Emerging a Content Strategy from User Research

Editor's Notes

• #2: Emerging a content strategy from user research. So first a little disclaimer… I’m not a “Content Strategy expert…but I’m a working as a Senior Experience Architect for News Digital Media and we are predominately a company in the business of content. So in this presentation I’m not going to really cover the nuts and bolts and detail of “developing a content strategy” (there’s lots of presentations, articles online and books that can help you do that). This talk is more about that shift toward a strategy in the context of my experience “with user experience design”). So a little background on what got me thinking about Emerging a Content strategy from user research...
• #3: There’s a presumption that the work we should be doing is entirely user centred...but remember the 3 circles diagram of IA. Trying to get the balance right for the business and it’s context, user needs & behaviour and “with the right mix of content”. and Jarod touched on this in his keynote yesterday... But we tend to focus a lot of our efforts at the user end of the spectrum. I however like what one of my colleague’s Melissa Cooper said about what we do...
• #4: There’s a presumption that the work we should be doing is entirely user centred...but remember the 3 circles diagram of IA. Trying to get the balance right for the business and it’s context, user needs & behaviour and “with the right mix of content”. and Jarod touched on this in his keynote yesterday... But we tend to focus a lot of our efforts at the user end of the spectrum. I however like what one of my colleague’s Melissa Cooper said about what we do...
• #5: There’s a presumption that the work we should be doing is entirely user centred...but remember the 3 circles diagram of IA. Trying to get the balance right for the business and it’s context, user needs & behaviour and “with the right mix of content”. and Jarod touched on this in his keynote yesterday... But we tend to focus a lot of our efforts at the user end of the spectrum. I however like what one of my colleague’s Melissa Cooper said about what we do...
• #6: We are really just mediators between all these things...and our work shouldn’t be predominately “user centred”
• #7: We are really just mediators between all these things...and our work shouldn’t be predominately “user centred”
• #8: so a little story... a year ago I was working on a user research project for a product at NDM with a colleague of mine, Patrick Kennedy (he’s the design research lead in our team, USiT). It was quite a large piece of work commissioned originally by marketing to validate a proposed segmentation for content categories and it was to be done from a design research perspective.  So this project involved over 10 in-depth interviews, diary studies, two sets of focus groups and a large survey at the end to validate what was coming out of the qualitative research. Along the way we talked to some of people from News Limited’s Intelligence area and they also ran some attitudinal segmentation for us to add to the mix. It was really interesting, and lots of data was collected. In the end Patrick developed what he cleverly called a “Needs vs. Attitudinal Matrix Audience SegmentationTM.
• #9: so a little story... a year ago I was working on a user research project for a product at NDM with a colleague of mine, Patrick Kennedy (he’s the design research lead in our team, USiT). It was quite a large piece of work commissioned originally by marketing to validate a proposed segmentation for content categories and it was to be done from a design research perspective.  So this project involved over 10 in-depth interviews, diary studies, two sets of focus groups and a large survey at the end to validate what was coming out of the qualitative research. Along the way we talked to some of people from News Limited’s Intelligence area and they also ran some attitudinal segmentation for us to add to the mix. It was really interesting, and lots of data was collected. In the end Patrick developed what he cleverly called a “Needs vs. Attitudinal Matrix Audience SegmentationTM.
• #10: so a little story... a year ago I was working on a user research project for a product at NDM with a colleague of mine, Patrick Kennedy (he’s the design research lead in our team, USiT). It was quite a large piece of work commissioned originally by marketing to validate a proposed segmentation for content categories and it was to be done from a design research perspective.  So this project involved over 10 in-depth interviews, diary studies, two sets of focus groups and a large survey at the end to validate what was coming out of the qualitative research. Along the way we talked to some of people from News Limited’s Intelligence area and they also ran some attitudinal segmentation for us to add to the mix. It was really interesting, and lots of data was collected. In the end Patrick developed what he cleverly called a “Needs vs. Attitudinal Matrix Audience SegmentationTM.
