Learning the ropes as a content designer

30 Apr

In my first project working as a content designer I was a bit anxious. Although I was confident about copywriting, I didn’t know how that would translate to content design.

The project I was on would include user research and assessing user needs to create a service that was accessible, informative and understandable. I was working with the wonderful Neontribe, a digital agency working in user research, software development and design. With the team’s expertise in UX, my content experience and Crocstar’s huge experience in content design, we were shaping up to be a great team with the right combination of skills.

We were going to create content for a national safeguarding project. It was far from simple – we were writing for a varied audience, including non-profit organisations, big and small. There were lots of topics to cover so we started by conducting some user research.

Finding out what the users need to know

Research meant sitting down with charity staff or volunteers, who made up part of the target audience (users). We wanted to find out what users needed to know so we could present it to them in the simplest way possible. We designed bespoke content tests to help us understand their mental models and ways of thinking. Because the people using the content would be from different types of organisation, we needed to find out how to best structure the content so it was relevant and easy to navigate for all.

The user research sessions consisted of going through a series of activities with one or two people from a target audience organisation. We started off with a card sorting exercise, to help us work out the order of safeguarding priorities within that organisation. Through this we were eventually able to decide what the safeguarding topics should cover and how each one should be structured.

From this, we moved onto asking users to search for a safeguarding guide on the internet. We tracked their movements on the screen using recording software while they navigated their way through the web – also known as benchmarking. Benchmarking shows how simple (or complicated) a user journey is and how many clicks they take to find what they’re looking for. An important finding from this was that the information they were looking for wasn’t easy to find, justifying the need for centralised safeguarding content on the host website, NCVO.

Writing with subject matter experts (pair writing)

Writing about something you have little knowledge about is hard. There’s only so much Google can tell you about a topic, before things start overlapping and you get confused.

Once we knew what the user needs were (I’ve skipped over how we did that as we’ll write about it in another blog post), we were able to plan content, its structure and define exactly what it needed to achieve.

But. I was no expert on safeguarding.

That’s when you can use a a technique called pair writing. You work with a subject matter expert and take turns to create content.

If you have to create content on a specialised topic and want to make sure it’s accurate and cut down the back-and-forth of amends this is a way to involve people at the start of the process. They are the expert on the topic and you are representing the user and their experience.

It can be a great way to make sure the content is written in clear language, without jargon, while explaining any technical terms.

[Side note - if you like the sound of this but don’t know how to do it - Crocstar runs training on how to do pair writing. We’ve given it at the Houses of Parliament and the Department for International Trade and if it’s good enough for them...]

How to know that the content works

After months of writing, proofreading and copy editing, all the content was done. Now it was time for user testing - en a product or service is tried and reviewed by users – to make sure it meets users’ needs. In this case, we used an online survey to gather results.

The user feedback told us we needed to tweak the structure of the site and move a few bits of content around. It also confirmed users had no problems following the content in terms of structure and information. Hurray – I’d succeeded in my task. My nervousness from the beginning of the project subsided and I was feeling like I was starting to understand how important content design is in digital transformation projects.

The content is now live on NCVO’s Knowhow platform. Take a look.

Want to become a content designer?

Lots of projects like these need content designers so if you’re a content writer or working in another industry and looking to get into content design, look at our content design training.