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Content Strategy Insights

Content Strategy Insights

Hosted by Larry Swanson

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Interviews with content strategy experts: enterprise, UX, product, content design, content marketing, etc.

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June 28, 202633 min

Rob Hanna and Lance Cummings: Information Typing in DITA – Episode 215

Rob Hanna and Lance Cummings Good communication has always been about understanding your audience — shaping your message to match how they think, what they need, and what they'll do with it. Information typing, the "IT" in the technical documentation standard DITA, codifies that practice into a design discipline that organizes content around its function rather than its form. Rob Hanna and Lance Cummings explore how information typing clarifies writing for human readers and have discovered in the process that those same structural principles help AI deliver better results. We talked about: their mutual interest in information typing, the "IT" in the DITA technical documentation standard the origins of information typing in textbook-building research at Stanford by Robert Horn in the 1960s how aligning information by function and to human capabilities reduces cognitive load how Lance's early work trying to teach structured thinking about content to his students led to his study of information typing information typing as a design discipline the origins of structured authoring well before DITA was created the rhetorical nature of an information typing system the three foundational info types in DITA - concept, task, and reference - and two extensions that Rob has developed — principle and process the importance of the process information type in agentic AI architectures the role of rhetoric, in particular the application of "machine rhetorics," in establishing context for AI agents the importance of being aware of the connections between how our brains work and what content is some examples of research they've done that shows how structured content improves results in AI systems like RAG (Retrieval Augmented Generation) Rob's advice to technical writers to become well-versed in structured authoring to adapt to the need to write for both humans and machines Lance's assertion that "information typing isn't just for technical writers" Rob's bio Rob Hanna is the CEO and co-founder of Precision Content. For more than 30 years, he's helped organizations turn complex documentation into structured, reusable knowledge that supports people, processes, and increasingly, AI. His passion is improving outcomes for companies embarking on structured authoring journeys—helping them avoid costly missteps, align teams around a practical content strategy, and build systems that make information easier to create, govern, find, and reuse. At Precision Content, he leads teams of writers, information architects, trainers, and developers to raise the standard of technical communication through DITA, CCMS implementations, metadata, microcontent, and information architecture. He's taught structured authoring, metadata, and taxonomies, and he's a Fellow of the Society for Technical Communication. What drives him most is seeing organizations move from fragmented content to reliable content supply chains that deliver better experiences for customers, employees, partners, and digital systems. Connect with Rob online LinkedIn Precision Content Lance's bio Lance Cummings is a professor of English in the Professional Writing program at the University of North Carolina Wilmington. Dr. Cummings explores content strategy and writing in technologically and culturally diverse contexts both in his research and teaching. His most recent work looks at how to leverage structured content with rhetorical strategies to improve the performance of generative AI technologies and shares his explorations in his newsletter, Cyborgs Writing . Connect with Lance online LinkedIn Cyborgs Writing What 17 Student Chatbots Showed Me About Structured Content article Video Here’s the video version of our conversation: https://youtu.be/Kn9roYzWS-g Podcast intro transcript This is the Content Strategy Insights podcast, episode number 215. When you're trying to communicate with either human beings or computers, it helps to align the kind of information you're imparting with the way the recipient expects to receive it. Technical writing experts call this "information typing," the practice of organizing content around its intent, not its format, which better aligns the information to human cognitive preferences. It turns out that this practice also helps AI systems deliver better results. Interview transcript Larry: Hi, everyone. Welcome to episode number 215 of the Content Strategy Insights podcast. I am really delighted today to welcome to the show Rob Hanna and Lance Cummings. Rob is the CEO and the founder at Precision Content, a technical content consulting company. And Lance is a professor of professional writing at University of North Carolina at Wilmington. He's also a well-known content creator. We'll talk a little bit more about that. So welcome to both of you, and maybe start with Rob. Rob, tell the folks a little bit more about what you're up to these days. Rob: Perfect. Thanks, Larry. Yes, we've been pioneering a writing methodology that we believe makes content easier for people to use. And as it turns out, easier for machines to use. So, there's continuous development and research in this field on how we bring these together and create better future-proof content. So, I've been embroiled in that for the last number of years. Larry: Nice. And Lance? Lance: Yeah, so I've been teaching and researching how we write and collaborate in diverse linguistic and technological environments. And I've been writing about AI since before ChatGPT in online, and kind of found my niche with technical writing. I was introduced to DITA probably back in 2017, '18, something like that at a conference and been trying to figure it out ever since. And really, ran into Rob's stuff at a conference, and the information typing clicked for me. Whereas I understand DITA and the use cases, but haven't necessarily had the time to really dig in and use it on my own, or to teach a class on it. But the information typing really got me thinking about structured writing in a different way, especially in concerns with AI, which I've been exploring on my blog, Cyborgs Writing on Substack. Been looking at structured approaches, how you take structured approaches, combine that with rhetoric to make AI work better. And I've really found information typing to be a pretty big part of that recently, and been working on developing approaches in AI writing systems and things like that. Larry: Nice. And you're reminding me of the reason this conversation came together. One of you, I think... I can't remember which of you posted it, but you had jointly created this document called DITA Information Types Aren't Templates, which I think is one of the key concepts behind DITA. I wonder maybe, Rob, maybe you can talk about that a little bit. What led to that article and a little bit about the difference between types and templates? Rob: Sure. Perfect. Thank you. Yeah, this has been a crusade of mine for a very, very long time: understanding what information typing is. I like to say it's at the heart of DITA. And D-I-T-A Information Typing, it's right there, but there's so little discussed or talked about what information typing actually is. In my work with the OASIS subcommittee, Business Documents Subcommittee, back in the aughts, we were looking at how we extend beyond product support and into the rest of the business. So, I studied a lot of different models that we could look to for extending DITA beyond simply concept, task, and reference, and landed upon information mapping. And so, that's where I discovered the genesis of information typing as defined by Robert Horn back in the late '60s at Stanford University, where he came up with these ideas around these information types based on patterns that he had found in textbooks. Rob: His task was to try to find a methodology that would help to build a better textbook. And so, through his analysis of a lot of text, he found these patterns in that content. And from there, a number of other folks in pedagogy and other areas started to look at why do these patterns emerge. And so, where we've landed with that is that that information types represent the function of information. In other words, how do our brains work with that information? How do we lower cognitive load for the reader by aligning information by function, and not mixing content together that have different purposes, different functions, different outcomes? Rob: So we can sort that apart, tease them apart, and signal to the reader what type of information it is that they're looking for. We can dramatically reduce the cognitive load and improve performance on that content. So, it's well beyond what a template was ever designed to do. This is more a template for your brain. This is how your brain works and how we template the information. Going here and actually do something with that information. Larry: Yeah. As you said that, it's a higher level than just WYSIWYG thinking. It's like, what are you doing here? What's the function versus the form that it takes in its expression? And one of the things that makes it so powerful, I think, is its alignment with how humans think. Maybe you can talk a little bit about this, Lance, is how the cognitive science that supports information typing and a lot of other DITA stuff as well. Lance: Yeah. So, I'll start by saying one of my hobbies has been to take the idea behind DITA and try to apply it to my education materials that I use with students, and also my own notes structures and things like that, because I see the value of reuse and modular thinking. And that's one of the things that I did in my blog when AI first came out, was to try to apply those. But a lot of times, trying to use the DITA labels, they didn't quite fit and I had a lot of trouble. And sometimes, you just make up your own labels and things like that,...

