Designing Connected Content

Description

• Plan and implement a digital content strategy that helps you succeed no matter what devices and platforms come next
• Get crucial insights into back-end content management that you can’t find in any other book
• Master practical domain and content modeling techniques, even if you’re not a developer
• Bridge the technical and non-technical sides of web development, so you can succeed in any content management role

Often an afterthought in the web development process, content strategy needs to be considered front and center. If website content is out of date, off-brand, and out of control, a huge opportunity to engage, convert, and retain customers online is being missed. But creating (and caring for) “meaningful” content is far more complicated than we’re often willing to acknowledge.  Designing Connected Content  explains how to design, plan, and structure content that can be used now and can be ready for the future.

With digital content published across more channels than ever before, how can you make yours easy to find, use, and share? Is your content ready for the next wave of content platforms and devices?

In Designing Connected Content, Mike Atherton and Carrie Hane share an end-to-end process for building a structured content framework. They show you how to research and model your subject area based on a shared understanding of the important concepts, and how to plan and design interfaces for mobile, desktop, voice, and beyond. You will learn to reuse and remix your valuable content assets to meet the needs of today and the opportunities of tomorrow.

Discover a design method that starts with content, not pixels. Master the interplay of content strategy, content design, and content management as you bring your product team closer together and encourage them to think content first.

Learn how to

• Model your content and its underlying subject domain
• Design digital products that scale without getting messy
• Bring a cross-functional team together to create content that can be efficiently managed and effectively delivered
• Create a framework for tackling content overload, a multitude of devices, constantly changing design trends, and siloed content creation

The authors use a practical, conversational style with case study examples and illustrations to

• Demonstrate how to model subject domains and show the importance of this in planning web content
• Present a new approach to researching and modeling content and use examples to show how this informs UI and CMS design
• Provide an end-to-end process for content planning and CMS implementation
• Explain the decision-making process for CMS field selection extracted from elements of the content model
• Discuss the roles of designers, developers, and content strategists, and how this cross-functional team can best work together
• Provide a framework for tackling content overload, a multitude of devices, constantly changing design trends, and siloed content creation

Mike Atherton is a content strategist at Facebook. He has over 20 years of experience designing digital products and the teams who create them.

Carrie Hane is the founder of Tanzen, which provides content strategy consulting and training. For 20 years, she’s been helping organizations and people rethink how they create, manage, and connect content.

LET’S GET CONNECTED

1 Designing From the Bottom Up

2 Why We Need a New Way of Approaching Digital Content

3 Understanding Structured Content

STRUCTURING CONTENT

4 Researching the Subject Domain

5 Creating a Domain Model

6 Translating to a Content Model

PUBLISHING CONTENT

7 Designing Connected Content

8 Implementing Connected Content

9 Bringing Your Content to Life

THE FUTURE

10 The Future Isn’t Waiting

Additional information