I recently contributed my thoughts and experiences with “content ROT.” “ROT” stands for “redundant,” outdated (or obsolete) and “trivial” content on a website, or any digital platform. Here’s what I presented to graduate students in a content strategy class: Content ROT — what it is From my understanding and experience, “content ROT” refers to the current “bad” state
Read on »content strategy
A reminder: What your stakeholders want vs. what your users want
I recently was reminded of one of my favorite diagrams which depicts how content strategy is often ignored. It’s this simple: Credit: xkcd.com Right?! Doesn’t every website you’ve ever visited have this problem? Just swap out “university website” with “news website” or “health insurance” website … or anything else. I particularly love the “full name
Read on »Visualizing content strategy within UX design
Here is one interpretation of content strategy within the bigger picture of UX design. Content strategy covers areas of UX design including the collection of content, writing, editing, producing, managing, governance, style guide production and collaboration with everyone within an organization who has ownership or expertise in a content area. Collaboration with content owners might
Read on »Content strategy: Delivering structure to ambiguous things
I was recently asked during an interview for a UX job if I thought of myself as a person who likes structure or ambiguity more. This struck me as odd. Not because it was a bad question. It was an excellent question. But I fumbled the answer. Maybe that was the point, yet it bothers
Read on »Combining content strategy and UX design
As someone who has worked in content production and management, I can tell you it can feel like the backbone of everything, that everything lives and dies with your content production, the quality of the content, and how well you govern and manage it all. Maybe that feels like a bias statement to you, especially if you believe design
Read on »Award-winning news page design — Tragedy on the Trail
The Michigan Association of Broadcasters recently awarded me and my colleague a “best in category” award for new media. “Tragedy on the Trail” is a section on ClickOnDetroit dedicated to our coverage of a murder case in Armada, Mich. We are humbled to have received such an award. Hopefully it means we helped bring closure to
Read on »