September 20, 2023
August 16, 2023
March 12, 2015
My son has taken the head off of every one of his LEGO minifigs. He has rearranged everyone’s hair, given them new pants, and tossed the weapons into a giant pile on his LEGO table. He has no regard for canon. In the story of Star Wars, it’s now Darth who shot first, doing so […]
November 20, 2014
I don’t know what to tell people when they ask me what I do. I tell them that I help plan websites, because using my actual professional titles – content strategist; information architect; user experience strategist – leads to more confusion. Confusion not about what the title means, but about whether or not I do the things necessary to claim those titles. Some thoughts on that, camp, kayaking, and a painting that turned out to be totally bogus.
November 26, 2013
I’m excited to officially announce the my inclusion in The Smashing Book #4: New Perspectives on Web Design. SURPRISE – I wrote about content strategy. The chapter, which focuses on both sides of the content strategy landscape – both user needs and editor needs – serves as a capstone to all of this empathy stuff that’s I’ve been writing and talking about over the past year and a half. So go buy it.
February 28, 2013
A lot of praise for Karen McGrane’s recent column, a little notice about a post I wrote about speaking, and a whole bunch of excitement for our gradual shift toward audience-centered talks.
October 11, 2012
Content strategy practitioners – and, really, the entire UX umbrella – serve a unique role in the life of a web property, in that we act as an advocate for people we may never know. But there’s another element of this process that can often be overlooked, and it’s the audience we know and understand and work with on a daily basis: the client.
April 5, 2012
The theme of this year’s IA Summit – Cross-Channel Experiences – was well represented, and regardless of which wall of the user experience room you tend to lean against, it’s clear we’re all moving forward toward this universal promise of “future-friendly” web properties, where our content moves from one format to another through the magic […]
February 16, 2012
Earlier this month, Contents Magazine asked seven very smart people about their first principles – the things that ground every part of their work, whether in content or beyond. You should probably go read that. Then, Contents asked us to fill in the spaces by submitting our own answers to the question, “What are your […]
June 15, 2011
Jared’s right. In the past two years I’ve seen talk of content strategy shift from “we need to do this now” to “we need to claim our space,” and the rush to define the industry has likewise shifted from “this is what we do” to “this is what we control.” One of the most frustrating […]
June 2, 2011
Spot on tidbit from Seattle’s own James Callan: develop your site with content in mind from the beginning, but don’t be so strict as to expect finalized web content before design begins. From “Content doesn’t need to come first” on Scarequot.es “Content first vs. content from the beginning: Is it semantics? Maybe. But it matters. […]
January 31, 2011
Let’s make this quick. You know those times when you’re driving and listening to something SO GOOD that, when you arrive home, you pull up into the driveway and sit there. Waiting for it to finish. Waiting. Listening. Enjoying. That’s called a “Driveway Moment.” NPR may have created the term, but even if they haven’t […]