• #11: so a little story... a year ago I was working on a user research project for a product at NDM with a colleague of mine, Patrick Kennedy (he’s the design research lead in our team, USiT). It was quite a large piece of work commissioned originally by marketing to validate a proposed segmentation for content categories and it was to be done from a design research perspective.  So this project involved over 10 in-depth interviews, diary studies, two sets of focus groups and a large survey at the end to validate what was coming out of the qualitative research. Along the way we talked to some of people from News Limited’s Intelligence area and they also ran some attitudinal segmentation for us to add to the mix. It was really interesting, and lots of data was collected. In the end Patrick developed what he cleverly called a “Needs vs. Attitudinal Matrix Audience SegmentationTM.
• #12: so a little story... a year ago I was working on a user research project for a product at NDM with a colleague of mine, Patrick Kennedy (he’s the design research lead in our team, USiT). It was quite a large piece of work commissioned originally by marketing to validate a proposed segmentation for content categories and it was to be done from a design research perspective.  So this project involved over 10 in-depth interviews, diary studies, two sets of focus groups and a large survey at the end to validate what was coming out of the qualitative research. Along the way we talked to some of people from News Limited’s Intelligence area and they also ran some attitudinal segmentation for us to add to the mix. It was really interesting, and lots of data was collected. In the end Patrick developed what he cleverly called a “Needs vs. Attitudinal Matrix Audience SegmentationTM.
• #13: so a little story... a year ago I was working on a user research project for a product at NDM with a colleague of mine, Patrick Kennedy (he’s the design research lead in our team, USiT). It was quite a large piece of work commissioned originally by marketing to validate a proposed segmentation for content categories and it was to be done from a design research perspective.  So this project involved over 10 in-depth interviews, diary studies, two sets of focus groups and a large survey at the end to validate what was coming out of the qualitative research. Along the way we talked to some of people from News Limited’s Intelligence area and they also ran some attitudinal segmentation for us to add to the mix. It was really interesting, and lots of data was collected. In the end Patrick developed what he cleverly called a “Needs vs. Attitudinal Matrix Audience SegmentationTM.
• #14: so a little story... a year ago I was working on a user research project for a product at NDM with a colleague of mine, Patrick Kennedy (he’s the design research lead in our team, USiT). It was quite a large piece of work commissioned originally by marketing to validate a proposed segmentation for content categories and it was to be done from a design research perspective.  So this project involved over 10 in-depth interviews, diary studies, two sets of focus groups and a large survey at the end to validate what was coming out of the qualitative research. Along the way we talked to some of people from News Limited’s Intelligence area and they also ran some attitudinal segmentation for us to add to the mix. It was really interesting, and lots of data was collected. In the end Patrick developed what he cleverly called a “Needs vs. Attitudinal Matrix Audience SegmentationTM.
• #15: so a little story... a year ago I was working on a user research project for a product at NDM with a colleague of mine, Patrick Kennedy (he’s the design research lead in our team, USiT). It was quite a large piece of work commissioned originally by marketing to validate a proposed segmentation for content categories and it was to be done from a design research perspective.  So this project involved over 10 in-depth interviews, diary studies, two sets of focus groups and a large survey at the end to validate what was coming out of the qualitative research. Along the way we talked to some of people from News Limited’s Intelligence area and they also ran some attitudinal segmentation for us to add to the mix. It was really interesting, and lots of data was collected. In the end Patrick developed what he cleverly called a “Needs vs. Attitudinal Matrix Audience SegmentationTM.
• #16: so a little story... a year ago I was working on a user research project for a product at NDM with a colleague of mine, Patrick Kennedy (he’s the design research lead in our team, USiT). It was quite a large piece of work commissioned originally by marketing to validate a proposed segmentation for content categories and it was to be done from a design research perspective.  So this project involved over 10 in-depth interviews, diary studies, two sets of focus groups and a large survey at the end to validate what was coming out of the qualitative research. Along the way we talked to some of people from News Limited’s Intelligence area and they also ran some attitudinal segmentation for us to add to the mix. It was really interesting, and lots of data was collected. In the end Patrick developed what he cleverly called a “Needs vs. Attitudinal Matrix Audience SegmentationTM.