March 31, 202629 min

Melanie Seibert: Managing Content Design Teams – Episode 214

Melanie Seibert Few people have advanced the craft and management of content design as much as Melanie Seibert. She's been designing content experiences and managing design teams for more than 25 years. She recently captured the best of her insights in a new book, "Managing Content Design Teams." We talked about: her work as a content design manager at PayPal and her new book, "Managing Content Design Teams" her history of building content design teams how the arrival of gen AI may be shifting the focus in the design world from visual design to content design and language her many experiences on content-first design teams the unique aspects of managing content design teams and helping them cope with the unique professional challenges they face how her work reveals and amplifies the unique and important contributions of content design to digital products and experiences the lessons learned from the story of how Citibank lost half a billion dollars due to poor content design the three main ways she sees the arrival of generative AI affecting content design: designing products that include AI the use of AI in content design workflows ensuring the ability of LLMs to discover product information her approach to managing content design teams, in particular her focus on a service and support mindset her hope that UX and product leaders listen more closely content designers to learn how they can better support them Melanie's bio Melanie Seibert has worked in tech for over 25 years, including several years managing content and design teams. She built two content design teams from scratch and designed content for companies including Synchrony Bank, Indeed, and PayPal. Today, she manages a team of content designers who work on PayPal's websites, and she lives in Virginia. Connect with Melanie online LinkedIn Managing Content Design Teams book Video Here’s the video version of our conversation: https://youtu.be/3W1WNHxFfRU Podcast intro transcript This is the Content Strategy Insights podcast, episode number 214. Content design is typically practiced within large teams of visual designers, engineers, and product managers, not all of whom fully appreciate the value of language skills. Melanie Seibert is a pioneering content design leader who has elevated the craft at companies like Indeed and PayPal. She recently captured insights from her 25-year career advocating for the craft and supporting content designers in her book, "Managing Content Design Teams." Interview transcript Larry: Hi everyone. Welcome to episode number 214 of the Content Strategy Insights Podcast. I am really happy today to welcome to the show, Melanie Seibert. I'm reviving the show. I don't know if you've noticed, but I've been on hiatus for, I don't know, six or eight months now while I've focused on my knowledge graph podcast. But when I learned that Melanie had written a book and that it had been eight years since I last had her on the show, I was like, okay, we got to get her in here. And Melanie's currently, she's a UX content design manager at PayPal. She just wrote the book or recently wrote the book, Managing Content Design Teams. So welcome, Melanie. Tell the folks a little bit more about what you're up to these days. Melanie: Thank you. It's great to see you again. Yes, I work at PayPal now, managing an amazing team of content designers who work on the websites there. We work on paypal.com and Venmo.com. In my career, I had founded and led a couple of content design teams. So one at an agency was a team of five, including me. And then one during my time at Indeed for the enterprise business unit there, which was a team of 12, including myself. And I noticed a lot of things. I learned a lot. I made some mistakes and it gave me a lot of ideas and ways of working that I really preferred. Things that I saw working, things I saw that didn't work. And so I wanted to get those things out of my head and put it in a book. And so I did. So I wrote this book down and a friend of mine, good friend, edited it for me. Melanie: Shout out to Jen Mediano. She's an amazing editor. And yeah, I self-published it last August and it's out there. It's called Managing Content Design Teams. And it's all of my ideas and a lot of my experiences with managing content design teams. So hopefully other people don't have to make the same mistakes I did. Larry: That's right. Well, that's why I do this podcast, is to prevent that from happening. And one of the things we were talking about before we went on the air was like, there's so many ways we could come into this topic. But one of the things that's happening right now, people have heard of AI, I'm going to guess at this point and the way it's disrupting a lot of things and really changing a huge amount of the craft and the practice of content design. But one of the implications of it is this increasing need for cross-disciplinary collaboration, communication, just more and different stakeholders and peers to work with. Can you talk a little bit, did that figure into the genesis of the book? Melanie: Yeah, it did. I actually started writing the book before AI and LLMs were such a huge thing like they are now, but yes, it definitely figured in. It's really interesting because I have a case study in the book from my friend, Rebecca Nguyen, who works at Indeed and works on a LLM based product there. And she's collaborating, like you mentioned with engineers, product. She's essentially functioning as a design lead, UX design lead, as a content designer. So as more of these sort of language-based products, language-based models are being incorporated into digital experiences, and I hope that we are going to see more content designers functioning in a lead design role. But yeah, it really highlights something that I think has been going on for a while, which is something that I've seen in the industry is a focus on visual design, which is really important and can move the needle for business and can generate revenue. Melanie: If you have a highly polished, visually polished product, that's a good thing. But I've kind of seen a focus on that at times to the detriment of content. And you'll see UX teams with folks who focus on visuals, maybe the ratio is like 20 to one visual to content experts. And I was just noticing I don't think that works very well. If you talk to the content designers who work in those organizations, even for traditional digital apps and websites and web apps, if you talk to folks who work on those teams, the content designers are stretched, they're run ragged, the products have issues. And that was part of my motivation for writing this was to let UX and product leaders know like, "Hey, there's a skillset here. There's a discipline of content design that can really help you ship much higher quality digital products." Now with the shift to LLMs, we're really seeing even more of a hyper focus on the language aspect of the experience. Melanie: And so I'm hoping that UX and product leaders and executive leaders and tech companies are coming to realize the importance of the linguistic aspect of the design, the language design versus strictly focusing on visual. Larry: Yeah. As you're talking about that, you're reminding me of one of the things I've discovered, I used to do a podcast on content and AI. And I talked to Rebecca, and I talked to Laura Costantino at Google. I had 40 guests on that show. But one of the things that struck me after that series of conversations was that there's this kind of abstraction thing that content people are better at because images, not to criticize it, like you said, it's really important, but that's like a literal final end artifact to look at. There's a lot of abstraction that goes into this work and that only increases with the arrival of AI that you're not only abstracting out ... I've done a lot of content modeling and trying to figure out how to separate the content from its presentation in those situations. It's almost like we're going one more meta level out from that in designing language systems. Does that make sense? Melanie: Yeah. Designing the language system to ensure that ... Are you thinking of the knowledge graph and the data, that the facts underlying it are accurate? So it's pulling out and presenting accurate content. I mean, that's really important. Larry: Yeah, there's both that, but also just abstracting out the practice part of it. Taking what we know, and this does come out of my work in the knowledge graph world, this a huge part of the knowledge management and knowledge engineering world is capturing tacit knowledge and putting it in systems so that you can do stuff with it. And it seems like I know ... I talked to a few people on that podcast about that, and I don't know that any people are actually implementing this yet, but it kind of takes ... We're important, impactful people as content designers, but I think it could take us up a notch to get a one level of abstraction higher where you're designing the systems that create the language, which is what the language, the generative AI is doing. I don't know anybody that's actually ... I might be dreaming here, but it seems like content people would be well suited to that kind of work. Melanie: Yeah, no, I don't think you're totally dreaming. I have seen some conversations online where folks are looking for someone to do something like that. And I think, yeah, content designer, I think is a perfect skillset for setting up a scalable language system where you're automating content design to some degree. I don't know where the balance is between having the human touch. How much can you automate before you start seeing a deterioration in quality where you need a human sort of QAing and making sure that the system is actually tuned right and working well....

