Ep. 8 – Content design: Resetting the conversation around content – Sarah Richards

In this episode, we talk with Sarah Richards of Content Design London, the founder of what has become an entire movement in the world of content: content design.

Like all good movements, and in line with the movement's own philosophy, it is synthesis and clarification of what came before. Content design has aspects you might consider content strategy, UX research, and customer journey mapping, all under a unified umbrella discipline. It is a research-driven approach to passing content requirements, planning, content strategy and copywriting through a design thinking and service design lens. It’s based on a research and human-centric approach which puts user needs at the center of all content decisions. Rather than considering producing a deliverable or format in a channel as a goal – for example, creating a webpage or video – the goal is satisfying the requirements laid out in a user story. 

In our conversation, we discuss how content design came to be and how Sarah both needed it and used it to reset the conversation with the entire organisation of UK government about what a content professional is and does, and how the inter-team dynamics need to work to make sure that content is meeting the user's real goals.

Finally, we discuss the many resources that Sarah publishes where you can learn more. Oh, and Noz gets his first job-title change in over a decade!