Mobile Web, Part II.

Mobile Web, Part II

[ Figure 1 ]

According to Karen McGrane, author of "Content Strategy for Mobile" ( see figure 1), adaptive content that is as good as National Public Radio's has to offer 5 different elements, it's:

• Re-usable 
• Structured 
• Presentation-independent 
• Metadata is meaningful
• Interface has usable CMS (Content Management Systems)1 

[ Figure 2 ]

Re-suable contentis what it sounds like; content that can be used in more than one place. This isn't a new idea. When I was developing content for The Health Navigator Kiosk (see figure 2) for Blue Cross & Blue Shield of Massachusetts (BCBSMA), our content — as we developed it — didn't reside in a specific place — it was resident in a hierarchy within a database. From there it could be accessed to work within the kiosk, the website, sales presentations and public relations and promotional activity.

But things changed. And we began to think about content differently. If we only knew then what we know now. Hmmm? We began to think about content as something that goes in some place. But as Karen McGrane says we have to think about it differently, or "... the most fundamental challenge is a change in (our) mindset.2

Structured content to me is a misnomer because as Rachel Lovinger, Content Strategy Director for Razorfish, says, "The more structure you put into content the freer it will become."3   And this is all about database work and activity, similar to how we housed our content for The Health Navigator for BCBSMA — one place many uses.

We now have to think about content as "chunks of information" or content modeling, which is the "...process of defining what your content is and how to chunk it up into your database."4

To me, among all of these elements of adaptive content — this is one of the most critical. It's how you think about your content in terms of "process" —or how is it going to deliver to the channel/device.  McGrane says, "With adaptive content, your goal is to create a flexible base of content with a variety of structured content objects to cover a wide range of uses and contexts."5

All of this discussion is about how content needs to "morph" itself depending upon the "request" that is being made of it, or as McGrane says that creative responsive content 
( through responsive web development ) "automagically" re-formats itself to channels/devices/bandwidths/platforms. 6

Presentation-Independent content (PIC) is an enigma to me. I honestly had difficulty understanding its place as one of these elements. And that is mainly because it feels like PIC is all about general web practices that we are all faced with when programming a site, or:

•  platform variability
•  device requirements
•  user interface variance (mac vs. pc)
•  layout
•  animation
•  formatting

And so we need to think about this — separating the content from its "presentation."  McGrane calls this "separation of content from form," and she quotes information architect, Rick Yagodich, who says perfectly:

If an element of content is to be reusable — say rendered onto a website, into a print publication, through a mobile app, accessed via an API feed — it must exist in a form other than pre-formatted HTML. The element needs to be clean, a self-contained value." 7

Oh! Yah!

Meaningful metadata has gotten a bad rep because, let's face it — it's definition is kind of redundant — or, metadata is the data of data. And very honestly, it is critical to adaptive content because the types of metadata that you create for this need is specific to the various elements of adaptive content. Ok, what the hell does that mean?

• Creating specific metadata for content re-use allows you to target individual content to different platforms so each platform knows what to do.
• "When we talk about content models, content packages and content chunks (structured content) — we're really talking about metadata."
• PIC states that "we need to develop ways to encode...meaning in ...content — through metadata that tells us what the content means, not just how it should look. [ all 3 bullet points, 8 ]

Usable CMS is a difficult subject matter to summarize, and McGrane says it all with this:
"A good user experience in a CMS depends on having a well-defined authoring and publishing workflow."9  A workflow must include standards and guidelines, particularly if there are none in place before you get there. Because of the fact that CMS itself is very different from one version
to another — I am going to limit my summary about this in this blog. Please see and read McGrane's expert summary about this. Buy the book. 
(I get no kickback from this.)


There's much more to come in Content Strategy, Part III.

Stay tuned to the station.

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1 "Content Strategy for Mobile," Karen McGrane, A Book Apart, 2012, page 53.
2 Ibid, page 54. 
3 Ibid, page 58.
4 Ibid. page 59.
5 Ibid. page 64.
6 Ibid. page 65.
7 Ibid. page 67.
8 Ibid. page 74. 
9 Ibid, page 75. 

Mobile Web, Part I

Mobile Web: Part I

Figure 1 - Click to make image larger

From now on, web development will change. Actually, it already has, but I am noting this now. From now on when we develop content we need to think of it as components with compartments — the bits and pieces of a total package. "Packages, not pages."1

National Public Radio (NPR) already has it figured out with their COPE System = "Create Once, Publish Everywhere." Check out this latest article about mobile web from "A List Apart."

"Get your content to go anywhere because it's going to go everywhere." ~ Brad Frost 2
(bradfrostweb.com)

In understanding this it just makes so much sense that you wonder why this had to actually evolve — why didn't we think of this years ago? There are many components to mobile web, some just are a rehashing, or fine-tuning of old design principles; and others, like "adaptive content" — really need to be studied, understood and memorized for future use.

And according to Rich Ziade, CEO of Readability, "...he thinks this problem [issue] is even bigger than mobile...'content needs to be ready to go in all these new contexts. Content is being plucked and refitted everywhere.' " 3

The most important thing about content is that we usually think about it as something that goes somewhere. But now you have to stop thinking about it that way.

"What would it look like if you thought of your content as a service that could be accessed by a variety of different platforms, rather than as a substance that lives in a particular location." 4

While I have been reading and researching this subject I have thought about it in two different ways, metaphorically and as a process, or:

• like a juke box 
• or as a "continually optimized content process" (COCP) (see Figure 1)

More about those references in Part II. 