June 10, 202536 min

Manny Silva: Docs as Tests for Resilient Technical Documentation – Episode 213

Manny Silva Technical documentation of software products is critical work that needs to accurately inform end users, regardless of how quickly and substantially the software might be changing. Manny Silva has created the Docs as Tests, a system that integrates a set of well-developed practices and a collection of engineering tooling, to help technical communicators streamline and constantly improve their software documentation work. We talked about: his work at Skyflow and his new book "Docs as Tests" and a new version of his Doc Detective software the variety of "docs as" strategies that have emerged in technical documentation the intent of Docs as Tests to validate the accuracy of documentation the principles that underlie his approach to documentation the truism that in software "something always breaks" and the way Docs as Tests addresses this issue the tools available to test documentation the origins of his Doc Detective tool, which integrates developer tools in a tech-writer-friendly package how he extracts content and code from documentation to test it the differences between his old and new ways of validating the documentation he creates some examples of his Docs as Tests workflows, as well as other organizations doing similar kinds of of testing a key insight in the development of how to present Docs as Code to other tech writers the support and excitement he has seen in the tech docs community for his tools and others' Manny's bio Technical writer by day, engineer by night, and father everywhere in between, Manny wear many (figurative) hats. He's passionate about intuitive and scalable developer experiences, and he likes diving into the deep end as the 0th user. Here are a few things that keep him busy: Head of Docs at Skyflow, a data privacy vault company Author of Docs as Tests: A Strategy for Resilient Technical Documentation and the Docs as Tests blog Creator and maintainer of Doc Detective, an open-source doc testing framework AI development and experimentation He's always looking for collaborators on his projects, and he loves chatting with folks, so don't hesitate to reach out. Connect with Manny online LinkedIn Docs as Tests Doc Detective Video Here’s the video version of our conversation: https://youtu.be/zPkjrG1zgHg Podcast intro transcript This is the Content Strategy Insights podcast, episode number 213. As software has evolved from occasionally updated, shrink-wrapped artifacts to complex, continuously evolving online products, technical documentation practices have had to adapt. Manny Silva's contribution to this evolving technical landscape is the idea of Docs as Tests, a set of practices and a collection of engineering tooling that helps technical communicators streamline, automate, and otherwise improve their software documentation work. Interview transcript Larry: Hi everyone. Welcome to episode number 213 of the Content Strategy Insights podcast. I am really delighted today to welcome to the show Manny Silva. Manny is the author of the forthcoming book, Docs as Tests, and that's what we're going to talk about today. The subtitle of that book is A Strategy for Resilient Technical Documentation. Which he's got a fascinating approach and we'll talk in detail about that. He's currently the head of Docs at Skyflow and he's also the creator of a tool called Doc Detective that we'll talk more about. So welcome, Manny. Tell the folks a little bit more about what you're up to these days. Manny: Thank you for having me, Larry. Well, there's the book that you already mentioned that's going to be coming out shortly. I am working on a new version of the Doc Detective software to come out alongside the book. But otherwise I am handling things at Skyflow, new fun features coming out all the time. I own all of the documentation there, all of the error strings, really anything that's text that it doesn't come from marketing. But outside of job related things, I like to spend a lot of time with my kiddos and they keep me very busy. So lots of life happening all the time. Larry: Never a dull moment, that's a good life to have. But you've chosen, in the midst of all that, to write a book. Which I just admire immensely that anybody who takes on that challenge. More power to you. So first I just want to set this up a little bit. A few years ago, I don't know how long ago this came, the notion of Docs as Code that this theory that you should write documentation the same way you build the software ish. I probably am misrepresenting that. I assume that Docs as Tests might be a play on that, but tell me a little bit about the origin of the book and why you took all this time to write a book about it. Manny: Sure. So I'll start with Docs as Code. Docs as Code is one of many Docs as strategies I've come across as a technical writer. Docs as Code means that we as writers adopt many of the engineering practices and tools for handling our documentation. We use version control to manage our content. We use continuous integration and continuous delivery to check that our content builds like it should and to push it live to our users. But there are other Docs as strategies, like Docs as Product is a way of interpreting documentation as a product that is delivered by the working group. Just like you would your web interface or given feature or whatever else it is that your company builds. Manny: Docs as Tests is another one of these that borrows from engineering. But instead of the underlying tools and practices for managing code porting over to managing content, it brings in the validation aspects. The ways that engineers make sure that their code does what they expect it to, we're now porting over so that we can validate that documentation is describing what we intend it to, that it can work as written, that the procedures are correct and accurate against the products that they're written to describe. Larry: Nice. And one of the things I really liked as I read the book was that this is like tech and platform agnostic, which makes sense because there's so many ways that people can document software. Manny: Yeah. Larry: Like you just said, there's a number of philosophies and theories and then there's specific tools like DITA CCMSs or just a regular old CMS or probably a million spreadsheets out there that people are using. So that just points the need for a principles-based approach. Can you talk about the principles that underlie this approach to docs? Manny: Sure thing. I mean, you hit on one of them already. That Docs as Tests is platform agnostic, tool agnostic, format agnostic. If you use DITA, great, you can do Docs as Tests. If you do Docs as Code, you can do Docs as Tests. The tooling that you choose to implement Docs as Tests will vary by whatever constraints you have in your workflows. But Docs as Tests as a strategy works broadly. And as far as the application of it, there are a few core tenets that really help define what makes Docs as Tests work. The first is a pretty straightforward assumption that docs are inherently tests because docs are assertions that a tool is supposed to work a certain way, and I'll give an example here in a moment, but assertions are inherently verifiable. They are testable. And so if docs are assertions and assertions are testable, that means that docs are tests. Manny: So when you reference a product behavior or an attribute like a button label, you make a literal, verifiable assertion about the product. When you write the procedural step click continue, you assert that there is a visible clickable button that has the label continue. This statement is either true or it is false, and it can be assessed by performing the procedure. In engineering, assertions are used in tests to verify code-based behaviors. Tests are assessed whenever they're run, usually when the code changes. For content owners, our docs are our tests. Our product references are our assertions and our test runs are performing our procedures. And if we don't test our docs ourselves, we are making our users test our docs for us. They get tested one way or another and it usually ends badly if your users test your docs. Larry: Yeah. No, I just had a thing yesterday where I was screaming at my computer, and screaming at probably your poor colleague at that software company. One of the things about this is everything changes so quickly now, you don't buy software in a package and then a year later it's updated. You already mentioned continuous integration, continuous deployment. So I assume that's one of the drivers of this as well, just that relentless pace of change. Manny: Yes. Because I mean part of how this all came about was before Skyflow, I worked at Google. Before Google, I worked at Apple doing technical writing. And something always breaks, something always breaks. No matter how good your communication lines are with your colleagues, how frequently you check in, what procedures you have in place, inevitably something will slip through the cracks. A button label changes or your design team decides they want to change the shade of a banner from green to blue and it makes all of your screenshots go out of date. And so suddenly everything that was great before is no longer. And a user goes in to look at your docs and it no longer reflects the product interface that they're interacting with, which undermines their trust in your docs, in your product, in your company as a whole. Manny: We've all had experiences with docs that were inaccurate. By making sure that our docs are accurate, by actively testing our docs against the product interfaces, we not only avoid undercutting trust, we actively are building trust with our users. Because as they see that, oh hey, time and again these docs work the way I expect them to,...

April 21, 202531 min

Jeff Eaton: Content Observability in Complex Systems – Episode 212

Jeff Eaton Modern content systems are complex and abstract, presenting problems for managers who want to understand how their content is performing. At Autogram, Jeff Eaton and Karen McGrane have developed a content observability framework to address this complexity. Their framework evaluates the composition, quality, health, and effectiveness of content programs to help enterprises measure the return on their content investment. We talked about: his work at Autogram, the consultancy that he and Karen McGrane operate his high-level take on the notion of content observability how the growing complexity of content systems drives the need for content observability how content observability connects with content strategy the inadequacy of current analytics and other tooling to permit true content observations the role of content intent in discerning content performance the content ecosystem insight that led to their explorations in content observability the four pillars of Autogram's content observability framework: composition - the make-up of your content assets quality - organizational standards, regulatory compliance, voice and tone, etc. health - is the system working (regardless of the quality of the elements in it) effectiveness - is the content achieving the intended outcomes the ability within the framework to account for different content intentions in order to evaluate the ROI of the whole system some of the inspiration for his content observability work the talk that he and Karen are giving on content observability at the 2025 IA Conference Jeff's bio Jeff helps large organizations understand, model, and manage their content. Whether he’s fixing problems with CMS architecture or editorial workflow, his solutions sit in the overlap between design, communications, and technology. Connect with Jeff and Autogram online LinkedIn Bluesky Eaton, FYI Autogram Video Here’s the video version of our conversation: https://youtu.be/HMm5UhDKQiY Podcast intro transcript This is the Content Strategy Insights podcast, episode number 212. As content systems have become more complicated and abstract, understanding the effectiveness of your content efforts has become a real challenge. At Autogram, Jeff Eaton and his business partner Karen McGrane routinely work on very complex content projects. To help their clients understand the impact of their content, they have developed an observability framework that measures the composition, quality, health, and effectiveness of their content programs. Interview transcript Larry: Hi everyone. Welcome to episode number 212 of the Content Strategy Insights podcast. I am really delighted to welcome back to the show, Jeff Eaton. Jeff, I think is one of the few three-time guests I've had. Maybe Preston So was the other. That's right. Might have had one other, but welcome back, Jeff. Oh, and for folks who don't know, Jeff is a partner at Autogram, the legendary consultancy. And he's also probably, it's safe to say the most famous, infamous, renowned content nerd out there. Welcome back, Jeff. Jeff: Well, it's a pleasure to be here. Always fun to come and talk shop and exchange news about what wild stuff we've all been working on and thinking about. It's great to be here. Larry: No, and one of the things, the reason I wanted to get back on, we were talking a while back a few weeks ago about this notion of content observability, which immediately to me was like, yeah, thank God. Let's do that. And thank God Jeff is thinking about it. But I think a lot of folks, it's a pretty well-known concept in the tech world, especially the dev ops and those kinds of worlds. But I think to a lot of our listeners, it might not be a familiar concept, so can you walk through the notion of observability and its application that you see it in the content world? Jeff: There are a lot of different tactical things that we tend to do in the content world to measure what we've got or what's going on, whether it's auditing, inventories, analytics, stuff like that. But the concept of observability, that's a label that became popular in the software engineering world, particularly as organizations started depending more and more on large numbers of different systems. Like, oh, well, our company's web presence isn't just the server that runs the website, but in fact it's, oh, well, these three databases, these four services that we subscribed to, that our servers talk to. And there's the front-end stuff and there's this and this, and this. Increasingly, the web and digital infrastructure for companies has gotten complicated enough that it's really a system of different moving parts, each of which have their own health checks and monitors and stuff like that. Jeff: And observability really emerged as an umbrella term for this idea of building a system that you can monitor in order to see, well, what are the different moving parts of the system? How healthy is each one? Is something going wrong? All of that is with an eye towards giving yourself good feedback mechanisms for the operation and the health of the system as a whole, and it's individual parts so that you're not left to saying, well, something's wrong, somebody should go quote "debug" it or whatever. It's with a system of that complexity and as those systems have more and more central to a lot of businesses, that proactive approach to saying, well, how do we keep an eye on how everything's doing and put that as a part of our day-to-day processes for knowing what's an emergency or when we should change the oil on the car, so to speak, versus just waiting for it to break down on the side of the road. Jeff: That oversimplifies things a lot, but that has been a significant theme in the software engineering world for quite some time. And it's both at a strategic level like, what services do we need to monitor everything? But also at a just detailed tactical level questions like, well, how do we build those individual pieces such that we can monitor them effectively? That doesn't work if it's just a black box that either works or fails and who knows? The idea of being able to say, oh, well, we should be able to reach in and say, how is this piece working? What's it doing? Is it slower than usual? Does that matter? Yes or no? Those are the kinds of questions that software observability needs to be able to concern itself with. And in the world of content with digital publishing, there's a lot of overlap. There's adjacency because that kind of complex system that we just talked about is how a lot of digital content gets published. Jeff: It's going through systems like that, but the idea of the content itself, having that kind of observability framework isn't something that has really been there. And I think as we've been feeling the pain of that for a long time on different fronts, but haven't necessarily had a word to put to it. I can't remember where I picked it up, but a while ago I was watching someone talk about the concept of strategy and how all strategy is a theory. It's a story about what we believe is going to happen if we do X and why we think Y is going to happen. Because it's a story we have about, okay, if we do these things, here's how the ecosystem works, or here's how our customer relationships works, so if we do A, then because B and C, we're going to get D on the other side of that. And you can do all sorts of stuff from that but at its heart a strategy is that kind of a story you have about here's what's going to happen, the cause and effect. Jeff: The problem is, is for that to work, you need to be able to check back and figure out, okay, so was that story true? Was that an accurate view of the world? Because if it's not, we're doing the wrong stuff, we're making the wrong content, we're publishing it in the wrong channels, we're not getting it to the right people, or they're liking it, but it's not causing the behaviors that we had hoped it would or grabbing them in the way that we anticipated. And oftentimes it's a long, long feedback cycle before we really see whether our theories are true or not. And even then it's often with rough proxy metrics that aren't really telling us whether our theory of the world is true or not. Larry: That's what I was going to ask about because all we've ever had as content people is page-level delivery metrics, and it's like, oh, for crying out loud, but what you just said, I want to- Jeff: Views, how many views and what's that bounce rate. Larry: Like age views. But I love the way you described this as like, hey, does this story check out? And I'm picturing a magazine fact-checker looking at your strategic narrative and going, that doesn't really check out. And so that gets into- Jeff: We thought long form video content was going to really be a killer for us. How did that work out? Did that do what we thought it would? Larry: And you can't do that with Google Analytics, right? Jeff: Well, Google Analytics is incredibly flexible. If you take the time to go in and set up all kinds of custom triggers and events that you're tracking and stuff like that, you can track all sorts of things. But out of box, Google Analytics is set up to track page views and bounce rate. And if you've got commerce stuff wired up, you can track conversions in very specific ways. But those are very, very tailored kinds of conceptual questions. Like bounce rate is basically when someone comes to the site, do they stick around? What are the odds that they'll come look at what we've got and leave? And this was the germ for us at Autogram of what I ended up developing into this idea of a bigger concept of observability. The classic bounce rate question was, well, what about wayfinding content? The stuff that you make, if you build a large repository of information,...

