Comments on: The Content Conundrum

By: donnamaurer

donnamaurer — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Great article and all matches with my experience. This is exactly why, although I do a lot of IA, I also spend a lot of time on content and copy with my clients.

By: david_more

david_more — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

This is all too (sadly) true – always remember that people come to the web for content, and everything else is there to support it.
A major aspect of the problem is the paradigm of web design and development, and the role definitions and scope decisions that make projects almost bound to fail. Critique the project concept as early as possible… by the time it gets moving, there may be no time for content exploration or for real collaboration with content partners.

By: rahelab

rahelab — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

This article resonates strongly with me because of all the reasons you mentioned, and more. The UCD process can be mirrored for content strategy – loosely, user research, personas, task analysis and scenarios, content modeling (instead of wireframing), testing with real content and real users – and iterate. It’s got to be lock-step with development, and needs deliverables that are integrated within the project plan.

A few years ago, Joe Gollner articulated it this way: Content is too important an asset to be treated as a cottage industry. Your statement about usability becoming table stakes is well-taken. I’ve been saying that usability is the treasure map, and content is the treasure at the end of the hunt. No content treasure is the ultimate user betrayal, no matter how well the treasure map helps with the hunt.

Glad to see that content strategy is making its way into this arena.

By: patrickwalsh

patrickwalsh — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Christopher,
An article on content in B&A! Is ‘content’ getting somewhere at last? An excellent article too and I agree absolutely with Rahel above.
I wrote a short post last year about how I felt that content was not represented in the design process. I coined the term ‘content centred design’ as I felt that content needed a champion throughout the whole design process as much as users did. http://patrickcwalsh.wordpress.com/2008/06/16/content-centred-design/

In the post I state that ‘content has a structure and a purpose which is independent of the user or web designer’. I really believe that what happens with many websites with regard to content is that the intentions of the author/copy writer are often willfully ignored and thus the communication with the user throughout the life of the website design is diminished.

If we treat content as a stakeholder and create a structure for ‘content centred design’ mirroring UCD this might ensure that content is considered throughout the entire process rather than being shoehorned in at the end. I think that not only will the final product be better for this but I would guess that more consistent development times might be achieved as there will be one less potential surprise to deal with towards the end of the process.

By: richardingram

richardingram — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Enjoyed this article. I agree that it’s open collaboration, between the technicians, strategists and artists regarding the content direction, that will determine the long-term success of a project.

By: usersrule

usersrule — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Chris,

Good article. I face the content gap issue quite often with our clients. Thanks for the insight provided in this article.

By: evoljen

evoljen — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

I appreciate that you offered concrete solutions. If we truly are advocates for the end user, we must push for our content collaborators seat at the table. Great article, Chris.

By: redts

redts — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Thank you so much for highlighting this issue that so many of us face. We try very hard to get all the content prior to the completion of wireframes, but it rarely happens. Clients are not aware of how much time and effort it really takes to revise and generate new content. We now bring in a copywriter as the default in our contracts to try and minimize the content burden on the client.

By: toddtoler

toddtoler — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Perhaps it’s because I design for a publisher, but our content types for a new project are brainstormed, designed, and specified fairly early in the design process. Where we fall over is in two primary areas. 1) we rarely examine the legacy content which is to be migrated to the new project closely enough. In fact the IAs mostly look at a couple of representative “edge cases,” then find we need to make all sorts of concessions in our approved designs to accommodate the full set of real content. But this is mostly on purpose – we want to design the experience first and maintain optimism that our existing content and production workflows can support it. God help us the day we start doing it the other way around. 2) we often find that our design mock-ups are too full of high quality art and layouts, and the production staff who needs to maintain the site often doesn’t have access to the same art direction resources on an ongoing basis.

By: jhastava

jhastava — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Thank you! I’ve been a content strategy “looky-loo” for a while now, and your article struck a chord, prompting a response. I especially appreciated the graphic contrasting the approved design with the same design displaying real content.

I would like to add that I believe a piece of the solution is client education. If we agree (tacitly or not) to design web pages in the absence of content, we’re setting ourselves and our clients up for delay and disappointment. Like Travis, this doesn’t mean that I always get 100% of the content prior to design approval, but at the very least, it’s critical to help clients understand the value of content in meeting their goals, and to understand on a visual level, the relationship between the “shape” of the “real ” content and a successful design.

Happily for me, as a one-woman shop, I get to define the process, and set expectations with clients. Like Travis, I also find it helpful to “assume” copy writing as well as other content generation tasks in my proposals.

Thanks again for the article.