More than ever, content needs to cross boundaries—be they device or country, channel or language—to keep up with the pace of organizations, users, and the web at large. But fixed firmly to inflexible pages, today’s content is often stuck, only accessible and understandable from a single location, in a single layout, using a single language. When pushed and pulled by everything from responsive designs and mobile sites to APIs, read-later apps, and internationalization efforts, it simply can’t keep up. There’s a better way: a way to stop creating more content for every new device or channel, and to start creating content that does more. It all starts with structure.

1. CONTENT that
TRAVELS
Making content more
flexible with micro IA
Sara Wachter-Boettcher
EuroIA 2012
www.flickr.com/photos/frozenchipmunk/218991950

2. How does content travel?
By Eva-Lotta Lamm

3. By reaching
many devices.
www.flickr.com/photos/adactio/6005668024/
EuroIA 2012
@sara_ann_marie

4. By shifting and
flexing on the fly.
EuroIA 2012
@sara_ann_marie

5. By crossing cultures
and languages.
www.flickr.com/photos/gumtau/6812852116
EuroIA 2012
@sara_ann_marie

6. By reaching your users
wherever they are.
www.flickr.com/photos/vonderauvisuals/6818551846/
EuroIA 2012
@sara_ann_marie

7. Only, most content is stuck.
www.flickr.com/photos/wordridden/6125516150/sizes/o/in/photostream/

8. EuroIA 2012
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9. EuroIA 2012
@sara_ann_marie

10. EuroIA 2012
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11. What does
this have to do
with IA?
EuroIA 2012
@sara_ann_marie

12. We’ve done hierarchy.
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EuroIA 2012
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13. We get wireframes.
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EuroIA 2012
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14. We’ve audited pages.
EuroIA 2012
@sara_ann_marie

15. This won’t
hold up.
www.flickr.com/photos/mikebaird/4084235781/

16. We need IA
that gets at
the core.
EuroIA 2012
@sara_ann_marie

17. The content
EuroIA 2012
@sara_ann_marie

18. Content that’s
interconnected, not siloed.
EuroIA 2012
@sara_ann_marie

19. Content that’s
flexible and reusable.
EuroIA 2012
@sara_ann_marie

20. Content that’s
portable to new platforms.
EuroIA 2012
@sara_ann_marie

21. Content like
water
EuroIA 2012
@sara_ann_marie
www.flickr.com/photos/briangaid/2909765394/

22. COPE: Create Once,
Publish Everywhere.
EuroIA 2012
@sara_ann_marie

23. Writers enter content into
the CMS once
It’s stored without
presentational code
Then sent via API to
Editors approve and NPR and 3rd parties
double-check
metadata
EuroIA 2012
@sara_ann_marie

24. EuroIA 2012
@sara_ann_marie

25. But.
EuroIA 2012
@sara_ann_marie

26. Content is
chunky.
EuroIA 2012
@sara_ann_marie
www.flickr.com/photos/luzbonita/2558151303/

27. Chunky
is good. EuroIA 2012
@sara_ann_marie
www.flickr.com/photos/judybaxter/59996764

28. Chunky
gets stuck.
www.flickr.com/photos/certified_su/234726096

29. 2009: I learned this
the hard way.
EuroIA 2012
@sara_ann_marie

31. Later that year...
EuroIA 2012
@sara_ann_marie

34. Canned copy
Unr elated
R andom stuff
events
Canned copy
M anual
tags

35. Wait a second.
EuroIA 2012
@sara_ann_marie

36. Soaring peaks
EuroIA 2012
@sara_ann_marie
Arizona Office of Tourism

37. Historic charm
EuroIA 2012
@sara_ann_marie
Arizona Office of Tourism

38. Americana galore
EuroIA 2012
@sara_ann_marie
Arizona Office of Tourism

39. Trip ideas

40. I want to go there.
EuroIA 2012
@sara_ann_marie

41. Not so much

42. EuroIA 2012
@sara_ann_marie
www.flickr.com/photos/silverfuture/6799133336/

43. 2010: We’ve gotta
go mobile.
EuroIA 2012
@sara_ann_marie

44. EuroIA 2012
@sara_ann_marie

45. There’s only one
restaurant in town?
EuroIA 2012
@sara_ann_marie

46. This will fix
everything!
EuroIA 2012
@sara_ann_marie

47. EuroIA 2012
@sara_ann_marie
www.flickr.com/photos/silverfuture/5432635206/

48. 2011: Fixing (part of)
the problem.
EuroIA 2012
@sara_ann_marie

49. Not just hierarchical,
but relational

50. The CMS, before
EuroIA 2012
@sara_ann_marie

51. The CMS, before
CONTENT
GOES HERE
EuroIA 2012
@sara_ann_marie

52. The CMS, after

53. The CMS, after

54. Local ns
| attractio
Local parkss&
| monumen
t
Events in
| Flagstaff
Feature
Stories | | Local deal
s

55. Flexible content
needs to have
structure.
EuroIA 2012
@sara_ann_marie

56. This is a
content
problem
EuroIA 2012
@sara_ann_marie

57. This is a
ux
problem
EuroIA 2012
@sara_ann_marie

58. This is a
solvable
problem
EuroIA 2012
@sara_ann_marie

59. It’s IA,
brought to the
micro level.
EuroIA 2012
@sara_ann_marie

60. Say
what?
www.flickr.com/photos/davidw/2132684141

61. ‘‘
The structural design of shared information
environments.
Morville & Rosenfeld
EuroIA 2012
@sara_ann_marie