April 2, 202540 min

Jeffrey A. “jam” McGuire: The Value Map Content Framework – Episode 211

Jeffrey A. "jam" McGuire Aligning and orchestrating product content for complex business use cases is much easier when you have a framework to structure and guide your efforts. Jeffrey A. "jam" McGuire and his business partner developed the "value map" framework to structure and organize product marketing information. This helps them to align internal stakeholders on strategy and messaging and to efficiently deliver the right content to both business and technical users of the product. We talked about: his role as Partner at Open Strategy Partners, his consultancy based in Cologne, Germany, that focuses on marketing for B2B and open-source software companies the origins of his value map framework in the complex marketing services that he delivers in an early client's need for a CMS comparison an oral walk-through of his (very visual) value map diagram how clusters of features in his map provide technical answers to focused business questions his concept of a "value case," and its benefit-challenge-solution structure the role of structured content in the implementation of a value map how value cases serve as "a cheat code for storytelling" because it actually portrays a hero's journey the unique objectives of B2B marketing and the role social proof and face-to-face human interaction in his work a conceptual ascent of his framework pyramid: features and functionality at the base, position and USPs, and then up to guiding principles his methodology for aligning stakeholders around a product's messaging strategy jam's bio Jeffrey A. “jam” McGuire is a Partner at Open Strategy Partners, where he helps organizations communicate and grow, finding and telling the stories that connect their technologies with the value they deliver. He builds on nearly twenty years of experience in open source technology, at the intersection of software, business, and culture. His approach to technology marketing is centered on sharing the human context of complex technology solutions. As co-Founder of the German Drupal Association, community-building is close to Jeffrey’s heart. He enjoys celebrating creators’ expertise and combining storytelling and performance to convey information and motivate his audiences. An experienced public speaker, he has hosted numerous awards ceremonies and delivered dozens of keynotes, 150+ conference presentations, and 220+ podcast interviews in the last 15 years. He’s based in Cologne, Germany. Connect with jam online LinkedIn Open Strategy Partners Video Here’s the video version of our conversation: https://youtu.be/b5Fg26WuSZs Podcast intro transcript This is the Content Strategy Insights podcast, episode number 211. When you're taking on huge content challenges in complex business environments, it helps to have a good framework to guide your efforts. Jeffrey A. McGuire, known as "jam" in the content marketing and open-source software communities, has developed "value maps" to structure and organize product information. Content strategists and creators then simply follow the map to address the needs of both business and technical users of the product. Interview transcript Larry: Hi, everyone. Welcome to episode number 211 of the Content Strategy Insights podcast. I am really delighted today to welcome to the show Jeffrey A. McGuire. Jeffrey, he's known as Jam in the communities that I know him from, the open-source software and CMS communities. He's a partner at Open Strategy Partners, a consultancy that he runs. So welcome, Jam. Tell the folks a little bit more about what you're doing these days. jam: Hey, Larry. I'm really thrilled to be here talking with you, and I have no idea how we're going to cram... A half an hour is never going to be enough, I'm just saying that. And let's see, about me, I live in Cologne, Germany and I consider it my home. And at the time of recording, we've just finished Carnival for 2025. And the number 11 is a very special number in Cologne, so I'm thrilled to be on episode number 211. Larry: Oh, I did not make that connection. I was just in Cologne at the holidays for Christmas markets and learned a lot about that 11 stuff. That's a whole other... Which we've already had that conversation. That's fun. So, Jam, I can't remember which gathering it was, but you presented about this value map framework that you use to work with the content marketing content that you work with so much. So it's very visual, so this is going to be a little bit of a challenge, but I want to convey this in the form of a podcast as best we can because I'm just a sucker for a good framework. So talk a little bit about, how did this thing even come about? Where did the value map framework come from? jam: Open Strategy Partners has been in business for more than eight years now, and we serve B2B technology companies and open-source organizations, so imagine SaaS, content management, hosting platform certification and so on, and in general, specialist audience marketing, and generally technical. And I come out of open-source software. I come out of the Drupal community originally. I've been involved in Drupal and TYPO3 and PHP and a lot of other communities. We founded the company to help my friends and peers do better in their businesses by helping them communicate the value of what they do better. jam: We have a very specific meaning when we say we do B2B marketing and technology marketing, and the B2B marketing is not about getting 100,000 clicks to convert to 1,000 redirects to 10 demos to a client. It's about building trust, it's about building authority, it's about, in content marketing terms, consistency and relevance technically. So the first point there is that we operate on the principles of empathy, clarity, and trust. I want to create material that's relevant to the audience and that's easy to consume and that's technically accurate and that'll build up trust over time. jam: And when I say that we are in technology marketing as well as in B2B technology marketing, when I compare that to B2C marketing, I feel that technology marketing needs constant creation and reaffirmation of the context you're operating in. B2C marketing, if I'm selling a hamburger or a shampoo or a car, if you're in the same culture and timeframe as I am, we know the factors that go into choosing a car or food to eat or how to wash your hair. jam: In technology, do you know what the difference is between Kubernetes and Docker and how APIs work and whatever? Maybe not. So my clients are technically oriented businesses often selling very complex products to less technical people. So we have to do a lot of translation between technical complexity and the business value that those things deliver and then tell the stories to at least two kinds of audiences, more technical audiences. If we stick with the software businesses, which is what we do mostly, you know you're talking with developers, you're talking with project managers, you're talking with... And you have to give people real facts written in the real way to build credibility and build trust. And then if you show them features that they're excited to try, hey, presto, they download your thing, they call for a demo, they adopt your open-source project and so on. jam: Decision makers, budget holders, marketers don't necessarily have a technical background, and we need to write content about the same products from a business perspective that says, "You can earn more money or lose less money or be more efficient or deliver better quality." Everybody says they do. We start with the facts of a product and the business value that they deliver, and when we write the business stories, you can go and do your due diligence, and we've built them on fact. There's no hyperbole, there's no vaporware, so we're selling reality. jam: And then the third little piece on the side of our practice is we come from open-source, so our friends and colleagues in all of the open-source world can start with us basically on day one. We understand licensing and community and contribution and a bunch of the special, wonderful concepts about open-source that you can't assume that any given agency down the road will understand. When we got started with Open Strategy Partners in 2016, '17-ish, one of our very early clients wanted a comparison between their open-source CMS and some other CMSs, some of them proprietary, some of them open-source. And my genius co-founder, Tracy Evans, she is definitely the brains behind the operation, and most of the frameworks and most of the ways that we work structurally come from her education experience and background. She's an MBA, she's an internationally experienced manager and leader, and she has a formal education in business marketing and all of these structures. jam: I joke, but I'm also not joking, I've worked in open-source since 2006-ish; I've had 5,000 beers with developers and agency owners and other people, and I've also been in the business and been in a startup and so on, and I came through a technical beginning into communications as a writer and journalism and then through the community path into marketing to where we are now. One of the first big problems that we needed to solve for one of our first big clients was this comparison. Tracy had herself gone through comparison exercises in previous situations in her life and career, and she was a perfect marketing persona because she was the non-technical, budget-holding executive making technology decisions, and if she looked at Drupal, for example, an open-source CMS, the thing that the community homepage said for the long time was something like community plumbing, and she didn't understand why she would be interested in plumbing. And if she dug a little bit deeper, she would find a bunch of features, but it was impossible to tell as a business person what this thing would actually do for you. ...

