What does a content designer on an alpha do?
During my time as a content designer for the Department for Education (DfE), I learnt a lot.
It was my first government project and I was a little nervous. I was used to creating content, but I hadn’t consciously considered the end-to-end user journey before. However, it sounded like a natural progression and luckily, I was supported by the brilliant research and design agency, Paper.
The objective of the project was to help schools save money by improving the way they buy goods and services. I worked on the Alpha stage through to Beta.
Looking back on my time at DfE, there were two clear parts. Part one consisted of:
absorbing lots of information
getting to know the team
brushing up on GOV.UK style guide
Whereas part two was more about:
working with subject matter experts
presenting content workshops
figuring out processes
From this, three things stick out as valuable learnings that I’ll take on board for future projects.
Think, then do
One of the most important things I learnt on the project was that it’s ok not to know the answers straight away. Often, it’s a good thing.
It means you can go away and mull it over (should that sentence be above the button or below? What would be easier for the user? Why?).
A lot of my time on the project was spent thinking about who the users were, what they wanted and how I could make this as simple as possible for them. To fully understand this, I spoke to individual members of the team to hear their thoughts and understand how their impact on the project had made a difference.
It was also really useful watching earlier show and tells of the changes the work has already been through and the reasons behind it.
Ask lots of questions
At the beginning of the project, I had lots of questions. Initially, I was anxious about asking them – would it make me look like I didn’t know what I was doing?
But looking back, I wish I had asked more, instead of trying to work out what specific acronyms meant or why we’d decided to change the style of the prototype.
I soon learnt that actually, asking questions was a large part of working on this project. And once I was comfortable with this, it made for interesting discussions with valuable insights that helped influence the changes to the content.
If in doubt, pair write
To try and meet the objective (save schools money), I needed to talk to subject matter experts. The experts are the people who work closely with school buyers.
To help school buyers understand what they need for their school, the team and I started to create guidance manuals on certain categories such as ICT hardware, cleaning and catering.
At first, working with the subject matter experts was difficult. It was a classic case of a curse of knowledge: we both knew a lot about our own subject area but little of the others. This made for difficult drafts and edits – I found their guidance to be wordy and complicated, while they found my edits cold and stripped of meaning.
After countless drafts and lots of back and forth-ing of Google docs, we decided to give pair writing a go. Pair writing is a great (but still tricky) way of creating content. As the name suggests, pair writing is great for working with the subject matter experts. They can advise you on what needs to stay in text while you can make it as straightforward and tailored to the style guide.
Although it can take a couple of hours, pair writing saves time in the long run – cutting out phone calls, emails and lots of comments in a document.
This technique sped up the process and formed a trusting relationship between me and the experts. It’s a great way to learn about someone else’s area of expertise and useful to teach them your own too.
Every government project needs a content designer
Although I felt confused and overwhelmed in the beginning, it was clear near the end, that the work I’d done had made a difference and couldn’t have happened without me.
And for those of you interested in the project I worked on, take a look at the buying for schools guidance page.
Whether you’re taking on your first content design role or your 50th, hopefully you’ll have found a few nuggets from my experience that will help you.
If you want to find out more about content design, don’t hesitate to give us a call on 020 7183 1431 or email hello@crocstar.com.