The Shortcut to Oz: Lessons Learned on 3 Content Journeys — Lauren Moler, Alex Hunter and Jessica Pease
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Has a new project or role ever made you feel like you’ve been carried off by a twister? Are you searching for the Great and Powerful Content Strategy Oz to get you back to better content? These three intrepid travelers fought off witches and flying monkeys on their content strategy journeys. They brought back tools and techniques to help you get to Emerald City with a little less drama. Message architectures, customer journey maps, mental models, oh my! This presentation was given at Content Strategy Applied USA on November 17-18, 2014
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The Shortcut to Oz: Lessons Learned on 3 Content Journeys — Lauren Moler, Alex Hunter and Jessica Pease
- 1. The Shortcut to Oz Lessons Learned on 3 Content Journeys
- 2. “If we don’t laugh, Toto gets it?”
- 4. What will you get on the way to Oz?
- 5. “If we don’t laugh, Toto gets it?” Let the journey begin.
- 6. The Brain
- 7. The Problem We had a big findability problem and wanted to do a redesign. But we didn’t know what customers were looking to find.
- 9. “I could while away the hours, conferrin’ with the flowers, consultin’ with the rain, And my head I’d be scratchin’, while my thoughts were busy hatchin’, if I only had a brain.” Scarecrow The Wizard of Oz, 1939
- 10. Mental Models by Indi Young The Solution Mental models. A way to map your content to customer’s needs and questions.
- 12. CONTENT Our Mental Model USER NEEDS Red = Gaps
- 13. Our Mental ModelSENIOR DESIGN Why should I use NI tools for my senior design project? How can I use NI tools for my senior design project? Lab/VIEW Student Community-Project Library (https://decibel.ni.com/co ntent/groups/loop?view= documents#/?tagSet=10 43)
- 14. Tasks came from: • Employees • Product Marketing • Sales • User Experience • Customer Support • User Research • Usability • Surveys • Focus Groups • Market Research • Analytics, particularly search Then define user tasks
- 15. Our Mental Model
- 16. What we learned • We had gaps • We de-prioritized key tasks in favor of Marketing offers. • We weren’t reusing content. • We had some good content
- 17. 2Results are from a single product line. Contacts numbers are from web only. 70%Increase in contacts 51%Increase in online revenue 2 Results from first project
- 19. Before • Time: 4 months • Method: Analog • Included: Everything • Categories: Yes/No • Summary: Whole mental model After • Time: 2 weeks • Method: Mural.ly • Included: Research • Categories: Colors, Detail • Summary: Bullet points in a deck Making Mental Models lean
- 20. “...Once I had brains, and a heart also; so, having tried them both, I should much rather have a heart.” -The Woodman The Wizard of Oz, Frank L Baum
- 21. The Heart
- 22. The Problem Credit applications are a dime-a-dozen. They’re robotic and full of legalese. So how can we humanize them?
- 23. Customer-driven innovation DEFINE DESIGN DELIVER DISCOVER Engage with customers Focus & refine problem area Be generative in solution concepts Select, prototype, and test with customers Iterative refining DIVERGENT CONVERGENT
- 24. CUSTOMER Jim M. Age: 33 IT professional CUSTOMER GOALS CUSTOMER PROBLEM STATEMENT HOW PAYPAL CAN HELP Jim knows he could get a better credit deal, but he is time-poor and finds new applications arduous… so he sticks with what he’s got. PAIN POINTS • Existing PayPal Customer • Regular internet user • Makes occasional big-ticket purchases NEEDS • How does it work? • Where can I use my credit? • What offers are available? • How quick is the application? PRIMARY • Get the best credit deal available • Make his purchase • Comprehension of product • Finds application forms confusing • Personal & financial questions • Understanding of offers • Application time • Making that final commitment to open • Explanation of key value props (Video and microsite) • Support on hand if customer needs it (FAQs, Help Center, CS) • Clean and simple design of app flow • Clear content and supportive tone • Next steps (offers and places to buy)
- 25. Customer Journey
- 26. KPI Reduce drop-offs in the application process Hypothesis Address concerns at key points in the user journey and we can mitigate these potential drop-offs.
