpret.
If you have teams contributing content in different languages, then it's good to have the style guide in those languages.
Formatting style guides describe the official look and feel of your output. Defines the implementation of your templates, CSS, XML transforms, and more. A format style guide is a specification.
In XML environments, there's another style guide: XML style. What tags to use and their context. Here it's extra-important to have examples. And if you're a DITA shop, you want to add your DITA rules.
Tuesday, October 29, 2019
Who Are You Talking To? Using Personas To Create Unified Content Experiences
Donna Barkson of State Farm is telling us about creating end-user personas. It's about humanizing who we're writing content for.
Personas are representations of user groups. Archetypes of customer segments--and they are not marketing personas. Based on data and research, they express user needs, define user goals, and highlight user expectations.
Personas help keep the focus on user goals. They help writers structure voice & tone.
Create personas by doing research about users, analyzing the data, and deciding what information is going to be important for them. Look for patterns in the data. How many personas you create depends not on the amount of your content or the size of the company or the number of your customers, but on what emerges from your analysis.
Use empathy mapping to learn about users. This can be used to discover customer pain points.
Things to include in personas:
From the personas, can prioritize content, avoid assumptions, create a better and persuasive content strategy, get buy-in from stakeholders.
Personas are representations of user groups. Archetypes of customer segments--and they are not marketing personas. Based on data and research, they express user needs, define user goals, and highlight user expectations.
Personas help keep the focus on user goals. They help writers structure voice & tone.
Create personas by doing research about users, analyzing the data, and deciding what information is going to be important for them. Look for patterns in the data. How many personas you create depends not on the amount of your content or the size of the company or the number of your customers, but on what emerges from your analysis.
Use empathy mapping to learn about users. This can be used to discover customer pain points.
Things to include in personas:
- Quotes
- Demographics
- Motivators
- Goals
- Frustrations
- Preferred channels
- Favorite brands
- Influencers
From the personas, can prioritize content, avoid assumptions, create a better and persuasive content strategy, get buy-in from stakeholders.
Bringing Everyone Along: Unifying Distributed, Siloed Internal Content at Salesforce
Kameran Kashani of Salesforce talks about "port:80," an internal doc portal at Salesforce. It's internal and aimed at a dev audience.
Because of growth, there was a fractured content terrain and isolated pockets of knowledge. And no starting point for people. We did what any good content team would do: survey the landscape. Easy for internal docs, can just talk to people next door. We created a wish list. Found the missing peice: a central place.
But Salesforce has many tools for publishing content.
Time is a feature. That drove a decision to buy an outside platform rather than build from within.
Research distilled into a taxonomy: learn, do, discover.
Building the portal was evolutionary, using a cross-disciplinary team, with multiple design iterations and lots of reviews. Ended with key facets of dev experience, customized search, blog aggregation, and organized around activity modes.
"Sometimes the carrot is the stick." To get the word out about what we'd done, we engaged with our champions and overcommunicated.
Because of growth, there was a fractured content terrain and isolated pockets of knowledge. And no starting point for people. We did what any good content team would do: survey the landscape. Easy for internal docs, can just talk to people next door. We created a wish list. Found the missing peice: a central place.
But Salesforce has many tools for publishing content.
Time is a feature. That drove a decision to buy an outside platform rather than build from within.
Research distilled into a taxonomy: learn, do, discover.
Building the portal was evolutionary, using a cross-disciplinary team, with multiple design iterations and lots of reviews. Ended with key facets of dev experience, customized search, blog aggregation, and organized around activity modes.
"Sometimes the carrot is the stick." To get the word out about what we'd done, we engaged with our champions and overcommunicated.
This Time with Feeling: Bringing the Arts and Humanities to Tech
Jonathan Foster of Microsoft says that we need different talents in tech. And it's not the obvious thing, but it's critical to the way we work. To bring more people from the arts and humanities into tech.
People experience emotional connections to objects. Tech is creating objects that enable human-like experiences.
Microsoft Voice principles are warm & relaxed, crisp & clear, ready to lend a hand. Empathetic starting point. Voice principles are foundational to work in designing personality.
Core responsibility is to make the right choices so we don't let things loose that cause harm.
Interestingly, they reject the Turing test. Don't want to ever let users misunderstand that Cortana is human.
People experience emotional connections to objects. Tech is creating objects that enable human-like experiences.
Microsoft Voice principles are warm & relaxed, crisp & clear, ready to lend a hand. Empathetic starting point. Voice principles are foundational to work in designing personality.
Core responsibility is to make the right choices so we don't let things loose that cause harm.
Interestingly, they reject the Turing test. Don't want to ever let users misunderstand that Cortana is human.
Rage Against the Machine: Overcoming the Four Main Barriers to Content Strategy Success
Noz Urbina says many of his roles have been in large, regulated industries.
4 barriers are
Today's content is multichannel. It's not only about pushing content into channels but about finding the right message for the right people. Like "omnichannel" better, a different mentality. Channels are what the customers want to do. Customers move fluently between channels. Channels can be more than the sum of their parts.
To overcome, think like a product manager. There's that "content as product" again. Use design thinking, journey maps, and holistic views.
Content is not king. It is currency. Only valuable when you can exchange content for something of value.
Don't just provide a training course. Provide a support program, the long game.
Build cross-functional standards groups. Journey-based KPIs. What does success look like in each department, and are they pulling in the same direction? Build RACI charts.
Build a content strategy for your content strategy. Messaging architecture, editorial calendar, communications cadence, etc. Write stuff down, but concisely, in easily accessible places.
Natural language processing, the right tools, and a good taxonomy can scale tagging and personalization. Proper measurement requires consistent tagging.
4 barriers are
Thinking like a publisher
Can't stand the word "publishing." Conjures old paradigm of few powerful who have the power of what's published. The model is outdated. Not how we interact with audiences today.Today's content is multichannel. It's not only about pushing content into channels but about finding the right message for the right people. Like "omnichannel" better, a different mentality. Channels are what the customers want to do. Customers move fluently between channels. Channels can be more than the sum of their parts.
To overcome, think like a product manager. There's that "content as product" again. Use design thinking, journey maps, and holistic views.
Content is not king. It is currency. Only valuable when you can exchange content for something of value.
Hanging on to the past
The most dangerous phrase in the language is "we've always done it this way." Mentality holds back projects.Don't just provide a training course. Provide a support program, the long game.
Working in silos
If you look too closely, you miss the big picture. Measure individual interactions, you miss the satisfaction from the journey.Build cross-functional standards groups. Journey-based KPIs. What does success look like in each department, and are they pulling in the same direction? Build RACI charts.
Build a content strategy for your content strategy. Messaging architecture, editorial calendar, communications cadence, etc. Write stuff down, but concisely, in easily accessible places.
Death by tagging
Build meaningful models. The more structure and semantics in your original template, the less retrospective tagging is required. Without a good content model, reuse won't happen.Natural language processing, the right tools, and a good taxonomy can scale tagging and personalization. Proper measurement requires consistent tagging.
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