Content Modelling Workshop Preview

CONTENT MODELLING: THE ART OF DESIGNING STRUCTURED CONTENT Rachel Lovinger @rlovinger & Cleve Gibbon @cleveg Sample slides from the workshop

Photo by EricGjerde

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INTRODUCTIONS

Phot

o by

Roh

anna

Mer

tens

Cleve Gibbon CTO

Cognifide

Rachel Lovinger Experience Director

Razorfish

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• ‘70s – the child of database programmer and an editor

• ‘80s – student, photographer, writer, and filmmaker

• ‘90s – making interactive training programs

• Early ‘00s – web developer, working on presentation templates that displayed content from a CMS

Today, I do content strategy as part of a User Experience department, collaborating with

people from many disciplines.

HOW I GOT HERE (CONTENT STRATEGIST)

Rachel, Age 9

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• ‘70s – hyperactive child to nightshift nurses • ‘80s – designer, come gamer, and console

hacker • ‘90s – student, lecturer, modeler and UI

developer • Early ‘00s – platform developer / architect

building trading platforms

Today, I work equally across with content and technology to create engaging platforms to

better serve customers

HOW I GOT HERE (CONTENT TECHNOLOGIST)

Cleve, Age 6

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• The content strategist uses the content model to: • Validate experience concepts & designs • Explore the needs of the content creators • Drive the development of taxonomies • Communicate the content design details to those implementing the CMS • Instruct content producers

• The content technologist, uses the content model to:

• Get the business to pop the content bonnet from the get go. • Bring technologists upstream into content conversations. • Engage humans in the key elements of content architecture. • Provide a visual reference point for structured content. • Paint the incomplete content picture and highlight the obvious gaps. • Drive discussions around responsive design, mobile, targeting, translation, …

CONTENT MODELLING

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• Part One: Background • Let’s talk about structured content • Content Modelling Overview*

• Benefits of content modelling

• Part Two: Creating Content Models • Which content should be modelled? • Content types • Content properties

• Part Three: Refining Content Models • Attributes vs. relationships • Chunking & assembling • Adaptability

• Part Four: Putting it to

Work • Responsive design • Content APIs • Meaningful structure • CMS architectures • Content architecture*

WORKSHOP AGENDA

* Section included

PART ONE: BACKGROUND

CONTENT MODELLING OVERVIEW

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Chart Song

Album Page

Artist Profile

HOW DO WE GET TO STRUCTURED CONTENT?

Manage content separate from display (CMS) Content Modelling

Rich Metadata

Image by Richard Cyganiak and Anja Jentzsch

Web Standards

- Mark Boulton http://www.markboulton.co.uk/journal/structure-first-content-always

You can create good experiences without knowing the content.

What you can’t do is create good

experiences without knowing your content structure.

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CONTENT MODELLING IS…

…structured content design. It’s both an art and a science. • The art is “designing” something that is simple, clear and relevant.

• The science is “engineering” elegant structures with integrity and

consistency to house sustainable content.

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HOW IS IT DONE?

• It’s data modelling for content (and we’ve been doing it for a long, long time within the software industry…).

• Content modelling mines, defines and refines structured content.

• The tangible output from content modelling are content model(s).

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WHAT IS A CONTENT MODEL?

A content model is a formal representation of structured content as a collection of content types and their inter-relationships. • Defines and documents all the different types of content you will

have for a given project.

• Provides detailed descriptions and specifications of each content type, their attributes and relationships with each one another.

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HIGH LEVEL CONTENT MODEL: DIAGRAM

Landscape of content types

Chart Song

Album Page

Artist Profile

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CONTENT MODEL: DIAGRAM

Identify and express key content relationships

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More info about the underlying data storage & specs

DETAILED CONTENT MODEL: SPREADSHEET

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DETAILED CONTENT MODEL: DOCUMENT

Create documents using Word, Wikis, PowerPoint

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• A content model helps clarify requirements and encourages

collaboration between designers, developers setting up the CMS, and content creators.

• Content modelling helps bring the content strategy to life while also making sure: • The designs are complete and accurate • The business user needs are taken into account • The content management solution (incl. CMS) supports the content needs • The content strategy is sustainable

CONTENT MODELLING FOSTERS ALIGNMENT

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MODEL THINKING

Business Creative/UX Tech

Content (Production, Management, Delivery) Strategy

Comps

Wires

Specs

Prototypes

Architecture

APIs

Goals

Audience

Plan

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• Validate designs and planned content

• Identify constraints and capabilities

• Influence CMS selection

• Design UI customizations

• Ground designs in an information model

• Discuss content sources

• Discuss content workflow

• Pose requirements questions

• Get aligned on labels

• Discuss resources needed

• Create training and guidelines

MODELS SUPPORT DISCUSSION & DECISIONS

Business Creative/UX Tech

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• Content models are formal representations of structured content.

