I'd Rather Be Writing » User Experience

Designing from the Content/Story Out

Tom Johnson — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 06:47:30 +0000

My wife Jane attended a Segullah writer’s retreat conference this weekend. During the conference, one of the presenters explained a common mistake many novice writers make: they look for stories to fit a pre-selected theme.

You hear the result of this strategy most commonly in church talks. Someone is assigned a topic, or has a topic he or she wants to explore. To make the talk/presentation/essay appealing, he or she looks for stories to fit the theme. The result is that each story is moralistic, simplified, and often distorted to fit the speaker’s purpose.

A better approach is to start from the story and see what theme it moves towards. In other words, follow the story to whatever theme/meaning it naturally leads you to, rather than trying to fit it into a pre-selected theme. Even if you want to take one path (in the photo below, for example, Mandan Cottages), if the story naturally pushes you toward another path (for example, Return to Sundance), go with the natural path of the story.

It’s excellent advice, but not just for writers. The advice is a cousin to the commonly heard UX principle of “designing from content outward.” It’s the same idea that people who wear shirts with a big red x through the words “Lorem Ipsum” are trying to get across. Start with the content first and then create a design for it. Otherwise your design won’t fit the content.

In a writeup on the SXSW 2010 conference, Adam Schwabe explains the importance of starting with content first. He says,

Content is all too often considered as an afterthought after wireframes and design comps have been presented to and approved by the client. Relegated to boxes as placeholders and Lorem Ipsum, too many of us take a “do it later” approach with what is most important to the user. People aren’t visiting your site to look at colours and boxes, they’re there for a purpose, and the content should be at the core of any design. (SXSW 2010: Trends and Highlights)

Just as writers start from story and build meaning from those events, user experience professionals start with content and design the frame/layout for it. It seems obvious, but few follow this logic.

If you create a design that doesn’t stem from the content, you end up with a mismatch. When it comes to add your content, you find that your content/story doesn’t actually fit the design/theme.

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Storytelling for User Experience: Whitney Quesenbery at the STC Summit #stc10

Tom Johnson — Thu, 06 May 2010 13:38:58 +0000

Whitney Quesenbery has just published Storytelling for User Experience: Crafting Stories for Better Design. In this interview I ask her to elaborate on the story behind the story, how stories compare with user personas and user stories, and how to gather stories from users. We recorded this videocast at the STC Summit in Dallas.

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Measuring content strategy: Not a piece of cake

Tom Johnson — Sat, 06 Jun 2009 21:33:54 +0000

Measuring content strategy: Not a piece of cake

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Does Your Documentation Suck?

Tom Johnson — Wed, 13 May 2009 14:37:18 +0000

Does Your Documentation Suck?

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How Embedded User Assistance Impacts Documentation

Tom Johnson — Tue, 12 May 2009 18:08:22 +0000

How Embedded User Assistance Impacts Documentation

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Documentation as a Tool for User Centered Design

Tom Johnson — Mon, 11 May 2009 22:46:41 +0000

Documentation as a Tool for User Centered Design

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UX Designers Focus On Your Users | Designing User Experience

Tom Johnson — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 15:53:31 +0000

UX Designers Focus On Your Users | Designing User Experience.

Podcast: How to Create User-Centered Documentation, Interview with Joe Sokohl

Tom Johnson — Fri, 30 May 2008 13:46:07 +0000

Download MP3
Duration: 15 min.

In this podcast, Joe Sokohl explains how to create user-centered documentation by contacting, observing, and interviewing users to gather information about what types of information they use and the help deliverables they actually want.

In his experience, Joe found that almost no one used the user manual, but instead wanted quick information for specific tasks. The users hated stand-up training with PowerPoint slides (what the execs thought users needed), and instead wanted hands-on experience with the real system.

Creating user-centered documention requires technical writers to to break the standard (and ridiculous) rule of not contacting the user, to get out of their shells and interact and interview others, and to often challenge standards and assumptions from executives. It may be hard, but doing so is essential, because if you end up creating the wrong deliverables, all your efforts to create help may be irrelevant and useless.

In the podcast, Joe recommends a number of books:

About Face, by Alan Cooper (cooperdesign.com)
The Design of Everyday Things, by Don Norman
Emotional Design, by Don Norman
Observing the User Experience, by Mike Kuniavsky
Communicating Design, by Dan Brown
Blueprints for Information Architecture, christina Wodtke
Information Architecture for the World Wide Web, Peter Morville and Louis Rosenfeld

For more information on Joe Sokohl, see his blog here. Also, I blogged about this presentation earlier here.