Carl Haggerty's List: CitizenScape

Content strategy is more than just a discipline. It’s an approach to content that must be adopted at all levels of an organization to be effective. As it becomes ubiquitous to the way in which traditional disciplines create and manage content (marketing, communications, public relations, etc.) across digital channels, the tools that we use now to plan for content will need to evolve beyond the out-dated approach of target audience segmentation. With the demise of top down communications and a increasingly fractured digital channel landscape, organizations must continue to plan for and produce content that remains liquid and linked to engage users on their terms

1. Task Analysis
 The identification and understanding users’ goals and tasks, the strategies they use to perform the tasks, existing toolsets and solutions, problems they experience, and the changes they would like to see in their tasks and tools.

 

2. Contextual Inquiry
 Basically, contextual inquiry is the observation of a user in their environment. Particular attention is paid to the work they do, how the interact with the things around them and how they use what we’re attempting to model for (When I keep telling Content Strategists to be better anthropologists, this is what I’m referring to).

 

3. Participatory Design
 Exactly what it sounds like. Designers and users work together to design a system. Think card sorting, white boarding, etc. When it comes to content, pay particular attention to navigation structures and try to organize things around your engagement maps.

 

4. Interviews/Focus Groups
 Gathering data extracted from interviews to understand beliefs, behaviors, pain points, fears, etc. This is where the bulk of analysis should go when you’re creating your models. In person interviews are absolutely crucial to understanding your site segments and for the ultimate content planning that will follow.

 

5. Usability Testing
 Verifying an existing design, its content or system. Usability tests can be performed in the wild or in a laboratory setting.