Fun With Words: A Toolkit for Designing Great Content, First
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The document outlines a toolkit for creating effective content design, emphasizing the importance of audience understanding, experience definition, and messaging architecture. It details various activities such as journey mapping, crafting identity pillars, and designing narratives to enhance user engagement and connection with the brand. It encourages collaboration, iteration, and understanding core user needs to effectively communicate and deliver content.
Fun With Words: A Toolkit for Designing Great Content, First
- 1. FUN WITH WORDS A TOOLKIT FOR DESIGNING GREAT CONTENT, FIRST.
- 2. OH HAI! (this is me)
- 8. So we can… build the right thing the first time
- 9. get to market quickly (with a kickass digital experience)
- 10. build a connection through design that transcends channels
- 11. ” To know what content I need, I have to know what the page looks like. –Every designer ever
- 13. AUDIENCE DEFINITION Who are you speaking to? • Who are our audiences? • Which are the highest priority? • What kinds of information do they want and how? • What are their motivations?
- 16. KNOW FEEL FIND ACT What experience do we want to create? • What do we want our audiences to know about us? • What do we want them to feel? • What do we want them to find? • What do we want them to do? Methodology derived from John Schneider Activity 1
- 17. Activity 1
- 20. JOURNEY MAPPING What is the journey we want our visitors to take? Explore the “journeys” key audiences take as the become more deeply engaged in your organization. Mapping out this experience helps us: • Achieve a shared understanding of user needs and goals and how they relate to the content. • Identify what content is strong, where the gaps are, and derive an approach to strengthen conversions. Methodology derived from Donna LiChaw and Lis Hubert Activity 2
- 23. IDENTITY PILLARS What do we want to say and how do we want to say it? • Organizations define how they are perceived now and how they want to be in the future. • Result in a high-level framework to communicate a brand. • Defining / sticking to Identity Pillars helps ensure organizations stay true to themselves. Methodology derived from Ahava Leibtag Activity 3
- 24. IDENTITY PILLARS What do we want to say and how do we want to say it? Methodology derived from Ahava Leibtag Current Brand Attributes Future Brand Attributes False Brand Attributes Identity Pillars How we see ourselves now. How we want to be seen in the future. How we don’t want to be seen. How do we talk about our identity. Activity 3
- 27. MESSAGING ARCHITECTURE What do we want to say and how do we want to say it? Methodology derived from Karen McGrane As information architecture defines the blueprint for a site’s functional and visual design, messaging architecture defines the blueprint of all site content. Activity 4
- 28. MESSAGING ARCHITECTURE Primary message Should capture the “what” and the “why”. Secondary messages Provides supporting information answering “who”, “how”, “when”, and “how much”. Triggers / change in beliefs desired What should the user feel / what change should happen in their mind based on seeing this information? Methodology derived from Karen McGrane Activity 4
- 30. This is hard.
- 31. But worth it.
- 33. “TALK BUBBLE” Let natural language shape the experience • Conduct a design studio using “talk bubbles.” • Imagining real conversations helps us design the right flow / pacing. • Anticipate customer expectations and create personalized experiences. Methodology derived from Steph Hay & Mave Houston Activity 5
- 36. “TALK BUBBLE” Facilitate these questions • What did we like? • What are some insights we learned? • What are the biggest pain points for the customer? • What questions did people have? Methodology derived from Steph Hay & Mave Houston Activity 5
- 37. LANGUAGE BOARDS Outline the conversation • Using what we know, create a “language board” to focus the design. • Identify the top 3 things people will ask, and answer them. • Script out the conversation from there. Methodology derived from Steph Hay Activity 6
- 38. Language Board Capital One Home Loans What this is A language board serves three purposes: 1. It captures the natural language that starts conversations between us and our customers. 2. It serves as messaging / content roadmap for the design team to think about how to represent these conversations in an interface. 3. It serves as an internal communication tool to talk with project teams about whether we’re speaking the right language, and what content or design solutions we need to generate to fulfill on these conversations. What we say to start the conversation • We’ll help you figure out if you can afford a home and how your credit is involved. • We’ll explain everything every step of the way, and we won’t disappear. • You’ll know everything there is to know about rates, how we determine what you can qualify for, and things to avoid. Top questions they have, and our responses Q: (Skeptical) What are your rates? This is the starting point of all conversations for me. A: We have lots of rates for you to choose from. Give us a bit more information and we can tell you which programs are best for you. Q: (Overwhelmed) Show me how to do this. I want to know the process upfront, and how many days I can expect it to take. I want a site that tracks the process, what's submitted and what's required. And it needs to be up-to-date. A: The lending process takes some time, but we're here to help you get through it as quickly as possible. It's important that we get it right the first time, so we're not going to cut corners. Overall, you can expect that it will take around 10 days to get a mortgage with us. This varies depending on how complex your situation is. You can track the steps to get your mortgage. We'll be there every step of the way to help you know what to do now and what's coming up next. We'll be sure to provide you
- 40. CONTENT WORKBOOKS Keep yourself honest • Stay organized, keep your conversation design agnostic. • Manage all of your content iterations and promote collaboration. Methodology derived from Steph Hay Activity 7
- 42. No. Activity Used For 1 Know Feel Find Act Defining the experience 2 Journey Mapping w/ content Defining the experience 3 Identity Pillars Craft the message 4 Messaging Architecture Craft the message 5 “Talk Bubble” Design the narrative 6 Language Boards Design the narrative 7 Content Workbooks Design the narrative WHAT WERE THOSE ACTIVITIES AGAIN?
- 43. WHAT DO I DO NOW?
- 45. ” You don’t always need a plan. Sometimes you just need to breathe. Trust. Let go. And see what happens. –Cheryl Strayed
- 46. THERE’S NO RIGHT WAY
- 47. YOU MIGHT FAIL ONCE OR TWICE (but that’s ok)
- 48. AND YOU’LL FIGURE OUT WHAT WORKS BEST…
- 50. LEARN MORE
- 51. THINGS TO READ Content First User Experience | Steph Hay Content First Design | Steph Hay The Digital Crown: Winning at Content on the Web | Ahava Leibtag Content Strategy at Work | Margot Bloomstein Storymapping, A Macgyver Approach .... | Donna Lichaw & Lis Hubert Nicely Said | Nicole Fenton & Kate Kiefer Lee GatherContent’s Blog Epic List of Content Strategy Resources | Jon Colman MailChimp’s Style Guide
- 52. STAY IN TOUCH Michaela Hackner UX Content Strategy @ Capital One michaela.hackner@capitalone.com @kalabird