LavaCon 2017 - Reinventing a Traditional Content Team

@qdietrich @pkreymborg@qdietrich @pkreymborg
November 2017
Quentin Dietrich
@qdietrich
Workiva
Pat Kreymborg
Workiva
Reinventing a Content Team

to Produce User-Centered Content in an
Agile and SaaS Environment
Quentin Dietrich
Senior UX Writer
Workiva
@qdietrich
Pat Kreymborg
UX Manager
Workiva
@pkreymborg
Reinventing a Content Team

The plan
1. Getting to know you
2. About Workiva and SaaS development
3. Reinventing Content
past, present, and future

About you
● Currently working with a Agile/SaaS team?
● Planning to work with a Agile/SaaS team?
● Thinking about working with a Agile/SaaS team?

We Help Teams Work Smart
The leading cloud platform for reporting, compliance,
and data management.
Used by 70% of the Fortune 500

Where have we been?

7

Customer Success
Part of an Education Team
Video Team in Bozeman, Montana
Writers in Ames, Iowa
Dev CS COM PMM

Document everything
Describe how it works
Separate article/video content
No formal contact with development
No unified content strategy
General approach

Why should we move?
Closer to the source of product change
Exposure to user-centered design
Build - Measure - Learn

Welcome to Agile/SaaS!

Financial reporting in the cloud

Agile software development
No strict “waterfall” plans
No deadlines
Sprint reviews
Daily deployments - need advance warning!

What’s the problem we’re trying to solve?
Is it worth solving?
How do we solve it?
Okay to fail, but fail fast & iterate quickly
Software development teams
Build
MeasureLearn
14

Lead Engineer User Experience (UX)
Product Manager

Product Manager
Lead Engineer
User Experience (UX)
Interaction Design (IxD)
Visual Design
User Research
User Assistance

Where are we now?

Success Center
18

Now in UX
Task and solution-based
You are NOT the User
Lean content
App microcopy support
Link from the app

Help 1.0
20

Help 2.0
21

How did we do it?

Winning hearts and minds
A champion to bring everyone together
Meetings with Product Teams and Senior Management
The Importance of Content
How is Content Created
Time and Resources Needed
Setup meetings between writers and SMEs / Stakeholders

One step at a time
New platform
Metrics to track progress
Open the platform to search
Ontime delivery and improved quality
Getting CS to evangelize to customers

Proving ourselves
XBRL (CS/PS)
Spreadsheets
SOX and Internal Controls
Completely New Platform
Extremely Complex Solution

Validation

Usage vs Feedback
Observe your users
Talk with your users
User Researchers can help!

Publish On-time
● Feature Updates
● New Features
● New Products
Scoping to ensure success

Process
Establishing stakeholders and SMEs
Kickoffs to reinforce timeline and deliverables
Quality & performance to establish credibility
Announce delivery to stakeholders

Face the music
External 360 Reviews
Internal Retrospectives - “Retros”

Where are we going?

In a word… forward.

Principles
✓ Research-based - making content decisions based on shared knowledge
✓ Task-driven - aligning content with users tasks
✓ User-centered - focus on creating real outcomes for customers
✓ Lean content - reduce waste whenever and wherever possible
34

Content as Design
Content as Ecosystem
Content as Product
3 shifts

Content as Design1.

37
Writing is prototyping
Writing is sketching
Writing is iterative
Wireframes are just empty little boxes
if they don’t contain words.
Ryan Bigge
Shopify
https://twitter.com/biggeidea/status/861937700919799808

38
For products made of words
and pixels, words are at least
50 percent of the ship.
Elizabeth McGuane
Intercom
https://blog.intercom.com/how-words-build-a-product/

@qdietrich @pkreymborghttps://designintechreport.wordpress.com/

@qdietrich @pkreymborg
is the rendering of intent.
Jared M. Spool
UIE
https://articles.uie.com/design_rendering_intent/

CONTENT UX
Content Strategy
Voice & Tone
Microcopy
Content Modeling
Content Prototypes
Style Guide
Voice Design
Journey Mapping
Empathy Mapping
Interaction Design
Task Analysis
Personas
Patterns
Prototyping

CONTENT UX
Core Content Model Empathy Mapping

Content as Ecosystem2.

Help Articles
Terminology
App Content
Blogs
Social
Media
Brand
Content
Email
Email
Community
Email
Webinars
Release
Notes

??

Help Articles
Terminology
App Content
Release Notes
Blogs
Social
Media
Brand
Content
Email
Webinars
Email
Community

“
A content ecosystem map is a visual representation of
your content reality—what you have and where it is.
At many organizations, the only complete picture of
their content reality exists inside a single person’s
head.
Scott Kubie
http://braintraffic.com/blog/an-introduction-to-content-ecosystem-maps

@qdietrich @pkreymborg@qdietrich @pkreymborghttp://braintraffic.com/blog/an-introduction-to-content-ecosystem-maps

Content as Product3.

Find the right content problems to solve
Focus on shipping to customers
Deliver customer and business value
Prioritize work based on market demand
Tie efforts to business goals and revenue
53

What you do
SUBSTANCE
What you create
OUTCOME

So what now?

Takeaways, it’s worth it!
With your customers
● Invest in user research to understand your customers’ needs
● Gather customer feedback to validate content
Within your organization
● Need someone to evangelize & manage relationships
● UX Onboarding
● Listen to customers
● Do frequent team Retros
● Gather stakeholder feedback - 360s

Thanks!
Questions?
Quentin Dietrich
Senior UX Writer
Workiva
@qdietrich
Pat Kreymborg
UX Manager
Workiva
@pkreymborg

LavaCon 2017 - Reinventing a Traditional Content Team

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