The Design of Content: Strategies for Lasting Impressions

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©2014 Keith Anderson / mkanderson.com / @suredoc 1 @suredoc Keith Anderson: The Design of Content

description

Since the 1450s, we have been improving the reading experience. In a comparative instance, all of that work is seemingly discarded by the process of digital content creation and distribution. Is it possible to apply that history when we work with markup languages and distribute the same content over so many channels? Does the medium even matter anymore? In this session, you will hear an old take on a new problem. While there is some history, you will also be presented with possible solutions to problems of comprehension, retention, readability, and overall user experience from content.

Transcript of The Design of Content: Strategies for Lasting Impressions

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©2014 Keith Anderson / mkanderson.com / @suredoc 1

@suredoc

Keith Anderson: The Design of Content

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The Design of Content

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@suredoc #designcontent

#bigd14

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The Design of Content

DESIGN AND THE READING EXPERIENCE

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The Design of Content

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Some BackgroundSince the 1450s, we have been improving the reading experience

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The Design of Content

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Future OverlordsGestalt Psychology

What the eyes take in the mind processes as a whole.

• Background/Foreground• Law of Closure• Law of Similarity• Productive Thinking• Law of Continuity• Law of Proximity

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The Design of Content

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Jan Tschichold

The Form of the BookThe Importance of Tradition in Typography

1966

The form of our letters, the older handwriting, and inscriptions, as much as the cuttings in use today, reflects a convention that has slowly solidified, an agreement hardened in many battles.

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The Design of Content

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So What Happened?

Digital content and markup languages spurred the separation of content from formatting and chaos ensued

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The Design of Content

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Jan Tschichold

The Form of the BookThe Importance of Tradition in Typography

1966

Lack of pleasure in the usual, the commonplace, deludes one into the dark notion that different could be better.

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The Design of Content

And The Rest Is History

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The Design of Content

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Ask Yourself

• Just because you can, should you?

• Are you doing this because it’s pervasive rather than practical?

• Is imitation really that sincere?• If all your friends were flattened

by a steamroller, would you still design like that?

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The Design of Content

CONTENT WITH CONTENT

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The Design of Content

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Can Content Truly Be Alone?

Edmund Burke Huey

And so to completely analyze what we do when we read would almost be the acme of a psychologist's achievements for it would be to describe very many of the most intricate workings of the human mind as well as to unravel the tangled story of the most remarkable specific performance that civilization has learned in all its history. The beginnings of such an analysis and description are attempted with the help of many coworkers in the psychological chapters which follow the strange and fascinating story of how the book and page have grown to be is sketched in the chapters on the history of reading using the records of many patient scholars.

The psychology and pedagogy of reading1908

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The Design of Content

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Why Are You Creating Content?

• Profit• Entertainment (yours or your

readers?)• Education• Connections• Compliance• History

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The Design of Content

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Why Do You Have Readers?

• Product Support• Information Seeking• They Want Connections• Discourse Communities• You Are Unique• Fact Checking• You Don’t Really Know

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The Design of Content

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Content Strategy:The art and science of controlling the creation, storage, maintenance, and dissemination of words and their associated assets and context to be congruent with an organization’s goals.

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The Design of Content

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Stupid AnalyticsThe User Experience movement has simultaneously helped and hindered how we communicate

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The Design of Content

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The Huffington Post Model

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The Design of Content

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Coherence, continuity, and cohesion

Writing to serve a larger purpose will connect people in ways never anticipated.

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The Design of Content

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Your Job

To anticipate readers’ expectations and provide them with quality content within a context to help them achieve their goals.

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The Design of Content

CONTEXT IS KING

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The Design of Content

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Context Strategy

Deliberate use of all information available about readers to enhance reading comprehension, retention, and education.

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The Design of Content

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Context Strategy

Just like content strategy, context strategy is a plan producers must follow to achieve measurable goals.

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The Design of Content

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Context Is Abstract

Context has no concrete definitions, no universal standards, and may change with nearly any influencer.

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The Design of Content

OKAY, WE’VE PLAYED WITH THE NEW TOYS; IT’S TIME TO WORK

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The Design of Content

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Information Interaction Design

The intersection of three different disciplines:• Information Design• Interactive Design• Sensorial Design

If done well, these disciplines can help us create context consistently.

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The Design of Content

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Take Content Seriously

Write and Design with Purpose.

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The Design of Content

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Take Your Readers Seriously

People are not gadgets. Stop treating them as empty vessels with a bank account. Inform them.

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The Design of Content

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Take Writing Seriously

Employ your knowledge of a long and amazing history of human communication. Build on that proud tradition. The more seriously you take content, they more seriously your readers will take you and your message.

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The Design of Content

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Take the Work Seriously

Take the time to conduct reader research. Build profiles, conduct surveys, and make sure you understand what they expect from you.

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The Design of Content

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Questions?

@suredoc

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Bibliography• Bee, Oon Yin, and Professor Halimahtun M. Khalid. 2003. “Usability of Design by Customer Websites.” In The Customer Centric Enterprise, edited by

Professor Mitchell M. Tseng and Dr Frank T. Piller, 283–300. Springer Berlin Heidelberg. http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-642-55460-5_15.

• Behrens, Roy R. 1998. “Art, Design and Gestalt Theory.” Leonardo 31 (4): 299. doi:10.2307/1576669.• Carrell, Patricia L., Joanne Devine, and David E. Eskey. 1988. Interactive Approaches to Second Language Reading. Cambridge University Press.• Clapham, Caroline. 1996. The Development of IELTS: A Study of the Effect of Background on Reading Comprehension. Cambridge University Press.• David Collier. 1991. Collier’s Rules for Desktop Design and Typography. Addison Wesley Publishing Company.• Erik Spiekermann, and E. M. Ginger. 1993. Stop Stealing Sheep & Find Out How Type Works.• Golub, Benjamin. 2014. “Gutenberg Bible | Flickr - Photo Sharing!” https://www.flickr.com/photos/benjamingolub/5203602006/• Hsiao, Shih-Wen, and Jyh-Rong Chou. 2006. “A Gestalt-like Perceptual Measure for Home Page Design Using a Fuzzy Entropy Approach.” International

Journal of Human-Computer Studies 64 (2): 137–56. doi:10.1016/j.ijhcs.2005.05.005.• Huey, Edmund Burke. 1908. The Psychology and Pedagogy of Reading. The Macmillan company.• Jakob Nielsen. 2000. Designing Web Usability. New Riders Pub.• Jan Tschichold. 1991. The Form of the Book: Essays on the Morality of Good Design. Hartley & Marks Publishers.• Jared M. Spool. 1999. Web Site Usability: A Designer’s Guide. Morgan Kaufmann.

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Bibliography• Jeffrey Zeldman. 2001. Taking Your Talent to the Web: A Guide for the Transitioning Designer. New Riders Publishing.• John, Mark F. 1992. “The Story Gestalt: A Model Of Knowledge-Intensive Processes in Text Comprehension.” Cognitive Science 16 (2):

271–306. doi:10.1207/s15516709cog1602_5.• Kim Sydow Campbell. 1995. Coherence, Continuity, and Cohesion: Theoretical Foundations for Document Design. Lawrence Erlbaum.• Kristina Halvorson. 2010. Content Strategy for the Web. New Riders Pub.• Piet A.M. Kommers, Alcindo F. Ferreira, and Alex W. Kwak. 1997. Document Management for Hypermedia Design. Springer.• Piez, Wendell. 2005. “Format and Content: Should They Be Separated? Can They Be?” In .• Robert E. Jacobson. 1999. Information Design. MIT Press (MA).• Steve Mulder. 2007. The User Is Always Right: A Practical Guide to Creating and Using Personas for the Web. New Riders Pub.• The Elements of User Experience: User-Centered Design for the Web and Beyond. 2011. New Riders Pub.• “The Huffington Post Announces Record Year in Audience Growth, Video, Native Advertising, and International Expansion.” 2014. Yahoo

Finance. http://finance.yahoo.com/news/huffington-post-announces-record-audience-130000532.html.• “The Psychology and Pedagogy of Reading - Edmund Burke Huey - Google Books.” 2014. http://books.google.com/books?

id=bqFLMdfbNrsC&q=%22to+completely+analize%22#v=onepage&q=%22to%20completely%20analize%22&f=false.• Therrien, William J., and Richard M. Kubina. 2007. “The Importance of Context in Repeated Reading.” Reading Improvement 44 (4):

179–88.