February 25, 202531 min

Greg Dunlap: Designing Content Authoring Experiences – Episode 210

Greg Dunlap Experience design for readers of online content gets a lot of attention. The authors who create the content and get it ready for publication aren't as well served. In his new book, Designing Content Authoring Experiences, Greg Dunlap addresses this situation, showing content-system creators how to design better interfaces, streamline workflows, and otherwise improve the lives of content authors and managers. We talked about: his 20-year history as a CMS expert and the launch of his new book, "Designing Content Authoring Experiences" the huge gap between the needs of CMS authors and the attention paid to them in CMSs and their implementation how he includes content author needs in his content strategy and CMS implementation processes and workflows the organizational dynamics that typically lead to the lack of consideration for author needs how a good authoring experience supports any number of business goals: better SEO, more efficient operations, better content, better content discoverability, etc. how to balance conflicting needs for structure and flexibility in content operations the importance of understanding and accounting for the differences between content creation and content publication possible issues that can arise from using collaborative authoring functions in CMS workflows the ever-evolving of authoring tools and practices in decoupled architectures the hazards of using page builders in content authoring how he tries to keep structured content top of mind in organizations some of the criteria he uses when evaluating content authoring projects: the org's content maturity, its size, the technical skills of the system users, etc. Greg's bio Greg Dunlap got started in content management in the early 2000s, building custom systems for small clients. In 2006 at the Seattle Times Company, Greg got involved in the Drupal community, eventually leading one of the eight core initiatives for Drupal 8. Since then he has focused on building large-scale publishing systems for clients around the world. Greg makes his home in rural Washington with his wife Nicole and a small menagerie of animal friends. In his spare time, Greg is an internationally ranked pinball player and loud-music concert goer. Connect with Greg online LinkedIn Bluesky Resources mentioned in this episode AuthoringExperience.com Authors are also users - a new book on designing content authoring experiences (review) Video Here’s the video version of our conversation: https://youtu.be/aX2S8KT0Mv8 Podcast intro transcript This is the Content Strategy Insights podcast, episode number 210. Five years ago at the Confab content strategy conference a speaker asked the audience of seven hundred to raise their hand if they loved their content management system. One hand went up. Greg Dunlap was the only person in the room with close ties to the CMS world. The other six hundred and ninety-nine were professionals routinely forced to use content systems that had failed to consider their needs. Greg's new book, Designing Content Authoring Experiences, aims to fix that oversight. Interview transcript Larry: Hi everyone. Welcome to episode number 210 of the Content Strategy Insights podcast. I'm really delighted today to welcome back to the show, Greg Dunlap. He was on, I can't even remember how many episodes ago talking about this same subject, but we're going to get deeper into it today. Greg is currently the director of content strategy at Bixal, a consultancy/agency, and he's also the author and the reason he's here today of the new book, Designing Content Authoring Experiences. So welcome Greg. Tell the folks a little bit more about what you're up to these days. Greg: Thanks, Larry. As you said, I'm a Director of Content Strategy at Bixal. We are a consulting company that focuses on work in the federal government space. I've been bouncing around in the CMS world for the last 15, 20 years, and one of the things that's been something that's interested me since I got started was not just the experience of the people who use the website on the front end that we work for, but the people who are doing the authoring experience on the back end. Greg: This started for me when I was working at The Seattle Times and we did a big CMS rollout and one of the people in the editorial team came to me and said, "Where is this piece of functionality that we used to have and we don't have anymore?" I realized that the reason why we didn't have it anymore is because nobody had ever asked the people who use the CMS every day what they do with it. We had done this gigantic rollout with everybody involved except for them, and it set a light bulb off in my head about how these people are often marginalized in the CMS development process. Nobody thinks about them. We can just dump our product on their plate and they can just use it without any consulting. That sparked this whole idea in my head, and it's something that I've been bringing into my work a lot for the last 10 years and eventually led to this book being written. Larry: You're reminding me. I think I met you about a year or so before this, but at the Confab, I think it was in 2020 [actually 2019]. Laura, what's her last name [Laura Robertson] from England, did that great talk. Greg: Yes. Larry: She asked, and this is etched in my memory, a room full of 700 people, and I'm sitting over to one side and she asked, "Hey, who in this room loves their CMS?" I look around, one person stood up and it was you because everybody else... Greg: I tell that story in the beginning of the book. Larry: Oh, good. Because that's the best story ever, but it also speaks to that was a room full of the people you were just talking about. Greg: Yeah, exactly. Larry: The people who were forced to use these systems. The need was clear for something like this. The other thing you say early in the book is that this is a lot of work. This isn't just tidying up some stuff. This is a whole parallel project to, you think you're building a website, but you're really building, you need to build along with it, this authoring system. How big is that disconnect among orgs getting that? Greg: I think it's incredibly large. I mean, because the book is basically outlines the process for properly designing for your content authors and treating them as users just as much as you treat the people who use your website as users. If you're going to treat them that way, then you go through the same process. You have to research them to learn about their use cases, you prototype potential solutions with them, and then you implement and test those solutions and support them over time. Greg: That very much parallels the different process that you go through when you're designing an actual front end for a website. It involves all of the same skill sets. It involves designers, it involves engineers, it involves content strategists, it involves executive stakeholders, and it really is like a parallel web development process. In most projects, it is very far from a parallel web development process. Greg: I think that a lot of that just comes down to this idea that these content people are just at the bottom of the chain of command at any given organization and that people view them as just like word pumpers. We see this all the time at organizations where people are like, oh, this person knows something about a topic. They can write the content for the website or whatever. I'm not the only person who have talked about that on your podcast for sure. Greg: This view that anybody can write, anybody can do this work, and so there's no specialization, there's no needs for it that need to be catered to. Part of me telling this story is just to say that that's not true. That if you do this work, you will make better content and you will get better ROI on the system that you've spent a lot of money building. I think that's a really important message to get out. Larry: We didn't plan it this way, but the episode right before this one, I don't know if you've listened to it yet, it just came out, was with Sarah Johnson who just wrote a book called Content-first Design. Starting with the content and a lot of parallel issues. I think this is going to be an interesting pairing in the sequence here. Larry: But when you talk about authors or users too, that's one of the things you talk about in the book and just talked about, and you have this parallel process to go through them, which has never done well. How close in your work, I guess, because you're probably doing as well as anyone. How close do you feel like you're getting and how do you carve out whatever bandwidth you can for these concerns? Greg: I mean, I say at the beginning of the book that I outline a ton of things that you can do to help authors in the book, but I admit that there's never been a project in which I have done all of these things. Usually what I'm doing is I'm taking the pieces that I can or that I can apply to the project that I have at hand and working them into the process. Greg: For instance, when we do discovery with a client, I always make sure that the content authors or someone from the editorial side is represented in the meetings. That's like a step one to make sure that they're involved and can make their voice heard, and that's easy. Well, it's mostly easy, and that moves a lot of what follows along and can say, well, who is this person and what are their expertises and needs? That leads to interviews with other content authors and that can feed into definition of functionality, into identifying pain points, and that leads in different directions depending on how it goes. Greg: I think it's more about we never carve out a bucket of hours for content authoring. It's more about how can we build it into our existing process and mak

