content skeletons in your redesign closet

The Content Skeletons in Your Closet

christine@analyticalengine.ca

@cmcglade

#DCO2015

Who is this for?

Accessibility

Mobility

User Expectations

User Expectations

User Expectations

Productivity

“The enterprise technology that employees have to do their jobs is mostly appalling…Most intranets are an absolute and utter joke. Enterprise search is pathetic. Why? Because…management practice often heaps more complexity and awful, unusable systems on top of frustrated, overwhelmed employees.”

http://www.gerrymcgovern.com/new-thinking/internet-hurting-productivity:

Content Strategy

"Connecting the content components and people components is one of the most important roles that content strategy plays in your organization."

– from Content Strategy for the Web second edition, Kristina Halvorson and Melissa Rach

The Dreaded....

The Dreaded....

content audit

Skeleton 1: too. much. content.

Symptoms:• Website navigation = org chart

Why Is This A Problem?

• Content costs $$• More ≠ More. Less = More

• Does it support a key business objective? • Does it fulfill a key user need?

How Do We Fix It?

• Governance• Measurement• Collaboration

Skeleton 2: no micro authoring structures

Symptoms: • Content

“blobs”

Why is This a Problem?

Why is This a Problem?

How Does This Happen?

"I come across many websites where there is a well-designed top level with quality content. However, when you click down a few levels, everything changes-it's like walking out of a plush hotel straight into a rubbish dump”

– Gerry McGovern “Killer Web Content”

How do we Fix it?

• Make the backend better

• Design from Content type, up

Skeleton 3: Lost Control of IA.

Symptoms:• Author-driven information

architecture: wiki-like (too broad, circular) or library-like (too deep)

Why This is a Problem

“Mobile was the final front in the access revolution. It has erased the digital divide. A mobile device is the internet for many people”

– Susannah Fox, Pew Research centre

How do we Fix it?

• Controlled vocabularies • IA needs to work on mobile

FIRST

"if your organizations information is not available on a small screen, its not available at all to people who rely on their mobile phones for access. That's likely to be young people, people with lower household incomes, and recent immigrants-arguable important target audiences for important health messages”

– Susannah Fox, Pew Research Centre

Thank you!

Questions?

christine@analyticalengine.ca

@cmcglade

#DCO2015