- 27. Connecting on an emotional level
- 28. What we learned • The first rule of Content Strategy club • Involve your partners at the earliest possible stage • Prove that you can deliver • Build from the customer up, not the business down
- 29. “Hearts will never be practical until they can be made unbreakable….” -The Wizard of Oz to the Tin Man
- 31. KANSASME
- 33. © 2014 PayPal Inc. All rights reserved. Confidential and proprietary. Create (and help others create) consistent, trustworthy content to tell an engaging story everywhere PayPal Credit goes.
- 34. © 2014 PayPal Inc. All rights reserved. Confidential and proprietary. 34
- 35. The Problem End-to-end content for my product is owned by many teams – we come from different disciplines and different countries. We all need to speak the same language.
- 36. Content Strategy at Work by Margot Bloomstein The Solution The message framework. A way to start the conversation and find a common language
- 37. The Method • Get the stakeholders in a room • Give them 100 cards to sort • Keep the conversation going • Take copious notes (or record it)
- 40. PRODUCT AREA KEY ATTRIBUTES KEY MESSAGE REASONS TO BELIEVE ACQUISITION ONBOARDING SERVICING • Easy to use • Trusted and safe • There when you need us • The application process is simple –get an answer in seconds. • PayPal = Secure financial information • Available at most places PayPal is accepted With PayPal Credit, you get a secure & flexible line of credit that makes it easier to buy the things you love. • We help you get started with educational email & easy-to-use servicing experience. • When you see PayPal Credit on a merchant site, you know eligible BML purchases are covered by PayPal Purchase Protection & zero fraud liability. • We give you lots of ways to pay – online, by mail, one-time & repeat payment options. PayPal is there every step of the way to help you get the most out of your PayPal Credit account. • Welcoming • Trusted and safe • Customer-oriented • Welcoming • Trusted and safe • Customer-oriented PayPal Credit is built into your PayPal account so you can track your purchases & pay your bill all in one place. • The interface is clean and simple. • We send you friendly reminders to help you avoid fees or late charges. • You can set up repeat payments so you don’t have to worry about the bill at all.
- 41. “We’ve never had anything like this before.”
- 42. What we learned • Never be afraid to say “hello” • Circulate and share • Just because you built a message framework doesn’t mean you’re done
- 43. “Put ‘em up. Put ‘em up.” -- The Cowardly Lion
- 44. So you made it to Oz.
- 45. Alex Hunter @angryyoungalex Lauren Moler @merrymoler Jessica Pease @moregrist Let’s keep in touch, shall we?
- 46. “Going so soon? I wouldn’t hear of it. Why my little party’s just beginning.” -The Wicked Witch of the West
Editor's Notes
- TITLE SLIDE Hear me? ‘Welcome to our Wizard-of-Oz themed presentation.’ ‘My name’s Dorothy and I’m from Kansas.’
- Real name. Long way from home. Return to spiritual home. Why are we here? Discuss 3 content journeys. A journey of discovery if you like. Is Content Strategy the great and powerful Oz… or just a little old man behind the curtain?
- We’ll discuss our journey.But there were a number of twisters. Our own personal storms we had to overcome. Journey. PayPal has been interesting journey.
- So what will you get? Well, we’ve had to cut this down in the essence of time, but you’ll hear from: Lauren (brain) ‘mental models’ to solve findability Jessica (courage) ‘messaging architecture’ to ensure global consistency
- TITLE SLIDE
- Content slide
- Dana – You had the Scarecrow quote here. Do you prefer the image or the quote? Because we couldn’t readily answer the question of what customers were looking to find, we ended up an awful lot like the scarecrow. Although we had the best of intentions, we would while away the hours in a conference room, speculating amongst ourselves what people were looking for.