February 2, 202529 min

Sarah Johnson: Moving Content Forward with “Content-first Design” – Episode 209

Sarah Johnson Sarah Johnson asks, "If a digital experience is a conversation with a user, how can you have that conversation if you don't know what the words are?" Sarah addresses the crucial role of content in her new book, "Content-first Design," tackling both the pragmatic aspects of a content-first approach to design as well as how to advocate for content practice. We talked about: her new book, "Content-first Design" her definition of content-first design her decision to include case studies provided by multiple content experts, part of her efforts to build a community around the "content-first" idea how she shows the business benefits of a content-first approach to stakeholders her brilliant observation that "digital experience is a conversation with a user and how can you have a conversation if you don't know what the words are?" her practice of sitting in on call centers to discover user concerns and language how working with financial and healthcare products and experiences have shaped her content-first approach the importance of starting slowly and building good relationships with stakeholders all along the way her appreciation for the "Search Inside Yourself" leadership program her desire to create a community around the idea of "moving content forward" Sarah's bio Sarah Johnson, a content design leader and teacher with over 20 years of experience, has worked for industry leaders such as Fidelity Investments, Banks of America, TIAA, CVS, and Bentley University User Experience Design Center. She is the author of six books, including Content-First Design, and the founder and director of ContentFirstDesign.com. Content-first Design, the company, offers content services built on actionable, data-driven insights, and workshops designed to enhance practical skills in areas such as content design, AI integration, and more. Connect with Sarah online LinkedIn ContentFirstDesign.com Video Here’s the video version of our conversation: https://youtu.be/2OxYts6_n-4 Podcast intro transcript This is the Content Strategy Insights podcast, episode number 209. Anyone who works with content knows how important and impactful it is. We also know how difficult it can be to convey the value of content to our colleagues and collaborators. Sarah Johnson tackles this dynamic in her new book, "Content-first Design." Along with addressing the practical aspects of a content-first approach, she asks: "if a digital experience is a conversation with a user, how can you have that conversation if you don't know what the words are?" Interview transcript Larry: Hi everyone. Welcome to episode number 209 of the Content Strategy Insights podcast. I am really delighted today to welcome to the show Sarah Johnson. Sarah is the principal and founder and director at content-first design, a company she runs in Provincetown, Massachusetts in the US. Welcome, Sarah, tell the folks a little bit more about what you're doing these days. Sarah: Thank you, Larry. Thanks for having me on the show. I'm a big admirer and what I'm doing is I've just written a book called content-first design, which is one methodology and lens through which you can look at this process for developing content and developing digital products. I'm also starting a business called content-first design, which offers all kinds of content services and workshops and content-first design and other content related things including AI. So those two things dovetail nicely together and it's a lot of fun and I'm excited for the book to come out, it comes out February 13th. Larry: Which will probably be, I think if I stay on schedule, that'll be about two or three weeks after this episode drops, so people will be able to get it right away. I want to start, I want to read there's, I don't know if this is your official definition, but there was a passage in the introduction to the book that just to me summed up the whole thing that you say, "Content-first design is the process by which research, exploration and evaluation of content requirements and user needs inform the structure, layout, flow and visuals for a digital product." That is music to my content ears. How did you come up with that approach and that definition? Sarah: I think it started, I mean I've been on this topic in my brain for a long time and it started, I first got the idea working at TIAA when we were doing a redesign and re-everything of the website there and some people there went to the D school and came back with design thinking. And one of the things I learned from that was that when I was working with product people, they were trying to write content and I would always have to smooth the road to help them understand that I could write it and make it work. And when I went on to other companies, this continued to be the truth and other companies weren't having it, they were design-first. And I was asked to teach at Bentley University User Experience Design Center and I had to come up with a course for that. Sarah: And in developing the course I noticed that what I was doing was examining and doing exactly what you said in that quote, research on content and then having the students redesign a website. And it was fascinating to see what they came up with. They came up with the greatest things. Now they had a background, they were at the User Experience Design Center, but they also were amazed at what they were able to do by understanding content first. And I realized I was really onto something and I outlined the book and started writing it with the encouragement of Melinda Belcher who was great and I got sick from long COVID and had to put it down for three years. And then I went back to work and I was lucky enough to get laid off and have six months to finish the book and shape it out. Sarah: And I had the help of Shannon Geis who wrote the case study, and that's sort of where it came from. And the other idea around it was that I didn't want it to be just me, I wanted to include community in it. And that's why I have the sections called From the Experts. I wanted it to be one take on content-first design, here's one methodology, one way of doing this thing we've been talking about for years, and to both encourage it and to create the conversation. Let's be talking about this. Let's broaden the conversation to include more people. And another way I do that, I'm going on and on, is through the blog Moving Content Forward, which you'll see on our website, and that's to create community around what are you doing to help move our practice forward? I want to hear about that. And we also do a bi-weekly talk on that. So the idea of the whole enterprise is to create community around content-first design and what people are doing to evolve the craft. Here's what I'm doing, what are you guys doing? Larry: Nice. I love that. I come out of book publishing originally and so I was always aware that it's never a lone, brilliant author toiling and obscurity and coming, it's always a team effort. But the way you just described that this is not just a team effort but a genuine community effort to get this together. I'm curious about this. So the moving content forward, I love that, the impulsive, the forward nature of that. Tell me how long have you been doing that? Sarah: That idea came as a tagline for the book and the original title of the book was Moving Content Forward. And my awesome editor Richard Hamilton was like, "No, let's call it content-first design and that can be the tagline." Because I really loved that idea because that's what I'm trying to do with the book and I'd love to do a short series of books on that topic, moving content forward. And I'm working on one right now about content-first design and AI and the human connection between content and AI. The moving content forward idea for the blog came up because I just want to so much to create community around what we're all doing to evolve the craft because I'm on LinkedIn all the time, I see people talking about what they're doing. I want to create community for all of us to talk about it, to generate ideas, to move it forward. Larry: Yeah. And is there a region because you're in the northeast of the US, is there sort of a regional focus that way or do you attract people from all over the country? Sarah: All over the country. Larry: Nice. Sarah: Yeah, and I'd like to expand that actually because there are people overseas like you doing a lot of cool things and let's hear about it. Let's all get talking about it. Let's see what we can do here. Larry: Well, I'll talk to my co-organizers first, but I help organize a meetup in Amsterdam called The Future of Content. Seems to be some natural alignment there with the way we're talking about. Sarah: Definitely. Larry: Yeah. But the other thing about that is it's like it implies progress and I think there's a lot of people in the content world who feel, people talk about all the time that there's this feeling that we're banging our head against the wall sometime and maybe not making as much progress. Have you found other people in the community, not just, I mean it's great that a lot of this stuff is showing up in the book, but have people just by dint of that community around the book, are people having better results and getting more accomplished just from having talked about it? Sarah: I think so. I had that experience at CVS with someone who was on my team who didn't know that she was doing content-first design, but she was, and I recognized it, and we did a presentation on it. But it only went so far because there's resistance from designers and product people who want their say. But what was brilliant about what she did, and she didn't even know it, was that she included all the stakeholders in every phase. One of the phases is empathy mapping and the stakeholders were in there so they un

January 17, 202533 min

Leah Buley and Joe Natoli: The UX Team of One – Episode 208

Leah Buley and Joe Natoli Both UX and content professionals routinely find themselves on teams where they are the sole practitioner of their craft. Leah Buley and Joe Natoli recently revised "The UX Team of One" (use code ELLESS15 at checkout to get 15% off through then end of February) to share their pragmatic take on solo UX practice, deftly balancing the application of human-centered research insights with the need to show the business value of UX work. We talked about: the origins of their book, "The UX Team of One," in Leah's early UX work at Adaptive Path the crucial role of content in UX Joe's take on the importance of balancing user needs and business needs in UX practice Leah's approach to showing the value of UX and research work the challenges of practicing UX in organizations populated with complicated and complex human beings their pragmatic approach that emphasizes methods over frameworks and that can adapt to different organizational approaches to UX the power of sharing design artifacts with stakeholders who have differents points of view their take on the benefits of collaborative teams over silo-ed functional organization Leah's take on the importance of always talking to customers and getting real experiences in front of real people Joe's take on the importance of figuring out what actually needs to be done over trying to be an omnipotent UX expert Leah's bio In her 20+ years in the user experience field, Leah Buley has held just about every role in the stack: front end engineer, user interface designer, information architect, researcher, strategist, and market analyst covering the UX field itself. Her #1 takeaway from all those experiences is that all great products start from great human-centered insights. Leah’s experience spans agencies, startups, and Fortune 100 companies. She is currently a Sr. Director of Consumer Insights and User Research at Lovevery. She has previously held roles in user experience research, strategy, and design at Intuit, Invision, Adaptive Path, and Forrester. She is a co-author of the book The User Experience Team of One, now in its second edition. While at Invision, Leah developed a body of research on design maturity that is widely used by organizations to benchmark and evolve their UX practices. Her research has been published in HBR, Forbes, Communication Arts, Tech.eu, and Information Age. Her talks and workshops at venues like SXSW, UX Week, and UX London have a reputation for being high-energy, hands on, and just a little bit quirky. Connect with Leah online LinkedIn Joe's bio Joe Natoli is a UX consultant, author and speaker — and a household name in UX and product design. For three decades, he’s advised, trained and empowered the UX, design and product development teams of some of the world’s largest organizations, from Fortune 100 companies to U.S. Government agencies and startups. He has published ten books — the most recent being the second edition of the bestselling The User Experience Team of One with Leah Buley for Rosenfeld Media — and is a regular keynote speaker and lecturer at industry conferences and corporate events across the globe. Joe has also taught more than 350,000 students through his online courses and his own UX 365 Academy, at ux365academy.com, in addition to a private coaching practice. Joe’s approach to improving product UX and design focuses on addressing systemic, personal dynamics issues across individuals, teams and organizations: combating impostor syndrome and increasing self-confidence, improving communication and collaboration, addressing fear and dysfunction driving poor management practices and redesigning inappropriate, counterproductive processes. His experience has been that when these root causes are improved and solved, the output of the work—and the experience people have with it—improves dramatically. Joe lives in Washington DC with his wife Eli and three kids, and he strives to be the person his dog Rosie thinks he is. You can find Joe (as well as a voluminous collection of free UX + product design resources) online at givegoodux.com. Connect with Joe online LinkedIn GiveGoodUX.com Video Here’s the video version of our conversation: https://youtu.be/E2pYAWQcYF8 Podcast intro transcript This is the Content Strategy Insights podcast, episode number 208. Creating digital products is a team sport. Some of those teams are bigger than others. And some are just one person. Both content and UX practitioners often find themselves in roles where they are the lone practitioner of their craft. Leah Buley and Joe Natoli have both been there. They've recently revised their book, "The UX Team of One," which emphasizes pragmatic methods and shows how human-centered UX insights can create the most value for an organization. Interview transcript Larry: Hi everyone. Welcome to episode number 208 of the Content Strategy Insights podcast. I am really delighted today to welcome to the show Leah Buley and Joe Natoli. They're the co-authors of the second edition of the book, The UX Team of One, published by Rosenfeld Media. So welcome Leah and Joe. You're the co-authors of the book, but I know you do other things as well. So Leah, tell the folks a little bit more about what you're up to these days. Leah: Will be happy to and thanks so much for having us here today, Larry. So let's see. I am ... Yeah. I'm a UX industry veteran, I would say. I've been around making websites, actually, believe it or not, since the last century. And I started out a long time ago as a front end engineer and then a self-taught UX designer, which is how the book came to be, the first edition. More recently and for about the last decade, I've been focusing pretty intensely on research. So I currently lead a consumer insights and UX research practice at a startup called Lovevery. Larry: Oh, nice. Well, welcome. And Joe, what are you up to these days? Joe: Thanks for having me first of all. Greatly appreciated. I'm a UX consultant. I've been working in product design and UX for the last ... I don't know. 34, 35 years of my life. Spent a majority of the last, I don't know, maybe decade teaching online as well as consulting and having an opportunity to write wonderful books like this. 350,000 students at this point. I have to say that out loud because I've decided I'm going to start celebrating my successes finally at this age. And that's where I spend a lot of my time. UX 365 Academy is my own training site, but there's a lot that comes my way that excites me and this is a perfect example. When Rosenfeld approached me and said, "Hey, would you like to be involved?" And when I found out what book it is, I was like, "Yes. I don't even want to hear the rest of the sentence. The answer is yes, and I'll figure out how to make it happen." So I'm an ungodly fortunate human being. Larry: I listened to your podcast with Lou and the story, was that he didn't even finish asking the question. Well, yes, of course. But I'd love to back up. Leah, can you tell us a little bit about the origins of the book? The first edition that was what, 2013 it was published, I believe? Leah: Yep. Launched or published I should say, in 2013. The book came about actually from a conference talk that I did a few years before that of the same name. And it was really just my reflections on my personal experience as somebody working in-house in small organizations who understood this idea of user experience but worked with a bunch of people who didn't. The backstory for me is, as I mentioned, I was self-taught as a user interface designer really. I think I had some successes, but the experience was very ... It was stressful in a way too because I felt like I spent a lot of time in my own little space making pictures of screens and drawing boxes and arrows and in a way working out the arguments that I was going to make when I presented these things to my colleagues. Building up a defense. Leah: And sometimes they liked what I created and sometimes they didn't. But that feeling of I have to convince them though why this is the right thing didn't necessarily always feel great. Move along a few years into my career and I had the opportunity to join a consultancy. One of the really first user experience consultancies called Adaptive Path, which was in San Francisco and started in the early 2000s. I just saw there that they were doing a different user experience than the one that I was doing on my own. And it was so much less about making the best design and convincing everybody that it was the best design and so much more about a participatory process that got clients and team members looking at and thinking critically about the user experience together and then put customers into the mix so people could really see how it played out. And there was just better outcomes that came from that. Leah: And once I saw what that looked like, I realized, my gosh, if I had known any of these things when I was in-house on my own, I think I could have been a lot more satisfied in my work, but also more successful on behalf of the companies that I was working for. So this book was really my attempt to turn what I was doing and seeing an Adaptive Path into these micro practices that somebody in a small place without a lot of resources, without a lot of allies could do successfully on their own. And that was what the book was about. Larry: Yeah. No. And for folks who don't know because, well, I go back to that era as well, Adaptive Path was one of the premier UX agency. In fact, Jesse James Garret- Joe: They spear headed that whole movement. Larry: Yeah. I'm sorry, go ahead Joe. Joe: No. I'm sorry. They spear headed that whole movement. I can't overestimate the importance of that firm and everybody who worked there. It's impossible. Leah: I feel the same way....

