As the great Alan Partridge once famously said – can I shock you?
I used to hate writing.
In fact, I was absolutely terrible at English at school and my vocabulary was pretty limited.
Over the years though, I’ve found enjoyment in writing, I’ve discovered a natural skill for stringing a few sentences together, and I’ve picked up a few big words along the way.
The thing is (between you and me), content design isn’t really about having a massive vocabulary of flowery words you can use.
Apart from the fact content designers don’t just do words, content design is about using very simple language to explain complex things, so that people with basic reading skills can understand them.
Back to school
To give you some idea of how I came to be a content designer, let me take you back to school. Well, back to my school.
I did my GCSEs at Ilkley Grammar School. Like a lot of things in Ilkley, it’s not as posh as it sounds. It’s a fairly standard high school, and not really a grammar school at all.
However, my English teacher was a lady called Mrs U (I’ll be kind and withhold her full name) but she seemed to think it was an actual grammar school. She floated around, wearing big dresses, silk scarves and pashminas, and speaking the Queen’s English with a gravelly authority. She used lots of big words, and she really liked us to use big words too.
There’s nothing wrong with that of course, but I just didn’t get it, personally. It didn’t really float my boat. It put me off English, and reading (which I still don’t do enough of).
I can pinpoint where my skills for simple writing really came to light though. One day, Mrs U set us a writing task, which I completed and handed in on time. No bother. Smashed it.
Parents evening
My Mum and Dad attended a parents evening not long afterwards. But when they saw Mrs U, she WAS NOT HAPPY.
The task I’d been set was to imagine myself as an army doctor during the first world war. I had to write to a mother to let her know her son had been killed in action. I was asked to set the scene – where the battle was, how many men were there, the number of tanks etc. You get the picture. It was an open invitation to waffle.
So, my parents sat there in front of Mrs U, and they could see my carefully crafted letter on the desk. Although upside down, they could read it. Every carefully chosen little word.
My Dad started to laugh. Then so did my Mum. And they carried on laughing until Mrs U made it clear again in no uncertain terms that she WAS NOT HAPPY.
I’d aced the letter structure – the addresses and date were all in the right place. For some reason though, Mrs U wasn’t pleased with my letter content. I’d not really followed the task properly, apparently.
My letter went something like this:
Dear Mrs Smith,
I am writing to you to tell you that your son is dead.
Ouch. Why don’t you just come out and say it, Andrew?
To be fair, I did go into more detail afterwards, but my letter was generally very short and to the point throughout.
After my parents picked themselves off the floor and composed themselves, they promised Mrs U that they’d have a stern word with me when they got home.
When they questioned me about my work, my answer was also very simple:
“I just thought that as a mother, she’d just want to know what had happened to her son. I didn’t think there was any point in talking about tanks and stuff, as she probably wouldn’t care.”
Thinking back, it appeared a career in content design was already laid out before me (and before it was even a thing).
So, this brings me on to user needs.
User needs
I didn’t know this back then, but as a content designer you need to have a clear grasp of user needs, what they are and why they’re important. You need to empathise with the people you’re designing for and put yourselves in their shoes – which is something I was clearly doing from an early age.
In user-centred design, this is why user researchers and their research is vital. You get a clear insight into what your users actually need from your services, content and digital products, and this helps you to design content that meets those needs.
If you meet user needs, generally your content is more effective and your service does what it needs to.
This is what I’d done to some degree with my letter – I’d created a user need, albeit without the research, but based on empathy and an assumption:
As a mother of a soldier
I need to know what’s happened to him
So that I can grieve or prepare for his return from war
I know my letter could’ve been delivered with a little more subtlety, so if I was doing it again now it would have been based on user research – what does a mother in that situation actually need to know from a letter like that? What language should you use?
Ignoring user needs in your service and just giving users something the organisation wants, but they don’t need, is the equivalent of when WHSmith try to sell you chocolate at the checkout when you only went in for a birthday card.
I don’t want or need chocolate. I needed a birthday card. Stop trying to sell me chocolate.
This is the basic principle in content design. Define the user needs, and design your content to meet those needs. Every. Single. Time.
Basic skills and attributes of a content designer
Despite finding out I’m good at writing simple things at an early age, I’ve had many different jobs over the years (supermarket shop assistant, administration officer working in international trade, helping to maintain public rights of way in the Yorkshire Dales National Park – and we won’t talk about my work experience at Santa Claus Land in Aviemore), but I’ve now been a digital content professional for 12 years, and I’ve built up a load of useful experience along the way.
So what basic skills and attributes do you need to be a content designer? In my opinion, no matter what your content experience, you’ll need:
Good grammar and punctuation
As we’ve established, using big words is not so important, but using good grammar and punctuation definitely is.
Most of us can use simple words. The skill comes in structuring your content using good grammar and punctuation to deliver your message as efficiently as possible. If you put a comma in the wrong place, it can give a sentence a totally different meaning to the one you intended – and then it won’t really matter what words you use.
Empathy
We are the voice of the user within an organisation. We have a duty to give our users that voice in a world where organisational requirements or ‘the brand’ are often the priority. If users can’t speak for themselves to say “that’s not what we need”, we have to do it for them.
You can back your case up with user research and data, but it also needs to come from the heart – if you truly believe the user needs you’re designing for and have some empathy for your users, it really helps put your case forwards more easily and passionately, and people are more likely to sit up and listen to you.
Ability to understand and explain complex information
To explain complex information in a very simple way, you need to be able to understand that information yourself first. If you can’t, how can you explain it to others?
You can do this by doing some more research on the subject, or just by asking a subject matter expert (SME) to explain it in simple terms. Use their explanation as the content – it might be you can also work with an SME on a simple version by pair writing.
Thick skin
I’ll be very honest, it’s still a bit of a battle out there for user-centred designers, and we’re a long way off from winning. But we are getting there.
As a content designer, your work will constantly be pulled apart, re-written by those who think they know better, or even just ignored completely. But remember, it’s not their fault. We’re trying to overturn decades of doing things in a certain way, and it takes time and patience to get people to understand why.
If we want people to really understand user-centred design, the best way is to just keep doing it – and gather all the research and data you can to back it up. The more evidence you have to support your work, the easier it is to try and help people understand what we’re doing and why.
Then there are content crits, where your work can be constructively criticised by colleagues. Crits are really important for sharing best practice and getting feedback on your work in progress.
There’ll be times your patience will be tested, but if you don’t take it personally, it just makes you stronger and it makes your content better. No pain, no gain.
Social, communication and negotiation skills
You’ll need to talk to a lot of people – product owners, business analysts, researchers, delivery managers, users, senior stakeholders, subject matter experts, communication experts etc.
If you can’t hold a conversation with these people to get your point across effectively, and negotiate changes to content based on user needs and research, then a content design role probably isn’t for you. It’s not for the faint-hearted, and you need to be strong and stand your ground.
You’ll need to be able to communicate effectively with a lot of different people generally. As you move into more senior roles, this becomes even more important and more common – as a Senior Content Designer, I’ve spent a lot of time talking to people just to try and get the job done before I can even make a start.
I don’t want to come across as negative here, I’m just trying to give you a realistic view. If I’ve given the impression it’s a hard role, that’s because it is. But it’s also massively rewarding and there’s a huge community out there who you can lean on for support and advice.
If you’re a content person who likes a challenge, then it’s well worth jumping into content design.
I’ve enjoyed the challenge in my first 6 months here at DWP Digital. Though I hear you ask “What have you been working on since you started?”.
Letters. Obviously.