62. ‘‘
The art and science of organizing and labeling
websites...to support usability.
IA Institute
EuroIA 2012
@sara_ann_marie

63. We’re not
starting from
scratch.
EuroIA 2012
@sara_ann_marie

64. Developers have
been modeling
data for decades.
EuroIA 2012
From Web Database Applications with PHP & MySQL @sara_ann_marie
by Hugh E. Williams and David Lane (O’Reilly, 2003)

65. Others have talked structured
content, too.
Ann
Rockley
Mike
Atherton

66. But content is often
ambiguous. What then?
EuroIA 2012
@sara_ann_marie

67. We can’t
just start with
structure.
EuroIA 2012
@sara_ann_marie

68. Meaning.
EuroIA 2012
@sara_ann_marie

69. What’s the content’s
inherent form?
www.melissaanddoug.com

70. This is human work.
By Eva-Lotta Lamm

71. ✦ CONTENT ANALYSIS, REVISITED
✦ CONTENT MODELING
✦ MAKING CONTENT MOVE
EuroIA 2012
@sara_ann_marie

72. ✦ CONTENT ANALYSIS, REVISITED
✦ CONTENT MODELING
✦ MAKING CONTENT MOVE
EuroIA 2012
@sara_ann_marie

73. EuroIA 2012
@sara_ann_marie

74. The content audit
✦ You might already be doing this, or working
with someone who does
✦ Typically asks things like:
- What content do we have?
- Who’s responsible for it?
- Is it accurate?
- Is it any good?
EuroIA 2012
@sara_ann_marie

75. The content audit, revisited
✦ We must also ask: What type of content is this?
✦ What’s the inherent shape of that sort of content?
- Can we identify its pieces and parts?
✦ What does it take to make it whole?
- What’s essential for the content to be
meaningful?
- What’s extra or secondary?
EuroIA 2012
@sara_ann_marie

76. This is
arecipe

77. Title
This is Attribution
arecipe Pub Date
Rating
Yield
Servings n
Descriptio
Image
Cuisine type
s
Ingredient Diet type
n
Preparatio

78. ✦ CONTENT ANALYSIS, REVISITED
✦ CONTENT MODELING
✦ MAKING CONTENT MOVE
EuroIA 2012
@sara_ann_marie

79. A content model is:
✦ A structural model that matches how your
content inherently works
✦ A way to visualize the relationships between
content elements and types in a system
✦ What will give your content the flexibility to
adapt
EuroIA 2012
@sara_ann_marie

81. Start with a
single type of
content, like our recipe.
Document what makes
it a recipe?

83. Then, how do our
different content types
fit together?

84. Once you’ve done this,
the fun begins.
EuroIA 2012
@sara_ann_marie

85. ✦ CONTENT ANALYSIS, REVISITED
✦ CONTENT MODELING
✦ MAKING CONTENT MOVE
EuroIA 2012
@sara_ann_marie

86. It’s easier to
manage chunks
By Eva-Lotta Lamm

87. EuroIA 2012
@sara_ann_marie

88. That’s a lot of languages.
EuroIA 2012
@sara_ann_marie

89. EuroIA 2012
@sara_ann_marie

90. We can’t constantly translate
big swaths of pages.
EuroIA 2012
@sara_ann_marie

91. But when we have chunks,
we can replace just those we need.
EuroIA 2012
@sara_ann_marie

92. Structure lets
us choose
By Eva-Lotta Lamm

93. We can’t manually manage
how each bit of content looks.
EuroIA 2012
@sara_ann_marie

94. But when we have structure,
we can make rules.
EuroIA 2012
@sara_ann_marie

95. Content Stacking vs. Interdigitation
From Trent Walton, “Content Choreography”
EuroIA 2012
@sara_ann_marie

97. When we have rules,
we make systems.
EuroIA 2012
@sara_ann_marie

98. Systems are scalable,
instead of manual.
EuroIA 2012
@sara_ann_marie

99. Systems work
for robots
www.flickr.com/photos/johngreenaway/3356358479/

100. And meaning
works for us
www.flickr.com/photos/mujitra/4868415523

101. Let’s put
our IA skills
to work.
EuroIA 2012
@sara_ann_marie

102. THANK YOU,
EURO IA
sarawb.com // @sara_ann_marie
Content Everywhere will be out this fall!
http://rfld.me/content-everywhere
Flickr images used via CC-Attribution license unless otherwise noted. EuroIA 2012
Illustrations used with the permission of Eva-Lotta Lamm. @sara_ann_marie