- Content slide
- Content slide
- Content slide
- Content slide
- Content slide
- Do you mean for the lower part of this page to appear at this point in the preso? Seems like something is off on the animation.
- Content slide
- Content slide
- Full page image slide
- Dana – Do you have a mural.ly board you can show?
- Content slide
- TITLE SLIDE Define what we mean by ‘heart’: empathy, understanding, the ability to form and build relationships, understanding your customers
- Here was the problem. On product called PayPal Credit
- We used a technique called CDI. Essentially building products ‘based on customers, not numbers’ Broad-based and then narrow the focus. Iterative.
- Define this problem statement
- Plotted user to the journey. Sketched. This is an application form that user can click out of.
- Empathy with business. Re-translate into a language they can understand. “Put it in a language the business can understand”
- Time-management.
- Kate Kenyon
- Content slide Don’t lose faith. It’s not easy trying to win hearts and minds.
- Hi, I’m Jessica Pease and I’m going to talk about how courage pertains to my CS journey. I actually have a pretty bad case of stage fright, so that’s one thing, but at work, I border on overconfident. Tech Writer for years. Bored. Joined design team so that I could influence experiences directly. Summer camp. Then on my first big project at PayPal, my boss said “I need you to be the lead content strategist for this global product.” Strategist. Hmm. All of sudden, I get weak in the knees. And why is that?
- Well, obviously, it’s because I’m not in Kansas anymore. I’m completely out of my comfort zone and despite wanting new challenges, I sincerely considered clicking my heels together and heading back to my old boring job.
- I’m serious. I was lost. Sadly, Google maps failed me this time. So I decided I needed a plan. First I have to figure out what it means to be a Content Strategist at PayPal. I asked around and it seemed like it was still being defined. Great. I was so hoping for a template or a checklist. In the words of my 5th grade teacher in Boston, “Jessica needs structcha.” So, I gave myself a definition.
- As a content strategist, I would have this as my North Star. Seems simple enough, right?
- When I tried to find all of the people and the content, it looked like this. These people are ALL touching content. Many of them are experts in their fields – comms, marketing, servicing credit. They’re not really all talking to each other. And, I’m the new kid on the block. I hear gossip that some of these people are territorial and no into newbies. What’s that sound? Oh, that’s just me hyperventilating.
- And I need a way in.
- Content slide
- Content slide Would be cool to show attributes moving into columns?
- Full page image slide
- Content slide
- Content slide We then used the conversations that came out of that exercise to build a message framework. This is something any content creator can use to guide how they write about PayPal Credit.
- Sure, this is qualitative feedback, but this quote came from the toughest nut to crack – the product owner who scared people. And it wasn’t even true – they’d had value props and other things to work with in the past to keep people on the same page – but the awareness pf our interconnectedness and the explicit desire to work together to provide a consistent and engaging experience wasn’t there.
- By facing my personal twister, I found out I that I actually really enjoy facilitating workshops. I want to find more opportunities to work with cross-functional groups this way. And I lost that fear that I’d made a grave mistake in leaving my comfort zone – I’m psyched to learn more an more about design and I realized being a content strategist was not really something new for me – it was just a different way of looking at my job and my purpose in the org.
- Recap – we talked about solving big information architecture problems with mental models, conquering dry subject matter by connecting with the hearts of our customers, and facing tough organizational challenges by finding the nerve to listen and collaborate. At the end of the movie, the Wizard of Oz leaves and names Scarecrow, Tin Man, and Lion as the new stewards of the Emerald City. The things they thought they lacked, they now fully possess and you get the sense that they’ll do a great job. That’s really the lesson in the journey to Oz. If you are facing your own personal twister or flying monkey, remember that you have what it takes to conquer it. Content Strategy might turn out not to be a magical and all-powerful wizard, but it might help you get where you want to go after all.
- We have __ minutes for Q&A. If you want to keep the conversation going, you can contact us this way. We’d love to hear about your twisters and how you made it through the storm.
- Q&A. This would be the final slide of the whole presentation