Content Strategy Insights

Designing content for immersive experiences has been around longer than you might think. Many people jump straight to modern VR headsets when they think about immersive digital experiences, but the craft of immersive content design also shows up in applications like location-aware text alerts and games like Pokemon Go. Preston So has just written the first book on immersive content design, drawing on his unique background in programming, product management, design, and content strategy.  https://ellessmedia.com/csi/preston-so-2/

Building a content design team is typically a long process. At Hotjar, Kaysie Garza has had the chance to build a new content-design practice with two colleagues at her side from the very beginning.  Hotjar offers a variety of research products, so Kaysie and her team have also been able to inform their work with plenty of research insights. https://ellessmedia.com/csi/kaysie-garza/

Content has always been a key element of any design system, but content designers have only recently become part of these system teams. It's still early days, but the role of content in design systems is evolving rapidly. Rebekah Wolf has been part of that evolution through her work as a content designer on Microsoft's Fluent design system. She has also built a professional community around the subject with the Design System Content Club Slack that she founded and facilitates. https://ellessmedia.com/csi/rebekah-wolf/

Sheryl Cababa wants to help designers of all kinds cultivate a systems-thinking mindset. Her new book - Closing the Loop: Systems Thinking for Designers - shows designers how they can expand their impact by adding a systems-thinking lens to their view of their work. Rather than setting out specific methods or practices, Sheryl focuses on how to leverage systems concepts like interconnectedness, causality, and wholeness to help you design better experiences. https://ellessmedia.com/csi/sheryl-cababa/

Debbie Levitt discusses customer journey mapping and task analysis. She emphasizes the importance of adopting the customer's perspective and avoiding assumptions in journey maps. Qualitative research, including observation and conversation, is crucial for gaining insights. The speaker critiques the focus on speed in Agile and Lean practices and discusses challenges in implementing customer centricty. Task analysis is highlighted as a key tool for understanding the customer journey.

Content strategy work is largely about language and how people use it. So to do our best work, we need to have a strong understanding of the language ecosystems we navigate. Jane Ruffino comes to content strategy and design with a background in archaeology. She shows how practices that archaeologists use to understand how different cultures name and label things can be applied to content work. https://ellessmedia.com/csi/jane-ruffino/

Technical content strategy has evolved dramatically over the past 25 years, and Sarah O'Keefe has had a bird's-eye view of the whole process.  As the CEO of Scriptorium, a leading content-operations consultancy, Sarah has both witnessed and participated in the massive changes that have unfolded in the world of technical documentation. https://ellessmedia.com/csi/sarah-okeefe/

The benefits of inclusive design practices are clear: better business results and more satisfied users of our digital products. Our task now is to sharpen our focus on inclusion in our content-design craft. We also need to get better at convincing leadership to support this work. Jonathan McFadden has been practicing inclusive design for years and gets better every year at persuading executives and managers to support this important work. https://ellessmedia.com/csi/jonathan-mcfadden/

Sam Bhagwat is the co-founder of Gatsby, a popular framework for creating content experiences. He is also the author of Modular: The Web's New Architecture. If you're not sure how the terms "headless," "decoupled," or "composable" might affect your content work in the future, the book can help you understand these concepts and the technical ecosystems that enable them. https://ellessmedia.com/csi/sam-bhagwat/

If you stop to really think about it - and Torrey Podmajersky has - everything is content.  We think of content as the words, pictures, and recordings that we view online and in apps and other digital products. But even when words and illustrations are removed, the graphical elements and technical experiences that surround still them convey meaning, which is the main job of content.  Therefore, everything is content.  https://ellessmedia.com/csi/torrey-2/