One of the most important parts of web design and development at Blend Interactive is what we call our Audiences and Outcomes process. The process – which borrows heavily from C. David Gammel’s Online and On Mission – helps determine site audiences and the expected outcomes of those audiences. It’s what drives decision making for the rest of the site. It’s kind of a big deal.
If you want to learn more about the process, we suggest two things.
1. Buy Gammel’s book. You can get it here.
2. Read my article, “Audiences, Outcomes, and Determining User Needs”, published today in Issue 345 of A List Apart
If you’re confused about how this differs from your standard discovery meeting, with people meeting in a room and answering questions and all of that, the answer is: it doesn’t. Not really. You may already do something like this without being so deliberate, or you may define audiences and outcomes elsewhere in your process.
That’s cool. We’ve found that tackling audiences and outcomes at the very beginning makes our content inventory more relevant (by allowing us to pair pages with audiences) and saves a step in our qualitative audit (by giving us context for content needs).
What’s more, it clarifies our goals from day one. This clarification is important. For example, if we’re building a site to sell mail-order diapers, we can’t just say, “We’re building a diaper delivery site, and mothers will come to the site to buy diapers, and so let’s start writing copy.” I’m not a mother. And if I was, I’m certainly not EVERY mother. I know damn well that fathers and other caregivers will come to the site, too. So if I move forward with the diaper-buying mother stereotype in mind, I’m doing a disservice to a giant percentage of the site’s users.
And, while you’re at it, this issue of A List Apart also has a wonderful look at future-friendly content from constant smarty Sara Wachter-Boettcher: “Future-Ready Content.”
We go into stakeholder meetings to foster discovery. To gain information and push the content strategy agenda and pick up things we can use to populate our deliverables.
If we’re doing it correctly, we also become counselors.
A client discovery meeting isn’t just about asking questions. It’s also about listening. Playing therapist. Rephrasing questions, digging into details, and getting the client to understand the answer lies within.
Hippie-dippy, AMIRITE?
Yes. Very hippie. Very dippy. Very accurate, too.
As user experience professionals, we don’t have the answers. We have the process, and we have best practices, and we have the skill to find the answers. But we don’t have the actual answers. The client does. It’s our job to draw it out.
That’s why this is a partnership. That’s why the myth of the Grand Reveal – built up so gloriously by the advertising industry – is so damaging.
So we go into meetings, and we listen. We provide documentation and deliverables, and we hammer down on the technical aspects, and we may not talk to them for a few weeks because we’re busy auditing and inventorying and creating personas and strategic plans and all of that. But we’re doing so upon a foundation of listening.
And as we deliver each piece, our clients – our partners – provide both buy-in. Not because they believe we’ve created some golden ticket, but because they recognize that the decisions are being made TOGETHER, with their ideas in mind.
Each piece is a dose of preventive medicine, helping us save the hassle of purchasing the Sam’s Club-sized bottles of aspirin during implementation. With that, we’re closer to providing some level of self-sustainability, because we’re reminding our clients – again: our partners – that they are providing the answers on their own.
When you cross the line from general to specific, you also cross the line from tolerant to expectant.
In other words, you’ll be given a pass if you’re talking in generals and leave something out. The second you cross into expert territory, though, you’re running with the big wolves, except these big wolves have specialized nomenclature and a list of best practices and several generations of expert knowledge at their disposal, and they’d love nothing more than to regale you with the details.
It’s scary. You’re immediate inclination is to stand down and allow the experts to control the message.
I’m saying is you don’t have to. Not if you position things correctly.
A Personal Definition of “Work Fanaticism”
First, an aside.
Firefighters love fire trucks.
They adore them. Truck posters are given the same treatment as pin-up models. Long-winded discussions about truck detail and options develop the same intensity as those about politics or sports. Throw a new fire truck in the middle of a group of fire fighters, and you’ll have people snapping pictures.
Taking pictures? Of some random fire truck? Yeah.
This is the mindset of the work fanatic: someone who spends so much time with one subject that it becomes an extension of his or her personal life.
Photographers obsess about their equipment. Web developers constantly think about browsers and computers and code. Fire fighters have both a vested interest and a full-out crush on the newest and best in fire equipment.
The further you get into a more pointed skill, the closer you get to work fanaticism. Whether a product of increased knowledge or of a feeling of expertise, work fanatics do all they can to own a subject,
They’re more sensitive to misconceptions. They’re more critical of mistakes. And they’re watching you like a hawk.
Do you see where we’re going here?
Expert Witnesses
All of this adds up to one thing: there’s a fine line between providing clarity and falling into fanaticism.
Not every marketing manager is an expert on a specific skill. But the position dictates expertise on one specific concept: namely, the history, brand and bottom line of the company.
I’ve found, in general, there are two mindsets when it comes to communicating this expertise.
1. The company is here to serve the goals of our customers, so here’s how we do it.
2. The company IS the goal of the customer, so here’s why we rule.
You can read this another way:
1. Marketing the Way It’s Supposed To Be.
2. Work Fanaticism.
Every person who makes decisions about a company’s communications efforts falls somewhere between these two mindsets. As writers and content wranglers, it’s our goal to straddle this line.
Our foremost goal is one of simplicity: providing Mark Q. Customer information as to why this company is worth paying attention to. On the other hand, we often run smack into the wall of Company Legend, where the WHY is lost in the fog of OUR HISTORY.
And despite our pleas we still have to make allowances for these points.
Oh. Good. Another “Content Strategy” Post.
Well, we’re in luck. There’s one way to handle this: A STRATEGY. Simply tie each piece of information to an actual need.
We’re not talking a full content audit – we’re not talking Web content strategy at all, really. We’re saying simply that each part of a brochure or Web site or television script or whatever should be justified.
Remember the company’s goals for communication. Tie every story, every paragraph, every page, every feature and every archaic company culture term to those goals.
If the goal is to promote product lines and pricing, there’s little need to go in depth with the company’s history. If the goal is to raise funds, you’re excused from providing a detailed list of past board members. If the message doesn’t support the goal, why waste time with it?
Why go through the trouble? Easy. When you lay everything out on the table and show what’s pertinent and what’s unneeded in supporting the client’s goals, you leave little wiggle room for the client to come back and say, “Well, that’s just what we usually do.”
That’s the coolest thing about strategizing content: there is no “what we usually do” anymore.
It may be a fight. It may never happen. But one thing’s for sure: you’ll get people talking about the importance of a clear message, unencumbered by weighty history and aged party lines.
And then, just like that, you’ll have extinguished the first layer of work fanaticism.
Congrats. You’ve just made reaching your client’s goals a lot easier.
(Originally posted at Black Marks on Wood Pulp)