• #17: In the end Patrick developed what he cleverly called a “Needs vs. Attitudinal Matrix Audience SegmentationTM. So in the end there was a proposed model that some personas could be extracted from and a big slidedeck full of research findings and data. A workshop was run with stakeholders to brainstorm what this model might mean for the business going forward. After that I couldn’t help thinking our handover of findings to the business missed something even though we’d outlined some content opportunities. I wondered how much impact the findings from the user research had on the direction for content of the product? I became paranoid, was I failing as an EA to keep the findings of the user research alive? Was I not influential enough?
• #18: I wondered what we could do to activate a change and who’s role was it to make it happen now? How can the findings from user research really make an impact on content as opposed to design, navigation and labelling (the stuff we are really good at). (click) I think the biggest realisation I had was that you cannot influence content from user research alone… That’s not going to emerge the content strategy! I realised I didn’t really know enough about what was in those business and context circles. For example what is the content workflow? What are the current motivations for content creation…I realised you’ve got to talk to the people working with content
• #19: It wasn’t long after that I started to really notice the term “Content Strategy” gaining momentum in the web community, on twitter, facebook and linkedin, in conference programmes like SXSW, articles by “CONTENT STRATEGISTS”, debates on the definition content and strategy and their own Content Strategy Summit!
• #20: It wasn’t long after that I started to really notice the term “Content Strategy” gaining momentum in the web community, on twitter, facebook and linkedin, in conference programmes like SXSW, articles by “CONTENT STRATEGISTS”, debates on the definition content and strategy and their own Content Strategy Summit!
• #21: It wasn’t long after that I started to really notice the term “Content Strategy” gaining momentum in the web community, on twitter, facebook and linkedin, in conference programmes like SXSW, articles by “CONTENT STRATEGISTS”, debates on the definition content and strategy and their own Content Strategy Summit!
• #22: It wasn’t long after that I started to really notice the term “Content Strategy” gaining momentum in the web community, on twitter, facebook and linkedin, in conference programmes like SXSW, articles by “CONTENT STRATEGISTS”, debates on the definition content and strategy and their own Content Strategy Summit!
• #23: It wasn’t long after that I started to really notice the term “Content Strategy” gaining momentum in the web community, on twitter, facebook and linkedin, in conference programmes like SXSW, articles by “CONTENT STRATEGISTS”, debates on the definition content and strategy and their own Content Strategy Summit!
• #24: It wasn’t long after that I started to really notice the term “Content Strategy” gaining momentum in the web community, on twitter, facebook and linkedin, in conference programmes like SXSW, articles by “CONTENT STRATEGISTS”, debates on the definition content and strategy and their own Content Strategy Summit!
• #25: It wasn’t long after that I started to really notice the term “Content Strategy” gaining momentum in the web community, on twitter, facebook and linkedin, in conference programmes like SXSW, articles by “CONTENT STRATEGISTS”, debates on the definition content and strategy and their own Content Strategy Summit!
• #26: Yes UX people there seems to be a CONTENT STRATEGY REVOLUTION happening! around this time also came across this book by Kristina Halvorson…
• #27: Content Strategy for the Web…(and it’s also Revolutionary Red! Anyhow the title itself is kind of radical because for a long time I think we’ve been trying to do “Web Strategy for Content” Who’s read it? It’s the type of book that’s really quite easy to read and there’s fundamental stuff in there that you just go…”wow…why aren’t we thinking of that stuff…” It’s also the type of book that gets shared around…I’ve been passing it over my pod to the business analyst I work closely with… and now he’s read it and shares my enthusiasm.. it’s starting to creep further down our row… anyhow there is revolutionary stuff in this book for a start…be scared people because Kristina says....
