{"id":178,"date":"2018-06-08T15:02:59","date_gmt":"2018-06-08T15:02:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/corporate.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/blog\/digitalteam\/?p=178"},"modified":"2018-06-14T23:07:27","modified_gmt":"2018-06-14T23:07:27","slug":"weeknotes-6-and-7-sprint-5-and-6-content-design-revolution","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.southampton.ac.uk\/blog\/digitalteam\/2018\/06\/08\/weeknotes-6-and-7-sprint-5-and-6-content-design-revolution\/","title":{"rendered":"Weeknotes 6 and 7, sprint 5 and 6: Content design revolution"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Last week there was no Weeknotes from me. Life has just been a little bit busy with all those long bank holiday weekends, and shorter weeks. So, this post will be a catch up on the past two sprints 5 and 6. <\/span><\/p>\n<h3><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Why call this post a content design revolution?<\/span><\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">I know calling it \u2018the content design revolution\u2019 is a bit dramatic. Although it isn\u2019t quite a revolution, it\u2019s still a good way of grabbing your attention! <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u200b&#x1f642;\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">I have noticed that, since we started the OneWeb consultation and the course pilot, more colleagues are becoming interested in content design as an approach for user-centric web content. Why? Because it solves many of the issues modern websites have, including ours. <\/span><\/p>\n<h3><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">The issues \u00a0<\/span><\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">One of the biggest issues with the website is that it\u2019s hard to find a sustainable, user-centred solution for producing and managing quality content <\/span><b>at scale<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">. Our content problems are like every other big organisation. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">We have: <\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Too much content <\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Unintuitive user journeys <\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Lack of governance <\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Big flabby digital channels <\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Content that is ego-centric, not user-centric (organisational needs vs user needs) <\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-179\" src=\"https:\/\/www.southampton.ac.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/27\/2018\/06\/university_website.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"600\" height=\"419\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.southampton.ac.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/27\/2018\/06\/university_website.png 541w, https:\/\/www.southampton.ac.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/27\/2018\/06\/university_website-300x210.png 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px\" \/><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 10pt\">Organisational needs vs. User needs, source: xkcd.com<\/span><\/p>\n<h3>What we did<\/h3>\n<h4>Enter content design &#8211; ta-da!<\/h4>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">I don\u2019t want to keep highlighting problems without ever finding a solution. There is a solution, a tried and tested one! <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Remember the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.southampton.ac.uk\/blog\/sussed-news\/2017\/11\/27\/one-web-head-of-digital-ayala-gordon-reflects-on-the-start-of-a-project-to-enhance-the-university-website\/\">user needs workshops<\/a>\u00a0from last year? We\u2019ve introduced the user stories that emerged in those sessions as a starting point. Hundreds of colleagues have participated and bought into the user-centric approach behind OneWeb. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">And for the past two sprints we\u2019ve been creating content for all sample course pages, with the ultimate goal of simplifying our course page content, making it more readable and applicable to our users (prospective students), and more importantly &#8211; using the language that would appeal to them.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-72\" src=\"https:\/\/www.southampton.ac.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/27\/2018\/04\/A-level-user-story.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"600\" height=\"405\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.southampton.ac.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/27\/2018\/04\/A-level-user-story.png 912w, https:\/\/www.southampton.ac.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/27\/2018\/04\/A-level-user-story-300x203.png 300w, https:\/\/www.southampton.ac.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/27\/2018\/04\/A-level-user-story-768x519.png 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px\" \/><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 10pt\">An example user story<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">We haven\u2019t been working on it in isolation. We are talking to Institutional Research, we refined our testing, modified the baseline due to time constraints and have looked at what we could realistically achieve since we are now halfway through the project! <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Sue and Chris in the web content team have also finished writing up the task-based study and launched it to the world via the Open Day emails. We also put in place the building blocks for the testing and the navigation by using <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nngroup.com\/articles\/card-sorting-how-many-users-to-test\/\">card sorting<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nngroup.com\/articles\/tree-testing\/\">Treejack<\/a> information architecture validation tests. More on this in the forthcoming sprints.<\/span><\/p>\n<h4>Build and design<\/h4>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">We created three versions for each of our sample course pages: <\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"><strong>As is<\/strong> &#8211; this is our current course page template <\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"><strong>HEFCE<\/strong> &#8211; a template based on the HEFCE guidelines with some slight modifications to the current template <\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"><strong>RAD<\/strong> &#8211; a radical content design version. We are building the design for it in this current sprint (sprint 7) <\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-185\" src=\"https:\/\/www.southampton.ac.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/27\/2018\/06\/Depth-1024x487.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"600\" height=\"285\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.southampton.ac.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/27\/2018\/06\/Depth-1024x487.png 1024w, https:\/\/www.southampton.ac.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/27\/2018\/06\/Depth-300x143.png 300w, https:\/\/www.southampton.ac.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/27\/2018\/06\/Depth-768x365.png 768w, https:\/\/www.southampton.ac.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/27\/2018\/06\/Depth.png 1898w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px\" \/><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 10pt\">An example Hero Banner from our Depth framework<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">All of these have been plugged into our content workflow software, GatherContent, and are ready for our fact checkers and Single Point Of Contact (SPOCs) to test the governance process. As it is a busy time of year, we\u2019ve asked them to fact check the RAD template and only comment on factual accuracy. Communication to SPOCs was sent out this week.