Ultimately, this will be much more work, but the results will be so worth it in dollars and "sense. Imagine that the 60% of people who now ONLY access the web via their smartphones will be able to get the same type of experience they would on a desktop — that's hard to estimate,  but it's not a bad thing.

(More to come in Part II,  further discussion about adaptive content, responsive content, the juke box and COCP)


1 Content Strategy for Mobile, Karen McGrane, A Book Apart, 2012, page 64.
2 Ibid, page 47.
3 Ibid.
4 Ibid, page 48.

Posted by Rob Griffin at 8:17 AM   

 

 

How Do You Do Content Strategy?

     The three best known "content strategy" authors (Kristina Halvorson, Erin Kissane and Richard Sheffield) all say that no content strategy project begins the same way and each is like a fingerprint, uniquely different. Kissane says, "IN CONTENT STRATEGY, there is no playbook of generic strategies you can pick from to assemble a plan for your client or project. Instead, our discipline rests on a series of core principles about what makes content effective—what makes it work, what makes it good.1”

     I agree, nothing that I have ever done, as far as I have so far, has ever started the same way.  While the components are the same and the principles should be as well — the targets, goals and outcomes for the client can be different; therefore different tools must be employed.  So, if that's the case — how do you begin?  Well, that's a good question. The way I start is to understand that there is an order to things, such as:

Preparation — Logistics: 

Research — Analysis

Organization

Development

Approval

Revision

Testing

This is "PRODART," if you will — an acronym to remember it.

   PREPARATION (logistics)

In this part of the process, you may ask: Who will I be working for? (name, address, contact information, etc.) How much will I be paid? And how will I be paid? Who is the Primary Contact? How will we communicate with each other...etc

Establish the purpose of the content that you are working on

Assess your target audience and the content that is most useful to them

Determine the scope of the project — how much? how long? ...etc

Select the various channels (animation, audio, blogs, social media, text, video, wikis) that best suits the content and determine the needed resources to pull the project off.

   RESEARCH

Interviews — note-taking

Documenting, cataloging sources

Surveys/questionnaires

Client tacit information process

Internet research

Website research (archives)

Directories

Discussion and support groups

Library research

Database

Workplace review

   ORGANIZATION

Exact vs. Ambiguous?

Sequential method (including Alphabetic)

Chronological method

Geographical method

Topical grouping

Task analysis

Audience specific

Cause and effect

Outlining

   CONTENT DEVELOPMENT

Organization style ---> leads to a form of "outlining"

Outlining ---> Paragraph development

Rough draft

Approval

Introduction --> Approval

Conclusion ---> Approval

Final Draft

   APPROVAL (sign-off)

   REVISION

Style guide cohesion

Unity, voice, coherence

Spelling, proofreading

Source check

Standards approval

Style guide recheck

   TESTING

This is something you should be doing all the time, but being able to check how your content acts or reacts in in various formats is something that should be checked and rechecked: Mac, Windows, Linux, iOs and Android. Testing the same content on multiple devices: desktops, laptops, tablets, and smart phones. Testing of style guides against multiple sections of the site. Testing of translation with native speakers, etc. etc.

   

Ok. That's a big list and not ever web project has the luxury of going through every item listed here, but honestly, it should be that way.  If we were writing a book, we would do this type of due diligence. But for some reason, other than time limitations, people don't believe that it is necessary to scrub content this thoroughly.

I often wonder if there will be a future time that "content" will be given its rightful place in the web development process, or it will be given the right amount of attention to thoroughly complete the job as it should be done.   

1  Excerpt From: Kissane, Erin. “The Elements of Content Strategy.” A Book Apart, 2011-03. iBooks. 

Check out this book on the iBookstore: https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/elements-content-strategy/id426814649?mt=11

Content Strategy; an eleventh hour suggestion?

Kristina Halvorson, in her epic text, "Content Strategy," in talking about UX design services agrees with the core services that UX has to give, but she says, "What I don't agree with is the way in which the majority of people who call themselves UX designers deal with content. That is to say, they don't."

Web designers think more about how things "look" than what is "said."

Legendary Harvard marketing professor, Theodore Levitt once said, “People don’t want to buy a quarter-inch drill. They want a quarter-inch hole.”  I say, “You don’t want a lot of content, you want content that matters.” How much ROT (Redundant, Outdated, Trivial) does your website have? Shouldn’t you care?  Don’t you want to get rid of it, or develop it correctly in a meaningful way? Wouldn’t better SEO help your cause?

Henry Ford once said, “If you need a machine and you don’t buy it, you will ultimately find that you have paid for it and don’t have it.”  I say, “If you don’t attend to your content to ensure it meets your business plan, then you will pay for it through its inefficiency.”

Clayton Christensen, author of “The Innovator’s Dilemma,” said, “Questions are places in your mind where answers fit.  If you haven’t asked the question, then the answer has no where to go.”  Good content is the receptacle for your customers questions. Good marketing always answers customers questions before they ask it.

GriffGraff, l.l.c.

GriffGraff Consulting is a small consulting group that focuses on web content strategy and information architecture.  We have been creating content for a variety of different websites since the inception of the internet in 1993. Our first project was Blue Cross & Blue Shield of Massachusetts' website, one of the first corporate websites to go live on the World Wide Web.