• #28: Content Strategy for the Web…(and it’s also Revolutionary Red! Anyhow the title itself is kind of radical because for a long time I think we’ve been trying to do “Web Strategy for Content” Who’s read it? It’s the type of book that’s really quite easy to read and there’s fundamental stuff in there that you just go…”wow…why aren’t we thinking of that stuff…” It’s also the type of book that gets shared around…I’ve been passing it over my pod to the business analyst I work closely with… and now he’s read it and shares my enthusiasm.. it’s starting to creep further down our row… anyhow there is revolutionary stuff in this book for a start…be scared people because Kristina says....
• #29: Content Strategy for the Web…(and it’s also Revolutionary Red! Anyhow the title itself is kind of radical because for a long time I think we’ve been trying to do “Web Strategy for Content” Who’s read it? It’s the type of book that’s really quite easy to read and there’s fundamental stuff in there that you just go…”wow…why aren’t we thinking of that stuff…” It’s also the type of book that gets shared around…I’ve been passing it over my pod to the business analyst I work closely with… and now he’s read it and shares my enthusiasm.. it’s starting to creep further down our row… anyhow there is revolutionary stuff in this book for a start…be scared people because Kristina says....
• #30: some radical things...like PUSH “USER EXPERIENCE DESIGN” OFF THE PEDASTOOL” p. 164 and
• #31: CONTENT IS NOT A FEATURE http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_4UtOUhm_0LM/ShOMBmWPymI/AAAAAAAAATY/Qu8UfNFlNzA/s1600-h/image_of_Kristina_Halvorson_byWarrenParsons.jpg And goes on to say…
• #32: ”UX designers don’t tend to deal with content” And collaboration is the answer “ So what she means is…
• #33: “if you take content strategy out of the mix, you marginalise one of the key components of a successful user experience: the content. So all of this really resonated with me…
• #34: for years I’ve been Lorem ipsum-ing in place of real Content features into boxes on wireframes
• #35: and plonking page stacks on wireframes..... thinking content was someone else’s problem… And dilemma-ing on how to really test content in a usability testing session…other than skirt around it testing how people get to it via navigation and labelling Even when you suggest testing content with teams it makes people nervous…
• #36: the say “it’s too hard” “theres’ too many voices to consider” “there’s too many variables” “what are we trying to achieve with this” “how can we test every single piece of content”
• #37: the say “it’s too hard” “theres’ too many voices to consider” “there’s too many variables” “what are we trying to achieve with this” “how can we test every single piece of content”
• #38: the say “it’s too hard” “theres’ too many voices to consider” “there’s too many variables” “what are we trying to achieve with this” “how can we test every single piece of content”
• #39: the say “it’s too hard” “theres’ too many voices to consider” “there’s too many variables” “what are we trying to achieve with this” “how can we test every single piece of content”
• #40: the say “it’s too hard” “theres’ too many voices to consider” “there’s too many variables” “what are we trying to achieve with this” “how can we test every single piece of content”
• #41: So is then content really King? Something else I came across in relation to all the content strategy hype recently really struck a cord with me also…
• #42: Dan Saffer from kicker studio blog suggested Content isn’t always king! He looks at it from a real interaction design point of view putting forward the “content continuum” model… http://www.kickerstudio.com/blog/2010/03/content-not-always-king/ Content consumption – Content Creation For example many of the products we use online fall somewhere on this continuum… Even in our own company there are varying degrees of where are products fall in NDM on the content continuum…and we are in the Content business = News digital media. Is this “Content strategy stuff” something we should be thinking about more even though we are in the content business. You could argue though that even with products that are content creation focused, content plays an integral role to interaction. i.e. instructional text, labelling, distribution and sharing strategy.
