Here are the slides the panel put together for the Adobe Day Europe discussion on “Assisting the millennial user – challenges and opportunities in the decade ahead”. We didn’t get time to cover all of the topics in the time we had available (unfortunately some of the previous speakers overran their time slots).
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In yesterday’s post, How technical content on the Web is turning traditional marketing strategy on its head, we discussed the importance of technical content to today’s marketing funnel. You might be thinking, show me more evidence.
Kathy Sierra famously summed up most marketing departments’ approach to content in this slide:
To paraphrase her, the website and brochure are a thing of beauty, while the user manual is a thing of boredom.
Doctor Who is a popular British TV science fiction series that is celebrating its 50th anniversary later this year. So why is it like your Web content? Let us explain.
One of the reasons why Doctor Who has managed to be popular for so long is due to the ability of the Doctor to regenerate: if he is old or mortally wounded, he can transform into a new physical form with a slightly different personality.
Similarly, your content may need to take on different forms over time. You may need to change the way it looks to suit different devices, or modify its personality (the tone of voice).
The basic fundamental story, or content, probably doesn’t not need to change greatly, as its purpose is likely to stay the same. However, it’s important to recognise and accept changes to the presentation format are now a fact of life for your Web content.
In most Doctor Who stories, the Doctor has a companion who travels with him and shares his adventures. The companion asks questions, often gets into trouble, helps the Doctor, and on occasions, rescues or challenges the Doctor.
The companion shows the importance of explanation – acting as the surrogate audience, asking the questions they may have, giving them important information and providing a persona they can relate to.
The readers of your Web content may also need a companion – someone who can assist them, enable them to have their questions answered. In the world of technical communication, we call this “User Assistance” or “online Help”.
Even the Doctor, one of the most expert of people needs an assistant. There are many times when he is overconfident, makes the wrong assumption, and is helped out of his predicament by his companion. This is also true for your expert users.
The sonic screwdriver
Whenever the Doctor wants to learn about a new world, a new creature or machine, he whips out his trusty sonic screwdriver. It gives him data that helps him understand how to solve his current problem. We need our own sonic screwdriver for our Web content – ways to measure its performance (i.e. if it’s meeting the users’ requirements), discover where the problems lie, and so on.
The Tardis, as nearly everyone knows, is bigger on the inside than it is on the outside.
Unfortunately, only the Doctor knows where everything is located, and we generally only see a glimpse of what’s inside. We know there’s a swimming pool and a library, but often people get lost within the Tardis and end up where back they began. There’s no official map of the Tardis, as far as we know, and it seems like there’s no logical structure to the corridors and rooms.
This is often the case with your web content. There’s lots of information, but it can be hard to find. If you know it’s there, you can search for it, but often you need a person to guide you to it.
Access to the Tardis is generally limited to those the Doctor invites in (or to those who are given a key). Many organisations take the same attitude to their online Help content: they hide it away from public view and, as a consequence, prospective customers.
Whovians is the name given to fans of Doctor Who. Doctor Who has a huge and passionate following, which means they, in a way, “own” Doctor Who has much as the BBC and its writers.
Today, Doctor Who is a “Second Screen” experience: as people watch the TV show, they also converse on Twitter and Tumblr. The user generated content is an important reason why Doctor Who is so popular today. This can be true for your website as well: your users are part owners of your site and its content; their user generated content can be as important as the content you provide.
Let us know if we’ve missed out any other links between Doctor Who and your Web content.
(Doctor Who fans Flickr image by Jason Riedy)
At some stage or another, a technical communicator is likely to have seen this image from Kathy Sierra:
Ray Gallon has recently completed a series of webinars looking at new models for providing end user Help (A Cognitive Design for User Assistance).
In the third webinar, Ray looked at how people learn today and he suggested a new approach for the future. He used The Common European Framework of Reference for Language‘s description of people’s levels of competences to outline the different ways organisations help people to learn.
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On Tuesday 26 February, Ellis Pratt from Cherryleaf will be speaking at the popular London Content Strategy lightning talk.
Ellis will explain how the principles of Lean manufacturing can be applied to developing and managing content. It’s a way of writing that focuses on maximising the value to the user and minimising waste. Since the Agile development methodology is based on Lean principles, it will help you to position content management within an Agile environment.
Each speaker gets 5 minutes and 20 slides (15 seconds per slide) to share their unique perspectives on content strategy in a blur of energy, passion and intensity.
We’re currently working on 40 minute webinar on:
If you have any questions on this topic, you can email these to us prior to the event. We’ll do our best to make sure we address them in the webinar.
Send us an email with your question
Details on the date for this webinar will be published in the Events section of the Cherryleaf Web site.