User experience design and content strategy

Content strategists: the men and women of a new renaissance

When you look at content strategy closely, you'll discover it runs through virtually every discipline—both online and off—from web development to service design to advertising. Once you understand the generic principles, you can apply content strategy anywhere you choose.

Eric will share his observations from over 20 years in the web industry that will shed some light on the interworkings of various web disciplines (including diagrams!).

Instead of positioning content strategy against other disciplines, let’s use our talents to make it even better.

What you’ll learn

1. How content strategy overlaps with other disciplines.
2. How to apply content strategy in different environments.

Topic: User experience design and content strategy →

The language of software: the role of content strategy in software development

Call it a bubble, or the year investment got smart, 2011 marks the birth of hundreds of web applications all promising to be the Next Big Thing™. And content strategy should be part of it.

To ensure the growth and maturity of content strategy as a discipline, it must have a permanent role in software development, not as a closing phase or an isolated perspective, but as a significant contributor to the process. This contribution is two-fold: it should both create content for users to consume, and ensure that interfaces are designed for user generated content.

Supported by practical examples, we'll discuss where content strategists can make the difference between lifeless echo chambers, and thriving community websites; between confusing workflows, and fluid software.

What you’ll learn

1. How to speak the language of software development
2. How to implement content strategy processes into development ones
3. What makes for good content in applications that have little of it

Topic: User experience design and content strategy →

Taking content strategy to people who already think they have one

Selling content strategy to a business that's never published before is one thing, but it's something else entirely to sell it to a traditional publisher who believes their established production and editing process will work just as well for digital as it does for analogue.

Martin will talk about how digital content strategy has changed editorial workflows and publishing processes at a business that has been publishing since 1821—The Guardian.

What you’ll learn

1. How a traditional publishing business has adapted to digital content strategy.
2. How to distinguish between digital and traditional publishing.
3. How content strategists can differentiate their services from UXers and IAs.

Topic: User experience design and content strategy →

Content is UX is design: crossing disciplines for fun and profit

We all want the same things. From research to concepts to IA, nomenclature, design and development, we all want to create the best user experience possible.

Content is a constant in the design continuum, and with the rise of increasingly agile and cross-disciplinary UX design teams, we have a unique chance to demonstrate content's core value to UX: its flexibility, granularity and ability to engage directly with the user.

Elizabeth will share her experience working with a developer and UX architect to improve both process and product - a major financial website redesign. Using Topic Maps, they built an information model that streamlined and managed UX deliverables and the scope and production of content.

What you’ll learn

1. How to integrate collaboratively with a UX team.
2. Tools and methods UX designers use relevant to content strategy and production.
3. How to use topic maps to develop and design the structure of large, complex websites.

Topic: User experience design and content strategy →

How web designers can stop worrying and learn to love content strategy

In a perfect world, every company has a content strategist. But often, it's web designers, not content strategists, who must orchestrate content production and integration.

We'll discuss which tools and techniques are most useful to a small team working with clients who have little content expertise. Sophie will share lessons learned from integrating content strategy into her own design process on several projects and how she got web designers to help their clients produce great content.

What you’ll learn

1. Which content strategy tools and techniques are most useful to non content strategists.
2. How web designers can incorporate some content strategy into the design process.
3. How to benefit from content strategy if you aren't a content expert.

Topic: User experience design and content strategy →