#Book: «Content Design» by Sarah Richards
Sarah Richards` book is so well written, designed, and printed, that I keep thanking myself for buying a printed version. It is a delight to hold this book in my hands.
This book is not about design as in graphics, icons, look and feel, colors, interaction and so on. It`s about the content that sits within the design.
After I`ve finished the book «User Friendly» by Cliff Huang with Robert Fabricant, I realized that seeing an interface as a whole is extremely important. I work with text, but to do my job well, I need to understand the bigger picture: to create a good interface, I need to know what is going on with a user (journey, expectation, behavioral pattern), with business, with society. Feeling, that it is too much for one person, I took «Content Design» as a lifeline, promising to teach me about how I can communicate in the most user-centered and efficient way for my audience.
Humans learn, evolve and adapt and you need to adapt with them. Assume nothing, question everything and test until you are sure.
Sarah gives a content design definition, that can only by itself help editor and writers become better specialists if they take it as a directive to act:
Content design means not limiting yourself to just words. Content on the web is often words, but not always. The point of content design is that you start with research to help you identify what your users actually need (which isn`t the same as what they say they want).
Then instead of saying «How shall I write this?» you say, «What content will best meet this need?»
The answer might be words, but it might also be other things: pictures, diagrams, charts, links, calendars, a series of questions and answers, videos, adresses, maps, calculators, spreadsheets, printable documents, and many more besides.
When your job is to decide which one of those, or which combinations of several of them, meets the user`s need — that`s content design.
And there are a lot of ways to build up your job as a content designer, Sarah describes step by step: how to write user stories and job stories, which content formats are there and how to choose which to use, how pair writing can help (this particular one was new to me, never tried writing in pair before).
The more I think about it, the more it seems obvious: we all, people creating something for other people, should be content designers. I mean, we all, whether writer, designer or manager, should think not only about our part of the job.
In Russia, we have a common saying «Initiative is punishable». This saying reflects a certain type of philosophy: when somebody suggests something, they will be put in charge of that, with no benefits, just additional responsibilities. So it is just logical to try to avoid initiative as long as possible, but no initiative — no new ideas, no thinking what is best for the users. And I, personally, don`t consider this concept as effective.
Content design stands on the opposite — «Be initiative, explore new tools and use them to create a better product». Content design is a win-win deal for everybody.
Berlin-based UX writer, editor.
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