You’ll often find that their experience and perspectives can
provide much-needed context
for (and sometimes even contradict) the viewpoints of your
primary project stakeholders.
Semantically, even the phrase
“content strategy” has an immediate impact on our perceptions
of content (mountains and
mountains of junk, a problem
so big we can’t possibly begin to
solve it). However subtly, “
content strategy” begins to shift our
take on content as a commodity—something easy to come by,
undifferentiated—to a valuable
asset worthy of strategic planning. So start saying it. Often.
process? It’s pretty simple,
actually: Make content your
problem.
If you’re designing an appli-
cation, ensure that you create
brand-appropriate voice and
tone guidelines. Yes, you might
be writing the copy as you go,
which means you can keep
things consistent. But if some-
one else has hired you to do the
design, it’s likely that the copy
will be rewritten or expanded
at some point by someone who
is not you. Define brand val-
ues. Demonstrate how voice
and tone should embody those
values. Create a usage guide to
ensure consistent terminology
and recurring interface copy.
And, while you’re at it, make
sure that content requirements
are clearly called out through-
out your technical documenta-
tion… including the error mes-
sages.
If you’re designing a website, begin with a quantitative
audit of existing content. Ask
what content people want; ask
why they want it, then figure
out if it maps back to business
objectives and user goals. If it
doesn’t, throw it out. Invite content owners to usability tests.
When appropriate, test real
content. Once user experience-design recommendations are
complete, conduct a qualitative
audit of your source content
prior to completing a gap analysis.
Then, prior to finalizing content recommendations, work
with the client to confirm that
sufficient resources have been
allocated for the creation and
maintenance of that content.
Otherwise, you’re handing over
a UX strategy that can’t be fully
executed, let alone sustained.
And that won’t improve any-
one’s experience.
words into action
Because we rarely have answers
about the content early in any
project—who owns it, where
it’s going to come from, how
much of it we already have and
whether or not it’s even any
good—we’re forced to make
a lot of assumptions about
the content, the fuel that will
make our Web products go.
Moreover, the content itself—
what exists now, and what will
be created—is rarely under our
jurisdiction. So we can only
hope that our carefully considered design will ultimately
deliver useful, usable content
to the right people, in the
right place, at the right time.
The good news is that there
are, in fact, processes and tools
available that can improve our
chances that said content will
become a reality. Even better
news is that these tools and
processes are slowly finding
their way to the UX design table
as part of content strategy.
How can you integrate con-
tent strategy into your design
how we can change
In a recent Q&A with
Sparksheet’s Dan Levy, Jeffrey
Zeldman said:
Content informs design; design
without content is decoration.
Content has the same relationship to
design that product has to advertis-
ing. Good ads are based on the prod-
uct; good designs come from and
facilitate the content. This is one
reason we bring content strategy to
every design assignment, and one
reason we insist on working with
real content, not lorem ipsum (place-
holder) content. Nothing is sadder
than a beautiful design that works
great with lorem ipsum but doesn’t
actually support the real content.
Our shared goal, across all Web
disciplines, is to create beautiful
designs that prioritize, contextualize, and effectively deliver content that people want and need.
That’s what the Web should be.
And, as always, it’s ours for the
making. Successful, collaborative
design means making content
matter, starting now. Think about
it. Talk about it. Do it.
About the Author
Kristina Halvorson is the
founder and president of
Brain Traffic, an agency
specializing in content
strategy and writing for
websites. Widely recognized as one of the
country’s leading content strategists, she
speaks regularly to audiences around the
world about how to deliver useful, usable
content online, where and when your cus-
tomers need it most. Halvorson is the
author of Content Strategy for the Web (New
Riders, 2009), which helps to define the
discipline and business value of content
strategy, offering simple steps for introduc-
ing the discipline into the Web project pro-
cess. She lives in St. Paul, Minnesota.
May + June 2010
doi: 10.1145/1744161.1744178
© 2010 ACM 1072-5220/10/0500 $10.00