January 9, 202531 min

Rob Punselie: Content Jobs to Be Done – Episode 207

Rob Punselie A truly customer-focused content strategy is the cornerstone of good customer experiences. Over the past 25 years, Rob Punselie has developed and honed content discovery research methods based on time-tested usability knowledge and the Jobs to Be Done product-development framework. This approach has helped him consistently deliver to his clients effective and durable content and customer experience strategies. We talked about: Content Kings, his customer experience consultancy, and their focus on the Jobs to Be Done methodology the surprisingly small number of jobs that exist in many large projects the JTBD methodology he has developed the need to cultivate deep knowledge of, and experience with, their methodology to use it the key factor to developing competency in using the methodology: curiosity the "magic quotes" that are key to identifying critical research insights his take on customer journey mapping how to be genuinely customer centered as you discern how to address the jobs that need to be done how staying customer-focused builds your credibility as a business how his approach encourages cross-functional collaboration the specific benefits to content practitioners of the JTBD approach Rob's bio Rob Punselie is a seasoned transformation leader and founder of ContentKings. With over 25 years of experience, Rob has guided organisations in government, healthcare, and business through complex digital transformations, always with a sharp focus on user needs and measurable results. Earlier in his career, Rob worked at ASML as a Publications Manager, leading international teams to streamline technical documentation in a high-pressure, global environment. As a lecturer at Leiden University, he spent eight years shaping the next generation of media and journalism professionals. Rob is also the author of eight non-fiction books, showcasing his expertise in communication, strategy, and innovation. Driven by the belief that IT should be as effortless as turning on a tap, Rob continues to help organisations make digital work — for everyone. Connect with Rob online Linkedin The ContentKings website CourtYard newsletter (in Dutch) email: Rob at contentkings dot nl Video Here’s the video version of our conversation: https://youtu.be/vNrhBzq66bw Podcast intro transcript This is the Content Strategy Insights podcast, episode number 207. At the end of the day, customers care very little about the content you have carefully designed and crafted. They just want to get something done. Teasing out the actual tasks and jobs they need to do is the foundation of a truly customer-focused content strategy. Over the past 25 years, Rob Punselie has developed and honed content discovery research methods based on time-tested usability knowledge and the Jobs to Be Done product-development framework. Interview transcript Larry: Hi, everyone. Welcome to episode number 207 of the Content Strategy Insights podcast. I am really delighted today to welcome to the show Rob Punselie. Rob is a Punselie, I'm sorry I screwed that up. We were practicing my pronunciation before the show, but Rob is the principal at ContentKings, which is actually they do more than content. They're a customer experience consultancy based here in the Netherlands. Welcome Rob, tell the folks a little bit more about what you're up to these days. Rob: Hi, Larry. I'm quite privileged to be here and such a good company and a long list of experts that I admire. What we're doing right now is a couple of projects. We've been working on a larger project, which is called the FK Farmacotherapeutisch Kompas. We've been working on content projects for the Brain Foundation and right now we're working together with a business accelerator program trying to facilitate their software programming and development right now. So that's the kind of thing that we do and we do a lot of research. Larry: Yeah, and that sounds like a general customer experience, usability kind of consultancy, but you still focus on content and this is a content strategy podcast, so we will kind of keep the conversation around that. But I think the first thing, I think a lot of my folks will know about Jobs to Be Done, that it's a thing that it exists. Could you provide just a quick overview of your conception and your take on Jobs to Be Done and how you apply it in your content work? Rob: Yeah. Well, originally we started off with using the task analysis view of Hackos and Redish in the nineties because that's more or less when we started doing our things and then we came across first Clayton Christensen's view on "Jobs to be Done". Clayton Christensen has this view of explaining that actually what customers are doing is they have a problem and they're hiring a solution to fix the problem that they're having. And he's written a couple of very good books about that. And then Tony Ulwick has this outcome driven innovation method, which is a methodology where you can actually manage innovation processes by quantifying what he calls underserved jobs in a particular market. And then you can really focus and deliver innovation and innovative products and services. And then of course you have Jim Kaulbach who has applied it very much into the UX and UI area, but actually Jobs to Be Done a very broad concept, and there are some, it has a lot of purposes and I really believe that it's of use in many situations. Larry: Yeah. Rob: Interesting. Larry: Yeah, no, it's just interesting that it's sort of like a Swiss Army knife in that sense, in that it originated as a business innovation tool and then kind of became a product kind of thing or the people's, I think, maybe perception of it kind of evolved that way. And then Jim Kalbach, I think because Rosenfeld published it, we kind of had this UX feel to it. But I guess the first thing about it, many of these kinds of practices, it's very based in research, both how it's done, but also how you start a project, like that FK project you just mentioned. Tell me how do you get started to identify these jobs and tasks that need to be done? Rob: That's very good. Actually, we always work, so we're called ContentKings, but we're not an agency. We say, "Okay, you give me 200 grams of content and we'll bake it for you." We do this a three-step method, so it's analysis, strategy, and then implementation. And in the analogy phase, we always go out in the field and we talk to the stakeholders, customers and the clients that are relevant to our client. And what we did in the case of the FK was that we really talked to doctors, GPs and specialists, in the hospital and we found out that actually those doctors, when they are subscribing medication, they had only had four jobs that they needed to do actually in that whole process. And when we came back with that kind of outcome of the research, that helps the product owner of this FK to all right, now we have to start the development process, the whole agile software development process. Rob: And that really simplified things very much because actually in the whole team where you have programmers, designers, and editors, you can simply say, "Okay, now we have four jobs and in this particular sprint we're focusing on this one job. What can you do from your discipline to support that job?" Larry: Interesting. Rob: And what it also does is it really specifies the scope of a project like that because you can actually say, "Okay, either what we're doing supports one of those four jobs or it doesn't, in which case it's out of scope." Just as simple as that. Larry: Yeah. Is that a common, when you look at any one function like that, because that's a big important thing and you mentioned before we went on the air that there's literally millions of uses of that product every year, but it really just boils down to these four jobs, I'm assuming. Is it safe to assume that there are a number of tasks that make up each of those jobs? Rob: Yeah, actually what's typical for Jobs to Be Done is that these jobs are usually quite recognizable. They're very plain. The four jobs of doctors when they're using this FK website is the first job is checking. Actually, it's verifying whether or not they can prescribe this particular piece of medication, and there are certain tasks in these dosage interactions with medications. The second job is finding an alternative, so they want to know about a different kind of medication that you want to do. The third one is policymaking because when they're in their whole practice, they quite often doctors have a change of heart when it comes to a different kind of medication that they want to try. And so they do that not on a weekly basis, but quarterly basis. They reviewed all the medication that they're prescribing. And the fourth one is studying, and that's all. And so either you support one of those four jobs or you don't have anything to bring to the table in the project. It's as simple as that. Larry: Interesting. And for any one job, I'm thinking of all the job descriptions I've had over the years and there's always subheadings everything rolls up to that are along those lines. And now you mentioned that you do a lot of field work to start this and that I know you have a, you've kind of developed your own methodology, right? How you conduct that research. Rob: Yes. What we found out is that, again, it's based on Hackos and Redish, common knowledge, but what we try and do is talk to people about their work. We ask people, doctors, for instance, when you are doing visiting patients, what does your regular week look like? We break down the activities in big chunks, and then with each chunk we also ask people, "Okay, what are the questions that you have when you are doing these chunks?" For instance, one of the chunks is visiting patients in the hall on the ward. Okay,...