• #43: So probably by now you are probably wondering what exactly “content strategy is. How do we define it? And since I’ve now introduced you to the revolutionary “Content Strategy for the Web” by Kristina Halvorson...Lets just review her definition... She’s says in essence it’s a strategy that is carefully considered, a well articulated plan of action, click achievable and executable...Content strategy plans for... (Click for points...) Creation: (what and why? how will it be structured and found? from where? who’s in charge of it? click Delivery: How does it get online? who will Review, edit approve and load it. What are the Phases? User requirements, tools and data to find it by users click Governance: What happens once it goes live? plan for adding, updating and archiving? Policies, standards, guidelines and evaluation.
• #44: So probably by now you are probably wondering what exactly “content strategy is. How do we define it? And since I’ve now introduced you to the revolutionary “Content Strategy for the Web” by Kristina Halvorson...Lets just review her definition... She’s says in essence it’s a strategy that is carefully considered, a well articulated plan of action, click achievable and executable...Content strategy plans for... (Click for points...) Creation: (what and why? how will it be structured and found? from where? who’s in charge of it? click Delivery: How does it get online? who will Review, edit approve and load it. What are the Phases? User requirements, tools and data to find it by users click Governance: What happens once it goes live? plan for adding, updating and archiving? Policies, standards, guidelines and evaluation.
• #45: So probably by now you are probably wondering what exactly “content strategy is. How do we define it? And since I’ve now introduced you to the revolutionary “Content Strategy for the Web” by Kristina Halvorson...Lets just review her definition... She’s says in essence it’s a strategy that is carefully considered, a well articulated plan of action, click achievable and executable...Content strategy plans for... (Click for points...) Creation: (what and why? how will it be structured and found? from where? who’s in charge of it? click Delivery: How does it get online? who will Review, edit approve and load it. What are the Phases? User requirements, tools and data to find it by users click Governance: What happens once it goes live? plan for adding, updating and archiving? Policies, standards, guidelines and evaluation.
• #46: So probably by now you are probably wondering what exactly “content strategy is. How do we define it? And since I’ve now introduced you to the revolutionary “Content Strategy for the Web” by Kristina Halvorson...Lets just review her definition... She’s says in essence it’s a strategy that is carefully considered, a well articulated plan of action, click achievable and executable...Content strategy plans for... (Click for points...) Creation: (what and why? how will it be structured and found? from where? who’s in charge of it? click Delivery: How does it get online? who will Review, edit approve and load it. What are the Phases? User requirements, tools and data to find it by users click Governance: What happens once it goes live? plan for adding, updating and archiving? Policies, standards, guidelines and evaluation.
• #47: So probably by now you are probably wondering what exactly “content strategy is. How do we define it? And since I’ve now introduced you to the revolutionary “Content Strategy for the Web” by Kristina Halvorson...Lets just review her definition... She’s says in essence it’s a strategy that is carefully considered, a well articulated plan of action, click achievable and executable...Content strategy plans for... (Click for points...) Creation: (what and why? how will it be structured and found? from where? who’s in charge of it? click Delivery: How does it get online? who will Review, edit approve and load it. What are the Phases? User requirements, tools and data to find it by users click Governance: What happens once it goes live? plan for adding, updating and archiving? Policies, standards, guidelines and evaluation.
• #48: So probably by now you are probably wondering what exactly “content strategy is. How do we define it? And since I’ve now introduced you to the revolutionary “Content Strategy for the Web” by Kristina Halvorson...Lets just review her definition... She’s says in essence it’s a strategy that is carefully considered, a well articulated plan of action, click achievable and executable...Content strategy plans for... (Click for points...) Creation: (what and why? how will it be structured and found? from where? who’s in charge of it? click Delivery: How does it get online? who will Review, edit approve and load it. What are the Phases? User requirements, tools and data to find it by users click Governance: What happens once it goes live? plan for adding, updating and archiving? Policies, standards, guidelines and evaluation.
