WHY

Brenda Horowitz

Bringing Content Development and User Experience Together

October 23, 2014

WHAT HOW

The of Information Experience

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 WHY are you in this session?  WHAT do you want to know?

 HOW can I help you?

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 WHY create this content?

 WHAT are our goals?

 HOW is work organized?

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Tech Pubs = Good

15

50 21 million

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“”

 Do the best you can  until you know better.

 Then when you know better, do better.

 Maya Angelou  

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 WHY change our approach?

 WHAT role should we play?

 HOW do we impact the user experience?

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“”

 The most exciting thing I heard you guys talk about

was Experience.

 IT Director  Construction Industry

It’s something that’s incredibly hard to do. But when you do it right,

you end up with Walt Disney World. People pay for that experience dearly,

and they do it happily.

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WHY?

Source - dmi: design management institute

 Design-led companies outperformed the S&P 500 by

228%

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Empathize

Define

Ideate Prototype

Test

Design Thinking

WHAT?

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Customer Journey

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 WHY do customers consider us?

 WHAT problems are they trying to solve?

 HOW do they become aware of our solutions? Learn more? Try us? Buy us?

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 WHY are some customers happy, but others not?

 WHAT are we doing right?

 HOW could we do better?

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 WHY should we create content?

 WHAT should our goals be?

 HOW should we be organized?

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“”  Kristina Halvorson

 Content Strategy for the Web

 Embrace whatever role is necessary

HOW?

to deliver on the promise

of useful, useable content.

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Information Experience = Better!

15

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More than just manuals

labels

organization

in-field examples descriptive text

tool tips

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Give people what they want

terminology

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Catch-Cook-Plate

Customer enjoys!

Ix professionalizes SME authors

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 Video Prototype Testing

whimsical minimalistic authoritative

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 Video Prototype Results

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 Technical Publications  è  Information

Experience

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Design

- Someone else’s job

- Aesthetically appealing

- An integral part of everyone’s job

 - Decisions focused on achieving the desired Experience

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Content Strategy

- Feature-driven

- Technical documentation

 - Experience-driven

 - Information flow & consistency across Customer Journey

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Deliverables

- Mostly external docs

- Almost exclusively word-based

 - Help customers use product without switching context

 - Support different learning styles

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Job Description

- Read

- Talk

- Write

- Illustrate

- Edit

- Empathize

- Define

- Ideate

- Prototype (Curate/Author)

- Test

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Reporting Structure

Eng

Dev Prod Ops

… LifeCycle Mgmt

Tech Pubs

…

…

Cx

Insights/Enablement

Ix

…

Product Design Corp Mkt

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Feedback

 - Generally negative, so avoid it

 - Passively wait for customer to report issues

 - Seek out opportunities to improve

 - Actively solicit input on current product and proposed designs

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Now it’s YOUR turn! Just ask yourself:

 WHY?

 WHAT?

 HOW?

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WORK BETTER. LIVE BETTER.

brenda.horowitz@citrix.com