Content Design

Product Information

But a content designer saying 'no, we're going to make that content a calculator and your 4 million words are now 12 words'; to get that across, we had to change the conversation - otherwise we wouldn't have been able to change the power and the relationship." In the early 2010s, Sarah and her team at the Government Digital Service looked to user-centred design techniques to transform their content.

Not quite. Yeah. You're welcome. How are you all navigating what's happening over there as an organization? Are you changing the focus of your services? Are you steady on? Are you looking at growth? Talk to me about what Content Design London is doing in terms of services and activities and pursuits. You're quite right, there isn't. But I do wonder how much... So the thing with content is that everybody can write. I still don't think it's particularly valued as a skill, but when we are trying to move up into those upper echelons, actually what does stop us? Our content designers work directly with clients to create clear, accessible content that meets user needs. They are experienced trainers and regularly work with individuals and organisations to help them develop their content skills. Clare Reucroft I love arguing about content. I mean, it makes my heart beat. So I just got to a point in the digital transformation project where I was like, I'm spending 80% of my day doing stuff I don't want to do. And I'm really not feeling happy. You just know then that you've got to go, because work takes up so much of your life."

Book: Readability Guidelines Handbook The book contains points on using clear language, grammar points, audiences, devices and channels. Article: Copywriter to content designer The differences between the two from Sarah's point of view. There we go. So that will come out. There's going to be one on research and content and how to do that directly. There's one on delivery and content.

This book is short, lively and practical. Using real-world examples and imagined examples, it takes the reader through the content design process one step at a time, explaining everything along the way. This is the content strategy podcast and I’m your host, Kristina Halvorson. On each and every episode I interview someone I admire who’s doing meaningful work in content strategy and all its adjacent disciplines. If you care about making content more useful, usable and inclusive for all, welcome in, you have found your people. A typical week for Sarah may be a mixture of attending a conference, a meetup or a 'lunch and learn', presenting to groups like an organisation's board to explain what content design is (because perhaps there's an internal project which is just not being listened to and supported by them enough).This is a jumble of questions. People will have to go through irrelevant information – because it goes through a variety of topics – to get to the one they want. And I’m not sure why some of it is here at all. That's right. Sarah, I usually start off our podcast interviews by asking folks to share their career path to content strategy and content design. So I wonder if you wouldn't mind sharing a little bit with our at home audience about where you come from and why you do the things you do. Sarah is responsible for delivery and direction of all our client projects. She makes sure work is delivered on time to a high standard. She also works with the team to develop a supportive organisational culture. Learn how to correctly use headings, writing and punctuation, plain language, emotional language and images for usability and accessibility. Chapter 8: Pair writing

Yeah, that is actually very well put because I often will describe content design as coming at design challenges through a content lens. And that's exactly how you've just described it. So what's interesting about that explanation is it's not unlike how I describe how I first started talking about content strategy, which is that none of these were things that I made up. If anybody's like, here's Kristina, the inventor of content strategy, I'm like, no, no, no, no. These were all practices that were already in place and it was literally just a matter of assembling them underneath a tent that people then could enter and talk about all the things at the same time. I feel like I've fallen into everything! I think there's a 'core', where there's my family and my kids - so 'I need to have this house', 'I need to have enough money to feed them' and 'I need to get them to school'. That's my core. Everything else is possible because it doesn't wobble my core; you get near that, and I come out fighting! Contributors shared research, knowledge and experience and topics began to come together. Publishing the guidelines Thanks to Rich Higgins for building and maintaining the Wiki, and to Dave Brayford for designing the book. Well, and just remember that the term content design came from changing government conversations around what we as a content team should be doing. We needed to get them to stop thinking we were going to proofread their work. We were going to design that thing from end to end, whether it was a tool, a calculator, a calendar, an app, a video that we would go and commission. It is not just words.So it's a hybrid, it's got some content strategy in there. So what are you publishing and why? But it's also how to deal with people, like you were just saying, right? It's culture change, it's organizational design, it's that sort of thing. So it is how to run a project end to end, because a lot of our market are single content people sitting in organizations doing it themselves, and they're trying to change this huge behemoth of an organization by themselves. So it is particularly for those types of people to be able to say, right, I will do this and then I will do this, and then I will do this and this is why I'm doing it. So that's the first one. And then of course, being able to get to the crux of the information whilst retaining the tone. But most of our job, 80% of our job, is usually getting people on board in organisations." What's one piece of advice you'd give other content people who want to achieve similar accomplishments to yourself? If you write using the audience’s vocabulary (and if you aren’t doing that, what are you doing?) and use good content design principles, then you don’t need an FAQ to help you out. “FAQs will expose our bugs and usability issues” use journey mapping to break down silos between legal, marketing, digital and design teams (and any other team really), Job stories are a better choice if you only have one audience to deal with. You know you need to switch from user stories to job stories, if every single user story you write begins with the same thing. If you’re writing ‘As a shopper, I…’ in every user story, switch to job stories.