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\"><span style=\"font-size: 10pt\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-190\" src=\"https:\/\/www.southampton.ac.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/27\/2018\/06\/GatherContent-project-status.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"600\" height=\"710\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.southampton.ac.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/27\/2018\/06\/GatherContent-project-status.png 553w, https:\/\/www.southampton.ac.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/27\/2018\/06\/GatherContent-project-status-254x300.png 254w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px\" \/><br \/>\nA screenshot from our GatherContent project status<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Needless to say that all three versions, for each course, will be tested in our user research to establish the experience and to ensure that they\u2019re getting what they need out of the content.<\/span><\/p>\n<h3>What we learnt<\/h3>\n<h4>Less, but better<\/h4>\n<h4><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Our UX and frontend developer, Jon, has created three different frameworks in flat HTML templates for us to put in front of our users.<\/span><\/h4>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-193 aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/www.southampton.ac.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/27\/2018\/06\/Good-design-is-little-design.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"600\" height=\"294\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.southampton.ac.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/27\/2018\/06\/Good-design-is-little-design.png 872w, https:\/\/www.southampton.ac.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/27\/2018\/06\/Good-design-is-little-design-300x147.png 300w, https:\/\/www.southampton.ac.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/27\/2018\/06\/Good-design-is-little-design-768x376.png 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px\" \/><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 10pt\">Source: <a href=\"https:\/\/uxdesign.cc\/\">uxdesign.cc<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">So what have we learnt? <\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">We always need more time, whether it is design, coding or conducting user research, but we need to deliver what we can with the time we actually have. <\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Reaffirmed that simplicity is the mother of usability. A good design speaks for itself, without asking the user to commit much effort. If the user can intuitively deduce what to do with our design, that\u2019s brilliant! If they need instructions, that\u2019s not so good&#8230; we learnt to concentrate on the essential aspects, so that the template designs are not burdened with non-essentials, therefore making it better for the user. Back to simplicity. <\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">We need to start planning the user testing a lot earlier, especially where there are more stakeholders whose time is short <\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">The user research process would be helped by developing a set of templates for user testing briefs, and plans that prompt the right questions<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h3>What we&#8217;re doing next<\/h3>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">We are going to rewrite the task-based study and send this out via YouthSite<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Chris is working on the build of the card sort \/ tree test. <\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">It is also worth us taking a look at some of the data that has already come through, to see if there are any patterns of feedback developing that might inform the iterations. <\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">We will be working to complete the RAD design and slotting all new content in <\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h3>Final thoughts<\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Doing things right takes time. We\u2019re very keen to show the importance of content design once we have metrics to compare before and after.<\/span><\/p>\n<h4><strong>Show &amp; tell <\/strong><\/h4>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">As we\u2019re heading to the finishing line of our Alpha phase, we will be carrying out a show and tell event for all interested colleagues, and would encourage you to attend.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">The show and tell will be on <strong>Tuesday 3 July at 2pm<\/strong> and we will be sending out more details in due course. We will also hold an exclusive session for the OneWeb Advisory Group in the morning.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">The afternoon session will be filled on a first come, first served basis. If you\u2019re unable to attend, we will be sharing the presentation, and filming our wider show &amp; tell with all of our stakeholders. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">That\u2019s it for this week. Have a good weekend! <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Last week there was no Weeknotes from me. Life has just been a little bit busy with all those long bank holiday weekends, and shorter weeks. So, this post will be a catch up on the past two sprints 5 and 6. Why call this post a content design revolution? I know calling it \u2018the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":185,"featured_media":193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,8,4,2,6,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-178","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-alpha","category-content-design","category-courses","category-oneweb","category-user-research","category-weeknotes"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.southampton.ac.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/27\/2018\/06\/Good-design-is-little-design.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paLsBb-2S","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.southampton.ac.uk\/blog\/digitalteam\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.southampton.ac.uk\/blog\/digitalteam\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.southampton.ac.uk\/blog\/digitalteam\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.southampton.ac.uk\/blog\/digitalteam\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/185"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.southampton.ac.uk\/blog\/digitalteam\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=178"}],"version-history":[{"count":20,"href":"https:\/\/www.southampton.ac.uk\/blog\/digitalteam\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":203,"href":"https:\/\/www.southampton.ac.uk\/blog\/digitalteam\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178\/revisions\/203"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.southampton.ac.uk\/blog\/digitalteam\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.southampton.ac.uk\/blog\/digitalteam\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=178"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.southampton.ac.uk\/blog\/digitalteam\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=178"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.southampton.ac.uk\/blog\/digitalteam\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=178"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}