• #49: So probably by now you are probably wondering what exactly “content strategy is. How do we define it? And since I’ve now introduced you to the revolutionary “Content Strategy for the Web” by Kristina Halvorson...Lets just review her definition... She’s says in essence it’s a strategy that is carefully considered, a well articulated plan of action, click achievable and executable...Content strategy plans for... (Click for points...) Creation: (what and why? how will it be structured and found? from where? who’s in charge of it? click Delivery: How does it get online? who will Review, edit approve and load it. What are the Phases? User requirements, tools and data to find it by users click Governance: What happens once it goes live? plan for adding, updating and archiving? Policies, standards, guidelines and evaluation.
• #51: So I thought it would be useful to collect some more stories from a range of people who really knew content other than the users and talk to them about content strategy and this really forms the basis for the rest of my presentation. So I did some internal research. I interviewed four people who were in key positions at the coal-face of content, I thought these people would be the closest I would come to content strategy. They were suggested to me by my USiT colleagues, each of us has worked with at least one of them. My aim was to also interview them from a range of products in the media spectrum. Somewhere on the content continuum…I also now have again lots of material..Tonnes of Content about content, four hours worth that I’ve had to somehow distil down into some relevant snippets for this presentation so the whole thing has been somewhat of a mini content strategy deployment on my part. One of the things that might be unique to us in comparison to your organisations is we have no lack of resources in terms of people dealing with content.
• #52: So here are my four content experts
• #57: I really wanted to focus on three core themes with the questions I asked them: -What is the context of content for your business -Measuring content/understanding audience, and -Influence So I’ll play some segments on these themes, we’ll stop along the way so I can share a bit of a summary on the takeouts I got out of each section…
• #58: I really wanted to focus on three core themes with the questions I asked them: -What is the context of content for your business -Measuring content/understanding audience, and -Influence So I’ll play some segments on these themes, we’ll stop along the way so I can share a bit of a summary on the takeouts I got out of each section…
• #59: I really wanted to focus on three core themes with the questions I asked them: -What is the context of content for your business -Measuring content/understanding audience, and -Influence So I’ll play some segments on these themes, we’ll stop along the way so I can share a bit of a summary on the takeouts I got out of each section…
• #61: Some key points about content and strategy from the editors i spoke to.... It’s clear these content experts are very focussed on the “creation” end of content strategy…they don’t really emphasise governance There’s a clear difference between the more news focussed vs. classifieds' approach to content strategy and user research They are pre-occupied by telling the story and breaking the news fast. They don’t really think of content strategy in the same way Halvorson describes they are focussed on editorial. The market is changing and so they are having to adapt to that. They value experience of others i.e. user experience but work fairly independently from product teams. I think things like originality is something UX professionals can help with as well as the market changes that effect editorial value and original ideas Tip: Adjust your content strategy to the context of where your business may have planning gaps I’d imagine in government you’d expect their to be heaps of governance but maybe not great expertise in copyrighting or creation?
• #64: Playback recordings of what users mouse over, scrolling behaviour, tracing text. Engagement time is stop start, doesn’t include dormant time.
• #65: Playback recordings of what users mouse over, scrolling behaviour, tracing text. Engagement time is stop start, doesn’t include dormant time.
• #66: Some of the editors mentioned facebook like and recommend in terms of measuring engagement. There’s lots of issues here. Just take a look at this story. I don’t really know if I feel comfortable “liking” that. It’s kind of disturbing. But 580 people have recommended it, why? Sensitivity can be the issue, we don’t know why they like it or what about it they like or recommend. Supposedly you can use facebook insights to gain more demographic info about people who have liked or recommended.
• #67: Tynt copy and paste is interesting, what can we get out of that. this has been implemented on news.com.au. you can see in this example it places an attribution link back to the story after any past action. copy referrers to search engines copy and pastes from documents
• #68: Kampyle feedback analytics. You can set it up to gather feedback on anything from content to design. very flexible to set up. Be wary of highly engaged minority! OK so just a final clip now on influence...
• #70: Some key points about content and strategy from the editors i spoke to.... Treat your content experts as your users, listen to them - understand their context User research isn’t going to be the major influence To be influential you need to recommend balancing the three circles of users, content and context. Demonstrate you understand Collaboration is the key