The Design of Content: Strategies for Lasting Impressions

@suredoc
Keith Anderson:
The Design of Content
©2014 Keith Anderson / mkanderson.com / @suredoc 1

@suredoc
#designcontent
#bigd14

DESIGN AND THE READING
EXPERIENCE

Some Background
Since the
1450s, we
have been
improving
the reading
experience

GesFtaultt Pusyrceho lOogvyerlords
What the eyes take in the
mind processes as a whole.
• Background/Foreground
• Law of Closure
• Law of Similarity
• Productive Thinking
• Law of Continuity
• Law of Proximity

Jan Tschichold
The form of our letters, the older
handwriting, and inscriptions, as
much as the cuttings in use today,
reflects a convention that has
slowly solidified, an agreement
hardened in many battles.
The Form of the Book
The Importance of Tradition in Typography
1966

So What Happened?
Digital content and
markup languages spurred
the separation of content
from formatting and chaos
ensued

Jan Tschichold
Lack of pleasure in the usual, the
commonplace, deludes one into
the dark notion that different
could be better.
The Form of the Book
The Importance of Tradition in Typography
1966

And The Rest Is History

Ask Yourself
• Just because you can, should
you?
• Are you doing this because it’s
pervasive rather than practical?
• Is imitation really that sincere?
• If all your friends were flattened
by a steamroller, would you still
design like that?

CONTENT WITH CONTENT

Can Content Truly Be Alone?
And so to completely analyze what we do when we read would almost be the acme
of a psychologist's achievements for it would be to describe very many of the most
intricate workings of the human mind as well as to unravel the tangled story of the
most remarkable specific performance that civilization has learned in all its history.
The beginnings of such an analysis and description are attempted with the help of
many coworkers in the psychological chapters which follow the strange and
fascinating story of how the book and page have grown to be is sketched in the
chapters on the history of reading using the records of many patient scholars.
Edmund Burke Huey
The psychology and pedagogy of reading
1908

Why Are You Creating Content?
• Profit
• Entertainment (yours or your
readers?)
• Education
• Connections
• Compliance
• History

Why Do You Have Readers?
• Product Support
• Information Seeking
• They Want Connections
• Discourse Communities
• You Are Unique
• Fact Checking
• You Don’t Really Know

Content Strategy:
The art and science of controlling the
creation, storage, maintenance, and
dissemination of words and their associated
assets and context to be congruent with an
organization’s goals.

Stupid Analytics
The User Experience movement has
simultaneously helped and hindered how we
communicate

The Huffington Post Model

Coherence, continuity, and
cohesion
Writing to serve a larger purpose will
connect people in ways never anticipated.

Your Job
To anticipate readers’ expectations and
provide them with quality content within a
context to help them achieve their goals.

CONTEXT IS KING

Context Strategy
Deliberate use of all information available
about readers to enhance reading
comprehension, retention, and education.

Context Strategy
Just like content strategy, context strategy is
a plan producers must follow to achieve
measurable goals.

Context Is Abstract
Context has no concrete definitions, no
universal standards, and may change with
nearly any influencer.

OKAY, WE’VE PLAYED WITH THE
NEW TOYS; IT’S TIME TO WORK

Information Interaction Design
The intersection of three different
disciplines:
• Information Design
• Interactive Design
• Sensorial Design
If done well, these disciplines can help us
create context consistently.

Take Content Seriously
Write and Design with Purpose.

Take Your Readers Seriously
People are not gadgets. Stop treating them
as empty vessels with a bank account.
Inform them.

Take Writing Seriously
Employ your knowledge of a long and
amazing history of human communication.
Build on that proud tradition. The more
seriously you take content, they more
seriously your readers will take you and your
message.

Take the Work Seriously
Take the time to conduct reader research.
Build profiles, conduct surveys, and make
sure you understand what they expect from
you.

Questions?
@suredoc

Bibliography
• Bee, Oon Yin, and Professor Halimahtun M. Khalid. 2003. “Usability of Design by Customer Websites.” In The Customer Centric Enterprise, edited by
Professor Mitchell M. Tseng and Dr Frank T. Piller, 283–300. Springer Berlin Heidelberg. http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-642-55460-
5_15.
• Behrens, Roy R. 1998. “Art, Design and Gestalt Theory.” Leonardo 31 (4): 299. doi:10.2307/1576669.
• Carrell, Patricia L., Joanne Devine, and David E. Eskey. 1988. Interactive Approaches to Second Language Reading. Cambridge University Press.
• Clapham, Caroline. 1996. The Development of IELTS: A Study of the Effect of Background on Reading Comprehension. Cambridge University Press.
• David Collier. 1991. Collier’s Rules for Desktop Design and Typography. Addison Wesley Publishing Company.
• Erik Spiekermann, and E. M. Ginger. 1993. Stop Stealing Sheep & Find Out How Type Works.
• Golub, Benjamin. 2014. “Gutenberg Bible | Flickr - Photo Sharing!” https://www.flickr.com/photos/benjamingolub/5203602006/
• Hsiao, Shih-Wen, and Jyh-Rong Chou. 2006. “A Gestalt-like Perceptual Measure for Home Page Design Using a Fuzzy Entropy Approach.”
International Journal of Human-Computer Studies 64 (2): 137–56. doi:10.1016/j.ijhcs.2005.05.005.
• Huey, Edmund Burke. 1908. The Psychology and Pedagogy of Reading. The Macmillan company.
• Jakob Nielsen. 2000. Designing Web Usability. New Riders Pub.
• Jan Tschichold. 1991. The Form of the Book: Essays on the Morality of Good Design. Hartley & Marks Publishers.
• Jared M. Spool. 1999. Web Site Usability: A Designer’s Guide. Morgan Kaufmann.

Bibliography
• Jeffrey Zeldman. 2001. Taking Your Talent to the Web: A Guide for the Transitioning Designer. New Riders Publishing.
• John, Mark F. 1992. “The Story Gestalt: A Model Of Knowledge-Intensive Processes in Text Comprehension.” Cognitive Science 16 (2):
271–306. doi:10.1207/s15516709cog1602_5.
• Kim Sydow Campbell. 1995. Coherence, Continuity, and Cohesion: Theoretical Foundations for Document Design. Lawrence Erlbaum.
• Kristina Halvorson. 2010. Content Strategy for the Web. New Riders Pub.
• Piet A.M. Kommers, Alcindo F. Ferreira, and Alex W. Kwak. 1997. Document Management for Hypermedia Design. Springer.
• Piez, Wendell. 2005. “Format and Content: Should They Be Separated? Can They Be?” In .
• Robert E. Jacobson. 1999. Information Design. MIT Press (MA).
• Steve Mulder. 2007. The User Is Always Right: A Practical Guide to Creating and Using Personas for the Web. New Riders Pub.
• The Elements of User Experience: User-Centered Design for the Web and Beyond. 2011. New Riders Pub.
• “The Huffington Post Announces Record Year in Audience Growth, Video, Native Advertising, and International Expansion.” 2014.
Yahoo Finance. http://finance.yahoo.com/news/huffington-post-announces-record-audience-130000532.html.
• “The Psychology and Pedagogy of Reading - Edmund Burke Huey - Google Books.” 2014.
http://books.google.com/books?id=bqFLMdfbNrsC&q=%22to+completely+analize%22#v=onepage&q=%22to%20completely%20analize
%22&f=false.
• Therrien, William J., and Richard M. Kubina. 2007. “The Importance of Context in Repeated Reading.” Reading Improvement 44 (4):
179–88.

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