December 9, 202432 min

Alan J. Porter: Storytelling for Enterprise Content Strategy – Episode 206

Alan J. Porter Storytelling is the oldest content practice. Alan Porter helps enterprises and content practitioners improve their story craft. Alan shows how better stories both convey the unique benefits of a business to their customers and improve cross-functional communication within organizations. We talked about: Content Pool, the enterprise content services organization he runs and its recent focus on storytelling the shift he's seeing in his clients' needs from formal to more informal communications the importance he sees in delivering consistent and aligned stories and content experiences irrespective of delivery channel the crucial role of memorable storytelling for brands his immersion in storytelling outside of his content work, writing fiction, for example the importance of changing your storytelling mindset from inside-out to outside-in his inclusion in his workshops of content practitioners from functional groups across organizations his belief that there's no B2C or B2B or B2B2C, just people communicating with each other the four C's of storytelling that he learned from an editor at Marvel comics - character, conflict, choice, and consequences - and how he applies them in business storytelling how he uses customer journey mapping in his storytelling work how storytelling techniques apply in internal stakeholder interactions predictable storytelling patterns used in Hollywood and how he applies them in his workshops how he engages and connects content people across organizational functions like tech comm, marketing, customer support, UX design, and even cyber security Alan's bio Alan J. Porter is first and foremost a storyteller, with close to 40 fiction and non-fiction book publishing credits. He is the Founder and Chief Content Officer of The Content Pool, that provides storytelling-driven content services to enable brands to deliver exceptional engaging customer experiences. He has held senior leadership roles in Content Operations, Product Marketing, and Customer Experience. Named one of the Top 25 Content Strategy Influencers and a Digital Strategy thought leader. Connect with Alan online The Content Pool website The Content Pool newsletter email: ajp at 4jsgroup dot com Video Here’s the video version of our conversation: https://youtu.be/GhVD3XR8NG8 Podcast intro transcript This is the Content Strategy Insights podcast, episode number 206. The craft of storytelling is the original content practice. From that famous cave painting 44,000 years ago, to countless campfire conversations over the centuries, to modern content strategy, content design, and marketing practices, humans have always been driven to share stories that inspire, inform, and educate. Alan Porter helps story crafters in modern enterprises communicate more effectively, both with their customers and with each other. Interview transcript Larry: Hi, everyone. Welcome to episode number 206 of the Content Strategy Insights podcast. I am really delighted today to welcome to the show, Alan Porter. Alan is a longtime storyteller in the content community and does a number of other things and has done a number of things in the content world. He's currently the Founder and the Chief Content Officer at the Content Pool, his company. So, welcome, Alan. Tell the folks a little bit more about what you're up to these days. Alan: Hey, well first off, thanks Larry. Thanks for inviting me. Yeah, the Content Pool is an enterprise content services organization, but actually, really interesting around the subject we're going to talk about, storytelling. Probably over the last nine months, my clients have pretty much told me that the thing they're really interested in is how to apply storytelling to their businesses. So I've been doing more and more of that, more consulting around that, running workshops for clients around actually bringing storytelling into their corporate communications, and that's corporate communications across the board. It's not just tech pubs, it's not just marketing, but actually how can they look at storytelling from a holistic point of view. So, that's become a really interesting area of focus. Alan: Still doing some of the more traditional stuff, the information architecture, the content strategy, the helping people choose CMSs, all that good stuff. But the real focus over the last nine months, thanks to some of my clients, has really been around this rapidly growing interest in applying storytelling. Larry: That's fascinating, and the fact that it's largely in-house, like corporate bizcoms kind of stuff, that's really... Do you have a feel for what's driving that, like the sudden interest in it? Alan: I think a lot of it is coming from their customers, and we touched on it just before we started recording, and the fact that we're now in an omnichannel world and they're looking to really be able to tell good, engaging stories and consistent stories, away from the traditional deliveries of, oh, here's another PDF, here's another white paper, here's a tech doc, piece of tech doc. There are customers, some customers still want those, but how do you really engage the customers in the first place is by getting them. There's a lot of noise out there, how do you capture somebody's attention? You really capture people's attention with empathic stories and through channels like TikTok and whatever social media platform of the day is. Alan: Video, YouTube, I've seen a definite move of people who are starting to do more interest in YouTube videos. I've got a client currently who is looking to take, they're in the... I like construction industry, they do safety equipment. They're looking to move all their safety briefings away from the PDFs to video. I got another client who we were just talking about podcasts before we started recording, I got another client who's talking to me about revitalizing their podcast series and making it more engaging and stuff like that. So there's that awareness I think, that the way the customers want to consume content is changing and it's going from a more formal to a more informal sort of model, if that makes sense. Larry: Makes perfect sense. And I'm also really curious now, I kind of had omnichannel is just like, we talked about this before we went on the air, like an obligatory buzzword to make sure we get to, but it sounds like it's fundamental to the work that you're doing. Do you have storytelling strategy that helps unite these? You're talking about podcasts and videos and PDFs and traditional web content and other social media content. Is there a lot of attention to aligning the stories across those channels? Alan: Yeah, I mean, one of the big things is to try and make sure that those stories are consistent across irrespective of whichever channel. I think so if you've got a YouTube video that links to the webpage, make sure that the webpage reflects that story or has some connection to it. There's no good putting a nice YouTube video out there that's a good, fun story that talks about your products, and then you don't give them the product information or you've got to be able to make sure that they align. If you've got a podcast, I've seen too many corporate podcasts that they do the podcast and then there's no place to go find follow up information. Alan: So, just making sure that that's a consistent customer experience because the one thing, I've talked about this all through my career is, as far as the customer's concerned, they're interacting with you as a brand. They're not interacting with your tech. They don't care that they're talking to the technical publications department or the finance people or customer support, or you consider they're 0.7 in the pre-sale cycle. The customer doesn't care about that, the customer doesn't know about that. All they know about is they're interacting with the brand, and as long as that brand, the stories that brand is telling and they're getting the right information, it's consistent, that's going to put you a step above everybody else. Larry: Yeah. The way you just said that too, it casts a really interesting, slightly different light on omnichannel than it's often talked about. It's usually talked about as channels that you shove the content through, but you just said a couple of things about like, they don't care where they are in your sales funnel. I mean, that's probably implied by the kind of content that you're giving them, where they think you are, but that sort of cross-departmental awareness in your storytelling, is that separate and distinct from your omnichannel kind of content strategy, or? Alan: I think it sort of applies to both. For me, I really like to start with figuring out the stories, irrespective of that functional group or even irrespective of the delivery channel. For my clients, as a company, who do we want to be? What sort of stories do we want to tell? What's the benefit? I go and I start every workshop I do with two things. The first thing is, we're going around on introductions and having everybody introduce themselves and what they do. I ask them to tell me what one of their favorite brands is and why do they like that brand? And I can say 100% of the time, what they do is they tell me a story about why they like that brand. They tell me- Larry: Interesting. Alan: At the end of it, I'm like, look, you all just told me brand stories about those brands. Can your customers say the same thing about dealing with you? And then I do- Larry: That's so great. That's reminding me of that definition of a brand, it's what people say about you after you leave the room. Alan: Yeah, exactly. Larry: And they tell stories. Alan: Yeah, yeah, which is actually going back, I'm going to tell a story about how I got interested in storytelling, because it's exactly that....

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