• Content models should be simple, clear and relevant.

• Content modelling is both art and science.

• Value modelling over the model.

• Use the process and the model to drive discussion and develop

alignment on content across disciplines.

SUMMARY

PART TWO: CREATING CONTENT MODELS

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• Which Content? – Determine which content in a design needs to be modelled

• Content Types – Identify the various configurations of content that are distinct enough to be unique types in the system

• Content Properties – Define each content type in detail • Attributes – Enumerate the content and metadata elements that make up

each type • Relationships – Express how content types relate to each other

COMPONENTS OF A CONTENT MODEL

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Use the designs and determine which content* will be:

WHICH CONTENT SHOULD BE MODELLED?

CMS

Display

Dynamic

Other

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• Which types of content are different enough that they might warrant a unique structure?

• Ex: Article, quiz, slideshow, recipe & event are fairly distinct.

CONTENT TYPES

© A List Apart, Jeff Baker and Alex Graham, Washington Post, Food Network, and Barnes & Noble

Article Quiz

Slide show

Recipe

Event

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• Figure out the separate elements, or attributes, of each one. Think about how each segment of information will be used.

• Related content items can be linked to or embedded.

• Ex: Book & author each have their own page.

CONTENT PROPERTIES

Event

Event Name

Location

Date & Time

Event © Barnes & Noble

Book Page (link)

Author Page (link)

Event Type

PART THREE: REFINING CONTENT MODELS

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• Attributes vs. relationships – Determine which parts of a

content type are core attributes of the type, and which are relationships to other types

• Chunking & assembling – Consider the decisions points around how granularly the content will be chunked, and how those chunks will be assembled

• Adaptability – Further refine the model by creating additional attributes that make it easier for the content to adapt to a wide range of contexts, platforms, devices, and channels

REFINING CONTENT MODELS

PART FOUR: PUTTING IT TO WORK

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• Responsive Design • Content APIs • Meaningful Structure • CMS Architectures • Content Architecture

PUTTING IT TO WORK

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• More content through increased interactions. • Increased complexity through more experiments. • Fewer resources to manage more content. • We’re approaching the unmanaged content tipping point. • Technology not equipped to plug people/process gaps. • Mindset shift to getting content everywhere. • Immature multi-channel publishing for marketing. • No time to define and shine!

- D. Keith Robinson, Think Vitamin http://blog.teamtreehouse.com/redefining-content-management/

There are four important pieces to the content management puzzle:

content, people, process and technology.

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Sustainable content requires us to understand:

• how best to apply technology (CM Ecosystem)

• to support the processes (Workflow)

• that people use to produce (Author Experience)

• and consume (Customer/Service Experience)

• structured content (Content Modelling).

⇒ Content Architecture is the Design Phase

CONTENT ARCHITECTURE

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CONTENT ARCHITECTURE

Content Strategy

Content Management

Why

Content Architecture

What How

Actionable

Plan

Operational

model

technical

solution

http://www.clevegibbon.com/content-architecture/

sustainable content

WRAPPING UP

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• Structuring content is an interdisciplinary task • Content modelling is the art & science of designing structured

content • Content modelling enables responsive design, enhanced authoring

interfaces, and smart components • Content models define and express content types, content

attributes & content relationships • Creating and refining content models is an iterative process that

informs and is informed by design, business needs, and technology • When we put content models to work we arrive at responsible

responsive design, content APIs, meaningful structures, and effective use of CMS architectures

• Sustainable content requires a well-design content architecture

WHAT WE’VE LEARNED

Karen McGrane Content Strategy for Mobile

Rahel Bailie & Noz Urbina Content Strategy for Decision Makers

Sara Wachter-Boettcher Content Everywhere

Bob Boiko Content Management Bible

Ann Rockley & Charles Cooper Managing Enterprise Content

Heather Hedden The Accidental Taxonomist

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PEOPLE TO FOLLOW

At the intersection of Content Strategy, Responsive Design, Structured Content, and the Future-Friendly Web.

• Karen McGrane (@karenmcgrane : slideshare : blog) • Rahel Anne Bailie (@rahelab : slideshare : blog) • Sara Wachter-Boettcher (@sara_ann_marie : slideshare : blog) • Noz Urbina (@nozurbina : slideshare : blog) • Cennydd Bowles (@Cennydd : blog) • Luke Wroblewski (@lukew : slideshare : blog) • Ethan Marcotte (@beep : blog) • Brad Frost (@brad_frost : slideshare : blog) • Mike Atherton (@mikeatherton : slideshare : blog ) And of course… • Rachel (@rlovinger : slideshare : blog) • Cleve (@cleveg : slideshare : blog) • Kerry-Anne Gilowey (@kerry_anne : slideshare)

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Cleve Gibbon @cleveg

[email protected]

THANK YOU

Phot

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Roh

anna

Mer

tens

Rachel Lovinger @rlovinger

[email protected]