2. Hello
I’ve 10 years of experience working in UX
(usability, information architecture, research
and content strategy) for diverse clients
including global ecommerce sites, financial
systems, medical software & charities.
I’m now a Product Manager at Immediate
Media, where I look after BikeRadar.com,
Cyclingnews.com, HistoryExtra.com,
Countryfile.com and a host of other passion-
driven brand sites.
5. The problem with UX & content
• We forget that content matters most
• Without good quality, appropriate,
findable content, digital services are not
fit for purpose
• No matter how much stylish design
patterns you layer on bad content, it
stays bad content
6. “It’s pointless to design a user
experience without a deep
understanding of the content that will
fuel that experience”
- KRISTINA HALVORSON
7. Digital Content
• Digital media (images, videos, audio etc)
• Words! Written text is the MOST
IMPORTANT part of the internet
13. CONTENT
WHAT IS IT?
HOW IS IT
DESCRIBED?
WHAT
RELATIONSHIPS
DOES IT HAVE?
HOW WILL IT
BE FOUND?
WHERE DOES IT
COME FROM?
14. Structured Content:
• High level: the site wide structure, how
all the content is structured
• Grouped: How a group of content types
are structured
• Specific: How a piece of content is
structured
15. Findability
Search Engines:
• Keywords
• Content Quality
• Data
Site Navigation:
• Menus
• Filters
• On site search
Other Content:
• Relationships
• Link Strategy
• Content Types
Social Media:
• Titles
• Visual Assets
• Sharability
25. Taxonomy
Term list: A standardised, controlled list of
terms or tags that are used consistently
Hierarchy: A structured taxonomy of
terms that have a structural relationship
with each other (e.g: Parent --- Child)
Thesaurus: Maps relationships between
items to help systems understand how they
relate
26. CYAN
Controlled Vocabularies
Controlling vocabularies used in taxonomy
term lists helps us avoid poor experiences,
such as:
Sprawling
terminology
Reduced
findability
Miss-match
with user’s
language
BRIGHT BLUE
0 Results
Wellingtons
Gum boots
AZURE
28. ACTIVITY #2
We have a lot of different content about
cheeses.
What sort of content types might these
be?
How might these content types relate to
each other?
30. Content Models
1. Create a set of ‘things’
associated with the
domain (get a domain
expert to work with you)
2. Join the ‘things’ together based on
their relationships e.g:
RECIPE <- - - -> INGREDIENT
Making a simple content model
35. Faceted Navigation
FIXED:
e.g:
• Geographic
• Alphabetical
These are closely
linked to you domain
and established
conventions
AMBIGUOUS:
e.g:
• Task-based
• Audience type
These are closely
linked to your specific
audience’s mental
model
42. ACTIVITY #3
Identifying Content Structures
1. Look for components that
could have relationships
with other content e.g: STAR
RATINGS
2. Create a list of all the
components that you could
standardise across all
reviews
ALL REVIEWS HAVE THESE ‘THINGS’:
• STAR RATINGS: with a value between 0
stars and 5 stars
•
•
•
•
43. ACTIVITY #3
Making Content Findable
1. Choose a ‘thing’ from
your list and explore
how it could make the
review more findable
2. Sketch out how users
could use an interface to
find content with this ‘thing’
Filter reviews by STAR RATINGS:
45. Metadata & Microdata
Metadata and Microdata help search
engines, APIs, feeds and content
management systems make sense of
content and improve its findability
They use controlled vocabularies to ensure
they are consistent.
49. Metadata
• Data about data
• Essential for findability: it makes
content understandable to search
engines and content management
systems
• Describes relationships between content
through taxonomies and content types
51. Microdata
• Stores data about content in context:
specific pieces of information are given a
structure so machines can take more
meaning from them
• Different standardised schemas exist e.g:
RDF, Schema.org, Dublin Core etc
52. Schema.org
Enables you to tag specific things within
HTML to give more context.
“Itemscope”: Broadly identifies the theme
of the thing
“Itemprop”: Provides the detail about the
thing
53. A simple author bio:
Aoife Glass
Women’s Editor, BikeRadar
I’m a mountain biker at heart, also drawn to the open road. I likes big long
adventures in the mountains. Usually to be found in the Mendip Hills or the
Somerset Levels in the UK. I’m passionate about women's cycling at all
levels.
54. <section itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/Person">
<span itemprop="name">Aoife Glass</span>,
<span itemprop="jobTitle">Womens Editor</span>
<span itemprop="affiliation">BikeRadar</span>.
I’m a mountain biker at heart, also drawn to the open road. I likes big
long adventures in the mountains. Usually to be found in the Mendip
Hills or the Somerset Levels in the UK. I’m passionate about women's
cycling at all levels.
</section>
Add microdata:
57. To Close:
Structured content makes content more
findable which is essential to any user
experience.
It blends multiple disciplines including IA,
content strategy, usability and SEO is
something UX PR actioners should
absolutely care about ;-)
58. Useful Tools
Trim: Content audit tool coming soon
Gettrim.co | @Trimvincible
Gather Content: Fabulous content workflow
tool
Gathercontent.com | @GatherContent
Hemmingway App: Lovely tool to test your
content readability
Hemmingwayapp.com
Google: Structured Data test tool
https://search.google.com/structured-data/
testing-tool/u/0/
59. Glossary
Content Modelling: The process of mapping the relationships between
pieces of content or information. A content model can include high level
relationships within a domain and more detailed relationships between
pieces of content.
Structuring Content: The process of taking content and breaking it into
parts to make it more findable and reusable for humans and machines.
Data Modelling: The process of modeling a database inline with the type of
queries it will need to handle.This is done by a developer.
60. Service Oriented Architecture: A development architecture that separates
data, processes/tasks and interfaces to make it more flexible. A service or
API (Application Programing Interface) acts as a middleman that processes
requests from the editorial interface and user interface with the information
stored in databases.
Content Management System: A system that enables a group of people to
manage content in a fairly straightforward way. Each CMS has its own way of
dealing with content types and favours a specific one, e.g:‘Posts’ in
WordPress. Some CMS platforms are much more flexible than others, for
instance Sitecore will enable you to build anything but it comes with the
challenge that it has to be built, whereas WordPress is restrictive but is ready
to go, out-of-the-box.
Glossary
61. Metadata: Data about data. Metadata describes information about the
content, such as structural information like author, publishing date, ID, or
taxonomy items in a format either defined by the CMS, or a universal
schema, or a mix of both. Metadata is used to find content based on specific
queries, so tools like search rely heavily on it.
Glossary
Taxonomy: In the context of creating and managing digital content a
taxonomy is a controlled vocabulary that is used consistently to describe
pieces of content. A taxonomy can have a hierarchical element to it, to
describe the relationship between different taxonomy items.
62. Planning Pages
Page Tables can
be used to
specify content
requirements at
the page level.
These were
originally
created by Brain
Traffic.
TITLE:
MAIN CONTENT
PRIORITY:
SECONDARY
CONTENT
PRIORITY:
PAGE OBJECTIVE: