Content Experience Modeling: Designing Customer Value and Consistency

Content Experience Modeling Workshop—2014 STC Summit
Content Experience Modeling
Designing Customer Value and
Consistency
Andrea L. Ames, IBM @aames
Senior Technical Staff Member &
Enterprise Content Experience Strategist/Architect/Designer
18 May 2014
Phoenix, AZ
Much of the material in this deck developed in partnership
with Alyson Riley and used with permission @aames

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About Andrea
Technical communicator since 1983
Areas of expertise
Content experience: Content strategy,
content architecture, and interaction design
for content display and delivery, within products
and interactive content delivery systems
Architecture, design, and development of embedded assistance
(content within or near the product user interface)
Content and product usability, from analysis through validation
User-centered process for content and content experience development
IBM Senior Technical Staff Member on corporate Enterprise Content
and eSupport Services team in IBM Chief Information Office (CIO)
UCSC in Silicon Valley certificate coordinator and instructor
STC Fellow, past president (2004-05), former member of
Board of Directors (1998-2006), and Intercom columnist (with Alyson
Riley) of The Strategic IA
ACM Distinguished Engineer

Agenda
Morning
Workshop introduction
Level set
Process and pre-work
Afternoon
Developing and applying models
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Setting the scene for the workshop
Experiential through exercises
The project is merely the bagel on which to deliver the cream-cheesy
goodness of the modeling concepts 
The scope of the project and discussion is primarily product-specific,
due to time constraints
There’s more, and I’ll occasionally mention the “more”
If you're a smart content strategist, information architect, technical
communicator, etc., you'll be thinking about the “more” and trying to
integrate
Whenever there’s time, I’ll address the “more” questions
For “more,” see (URLs in references):
2013 LavaCon Unified Content Strategy Workshop session: Building
a Content Strategy Ecosystem
2013 STC Summit Strategic IA Bootcamp certificate
4

5
Success factors
Share a definition of content experience modeling—understand what
models are and why they are important
Take away some actionable ways that you can approach modeling your
own enterprise content experience
Understand the general modeling process, from analysis and requirements
definition through delivery of a release-specific information architecture, and
how it functions within the product development process
Define and create use, content, and access models
Apply abstract models to create a concrete IA for a specific product release
Have fun!

Level set: Information architecture, content
experience, etc.
© IBM Corporation 2013. All Rights Reserved@aames

A rose by any other name…
Information strategy
Content strategy
Content experience strategy
Information architecture
Content architecture
Content experience architecture
Information design
Content design
Content experience design
7

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Information architecture: A simple definition
Information architecture is about
designing
high-value content
delivered in an
effective content experience
that enables client success.

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High value content
High-value content is content that:
 Speaks directly to client/buyer business and user technical goals
 Includes only the tasks necessary to achieve those goals
 Aids the client in making decisions or applying concepts in their own
situations
 Is technically rich in the sense that it includes validated real-world
samples, examples, best practices, and lessons learned
High value content does not:
 Focus on manipulating elements of a user interface (those things that
everyone knows by now, such as "Type your name in the name field")
 Describe tasks that can't be mapped to a meaningful goal or objective
 Describe what to do without explaining how to do it
 Describe how to do it without explaining why to do it

Message
Motivation
Form/format
Layout
Where
When
Organization
Structure
Users: The center of the
content experience
Bring their perceptions and
judgments
Access the target of their
motivation—content –
through layers of experience
If well designed, enable
user-content interaction
If poorly designed, inhibit
user-content interaction
Effective content experience
10

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Information architecture: 2 scopes
Strategic IA
 Abstract
 Typical tasks include:
—Architect a product’s
total information
experience (not just
technical docs)
Tactical IA
 Concrete
 Typical tasks include:
—Update a navigation tree
according to design
guidelines and standards
—Apply models and
guidelines to develop
information architecture
for a product release or
self-contained information
deliverable
—Solve architectural issues
with guidance from a
strategic information
architect (IA) or
information strategist
—Develop a cross-product or portfolio
information experience
—Prioritize requirements
—Apply models in new and novel ways to
get validated improvements in the end-to-
end information experience
—Provide input for model or guideline
improvement
—Create and validate new models and
guidelines

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IA in the organization
Group
Divisio
n
Portfolio
Product
Division Division
Portfolio Portfolio
Product
Company
Tech docs Support Marketing Engineering Etc.
total
information
experience
Group
Divisio
n
Portfolio
Product
Division Division
Portfolio Portfolio
Product
tactical IA

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IA in technical communication
Concrete resultProduct-specific details
+ =
We deliver consistent information architecture across
a diversity of teams and products
through a repeatable process that involves
applying concrete data to abstract architectural models.
Abstract model

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IA impact: On the client experience
Our customers—and probably yours, too!—
consistently request:
 Better retrievability
 Solution-oriented information
 A seamless information experience
Good information architecture fulfills these
requests by delivering:
 Retrievable information
 Consumable information
 Cohesive information based on a consistent mental model,
especially across products
 Appropriate information—that is, only the information our customers
need, where and when they need it, for their particular business
goals

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IA impact: On business strategy and success
Effective information architecture contributes to:
 Product awareness, interest, and consideration—through
aligning all aspects of the information experience to ensure strong,
visible, consistent messaging (does your technical information prove
what your marketing information promises?)
 Mindshare—through content that is ranked highly by search engines
and information experiences that generate social capital (which also
leads to awareness, interest, and consideration—key precursors to
revenue opportunities)
 Sales and revenue—through referrals from technical information
and reuse in sales collateral
 Customer satisfaction by:
Reducing time-to-value and speeding time-to-success
Reducing total cost of ownership
Reducing customer support calls

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Use Model
Common scenarios
that describe
interactions between
users and content
Content Model
Building blocks—
how we create content
to make reusable,
consistent assets
Access Model
Navigation, wayfinding,
discovery, and retrieval—
how users find
information
Progressive
disclosure
Model for
revealing only
the content that
users really
need
Navigation
patterns
Consistent
structures for
content retrieval
based on user
goals and tasks
Content
types
Definitions and
templates used to
deliver consistent,
complete content
Taxonomy &
metadata
Classification
schemes that help
IBM manage and
reuse its content
and customers find it
Tagging &
labels
Consistent
labeling and
tagging of
content, by IBM
and its clients
Search
Methods to
ensure
that content
and structures
are optimized
for search
Information Model
Abstract model to which
teams add unique offering
details to create concrete,
consistent IA
+ =
Models in IA
We use these architectural models:
… to help us define and apply:
… to deliver high-value content in an information experience that enables client success.

Process and pre-work

The information architecture process
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design
analyze
develop
deploy maintain
plan
 Development plans
 User needs
 Business strategy
 TIE and UX strategy
 Deep understanding of
IBM and its customers
 Scenarios
 Information requirements
 High-level architecture
 Inputs to Integrated
Information Plan (IIP)
and quality plans
 Infrastructure and
other requirements
 Detailed architecture
 Education
 Design validation and
design iterations
 Additional plan inputs
 User validation data and
analysis
 Results of Information
Experience Scorecard analysis
 Draft of next-release IA
 User validation data and analysis
 Usage stats and trend analysis
 Customer feedback
 Issue resolution
 Further refined draft of next-
release IA
 Usage stats and trend analysis
 Customer feedback
 Issue resolution
 Requirements for next release
 High-level IA for next release

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Identifying and prioritizing requirements
Identifying requirements
involves scientific research,
followed by artful analysis.
The process looks like this:
1. Gather business data
2. Gather client data
3. Gather the current content
ecosystem
4. Gather history
5. Gather political landscape
6. Extract requirements from
data
7. Prioritize requirements
After completing this task,
you will have:
 A deep, nuanced
understanding of business
strategy, market drivers,
client needs, why things are
the way they are, and what
it will take to drive change
in the current climate
 A list of business and user
requirements for your
information architecture to
address
>>> > >

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Where requirements come from
Portfolio
technical strategy
Marketing
Product management
DevelopmentInformation team
Manager
Customers
Corporate strategy
Division
Portfolio
business strategy
Information architect
Interaction design
Industry trends

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Large group exercise
What are your requirements?
Using the business scenario:
Gather data and identify requirements
Gather data about the current situation:
 Business strategy—what’s important to the company?
 Target clients—what’s important to target buyers or users?
 Current information experience—what’s the today-state like?
 History—how did we get here?
 Politics—who will influence your chances of success? How can you turn
those people into allies and advocates?
Turn data into requirements, like this:
[Person] has [problem] with [frequency]

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Developing scenarios
Before you can define
an architecture, you
have to know what your
users need:
1. Define your users
2. Define their goals,
tasks, and motives
3. Identify the content that
would be high-value to
them
you will have
a collection of scenarios
that define:
 Who your clients are—buyers,
users, etc.
 What they already know
 What they need to know
 Why they need to know it
>>> > >

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Large group exercise
What scenarios do you need to support?
Using the business scenario and the results of the prior
exercise:
Define scenarios
Who?
Does what?
In what order?
Why—business goals, tasks, personal motives?
When?
Where?
How often?

Creating and applying models

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IA & models
IA is scientific:
It requires us to follow repeatable processes
It requires us to clearly define metrics
It requires us to define and validate theories
It requires us to identify variables
It requires us to know about things like human cognition
IA is art:
We develop a deep understanding of the human experience
We create meaning
We create simplicity and elegance out of complexity and chaos
Models help IAs blend science and art to achieve measurable results:
They help us follow the scientific method by defining and refining theories until we
achieve predictable, consistent results
They help us ask the right questions, discover patterns, and tolerate the ambiguity
that comes from dealing with people
They help us discover solutions by applying concepts in a systematic manner
nuanced by a vision for the human experience—NOT by following rules and recipes

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Models, defined: an example
Model house
A blueprint that shows the ideal state of the
whole and ideal relationships between
constituent components
A pattern for perfection
A representation of what’s possible if price
were no object
Real house
 Might differ from the model—
sometimes significantly—but is
still recognizable as a home
 Purpose, form, and structure
are the same
 Details may vary as a result of
the humans involved

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Lessons about models from our model home example
Models are a pattern, not a rule
Patterns are always adapted to the “fabric” with which you’re working
Fundamental purpose, form, and structure remain the same
Details may vary according to human need or circumstances
Note: If your circumstances include things like “the developer says so” or “but we’ve
always done it this way,” we strongly encourage you to roll up your sleeves and fight for
your user!
Sometimes details are a big deal
Which house would you want to live in?
Good architects leverage the flexibility of the model only in ways that
benefit the humans involved (example: “I just don’t like windows” isn’t a
reason to break from the model)
Good architects always balance business issues (cost, time, etc.) with
user issues (wants and needs)
What’s boring in neighborhoods can be good for user experiences
Consistency is predictability
Consistency leads to recognizable brands and strong identity

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Why models? Models help businesses think
Think, not cut-and-paste
For many larger organizations, it’s too expensive to develop templates for every
possible design context
Templates are hard-coded and can’t handle more than cut-and-paste design work
Scalability and adaptability
Abstract models scale with increases in complexity, number and diversity of users
Models are abstract, and as a result, ensure the information architecture remains
above the fray of trends and change
Abstract models can be adapted to handle technological innovation, changes in
strategy, flux in a product portfolio, new business processes, and evolution in the
market
Focus on high-value user interactions
Abstract models force an organization to identify, prioritize, and design for the user
interactions that are critical to business success
Technology, marketing strategies, and brand identity may evolve— core
user interactions are more stable
Consistency, with room for creativity
Abstract models can be used to align all aspects of a content experience
Abstract models drive focus on predictable user interactions while
allowing for interesting change at the presentation level

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Why models? Models help users think
What users want to think about
Users want to think about their primary goals and tasks
Users do not want to spend time on figuring out how to use our frameworks to
achieve their goals and tasks
Our job is to eliminate cognitive load and help users focus mental space on
what’s really important to them
Toward an invisible architecture
Good abstract models are based on cognitive science and user-centered design
principles
As such, abstract models help us deliver an information architecture that users
don’t have to think about
Abstract models help our users maintain focus the things they really care about
—not navigating our framework
Abstract models make obvious things like:
What to do next
Where to go next
Whether the information answers the question
How to find more or different information that will answer the question
Thanks to Steve Krug and
his first law of usability
—“Don't make me think!”
Thanks to Steve Krug and
his first law of usability
—“Don't make me think!”

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Why models? Models help communicators think
Abstract models remove the guesswork for technical communicators
Abstract models provide a framework for teams to think through things like:
Access
Delivery
Content
Presentation
Currency
Maintenance
Invaluable for teams new to information architecture or who lack a dedicated
information architect on their projects
Abstract models encapsulate lots of helpful theory
The best abstract models reflect current theory and research into human
cognition, user information-seeking and processing behaviors, and so on
This enables teams to focus less on theory and more on the specifics of their
target users and their needs, and how best to apply the models in their
design contexts
Teams learn by experience, with a solid foundation

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Why models? Models help IAs think
Abstract models encourage an IA to:
Keep user needs and business strategy in the forefront of her
thinking
Take risks and be creative in an intelligent, calculated, data-
centered, purpose-driven manner
Maintain the integrity of the overarching experience—that is,
ensure that the fundamental purpose, form, and structure of the
information experience remain the same
Tailor an information experience to meet specific user needs or
business challenges—that is, allow freedom in the details as
dictated by user need
Avoid confining an information experience to template
boundaries
Keep the focus on outcomes—results, not rules

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Key types of models
Use Model
Content Model
Access Model
Information Model
Defines ideal interactions between users and information—what they
need, why they need it, what they’re doing when they need it, and
how they’ll use it.
Defines standard building blocks of content, from the atomic level to
larger “deliverables,” including subject, presentation, taxonomy, and
metadata.
Defines a vision for how users will find your information, including
organization, structure, relationships between chunks of information
and full deliverables, and a big picture view of navigation strategies.
Defines how all dimensions of the information experience fit together
and how content teams can apply product-, solution-, project- or other
kinds of offering-specific details to produce a concrete, project-
specific, and user-centered information architecture

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Developing a Use Model: Steps
1. Develop use scenarios.
Describe user interactions with the system.
Develop a scenario for each type of system/subsystem in the product,
offering, or solution.
List the high-value tasks (vs. system features).
2. Develop information-use scenarios.
Describe the ideal user interaction with content.
Ensure that information scenarios follow use scenarios.
3. Validate the model.

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Developing a Use Model: Result
A standard set of scenarios that describe an optimal user
experience with information
A standard set of user information requirements for specific
product or system contexts
A document describing how the use model can be applied to
produce an offering-specific information architecture

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Small group exercise
What does your product’s use look like?
exercises:
Describe your product’s use
Who…
…does what….
….why….to meet what goals…
…in what context…and…
…how…and…
…what information is needed to do it

1. Leverage your use model to determine users’ information needs:
The subjects and atomic units of information your users will need
The best ways to structure and combine the information
The best presentation style and media to communicate the information
The deliverable (or delivery vehicle) that will work best
1. Standardize common subjects of information in an enterprise-level taxonomy
(a structured collection of terms that describe what the information is about).
2. Standardize your list of required atomic units of information—the information
objects that you can’t break down into smaller pieces without making them
meaningless.
3. Define standard information deliverables and delivery vehicles, specifying
how to combine atomic units of information and common
subjects to deliver understandable, stand-alone information
products that humans will see and touch.
4. Develop presentation templates, indicating how to
use media to present the information deliverables
for human consumption.
6. Validate your model.
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Developing a Content Model: Steps

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Developing a Content Model: Result
A document describing required and optional deliverables
(collections of information atoms), how they relate to one
another and are used and delivered, and how the content
model can be applied to produce an offering-specific
A collection of templates—one for each deliverable—describing
the required and optional elements of each

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What should your content contain?
exercises:
Describe your content abstractly
Content collections
Required elements
Optional elements

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Developing an Access Model: Steps
1. Leverage your use model to determine how users are most likely to
access (or need to access) your content to:
Searching for and finding relevant information
Following leads when searching
Scanning an information space to develop a sense
of its contents
Staying informed about updates or new content
Evaluating information for relevance
Using information to achieve a goal
1. Define the overarching strategy for user access to information.
2. Depict how a collection of access methods work together to
accommodate the wide range of user behaviors when navigating to
and within an information space.

A document describing the overall access strategy, how
multiple access methods work together, and the details
about how specific areas of access can be supported, as
well as how the content model can be applied to produce an
offering-specific information architecture
Any technology, business requirements, and user needs
that emerge from the detailed access-related patterns,
schemes, and strategies
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Developing an Access Model: Result

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What does your access look like?
exercises:
Describe users’ access to your content abstractly
Search
Browse/navigation
Linking
Taxonomy/metadata
Product-embedded content—persistent, pushed

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Developing an Information Model: Steps
1. Start with the output of the other three modeling processes—use each
of the other models as input to the Information Model.
2. Define a high-level information architecture that defines the entire
information strategy and experience.
3. Define one or more low-level information
architectures that are focused on the details of
specific pieces of the total information solution.

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Developing an Information Model: Result
A written description of an information strategy—that is, a document
describing the abstract model that includes:
How all dimensions of the information experience fit together
How content teams can apply product-, solution-, project- or other
kinds of offering-specific details to the abstract information model in
order to produce a concrete, project-specific, and user-centered

44
Applying models
Apply the models to
create a detailed,
prioritized, information
architecture for a
specific product (or
release):
1. Develop the high-level
design
2. Develop the product- or
release-specific Use Model
3. Consider the Content
Model to determine what
content collections should
be provided and how the
content will be presented
4. Consider the Access
Model to determine how
users will find the content
you will have:
A detailed information architecture
defining:
 What content will be provided
 Where/when in the users’ task
flow it will be provided
 How the content will be delivered
 How the content will be presented
 How users will find the content
 Priorities for the content
 Mockups and designs for specific,
high-focus content components,
such as “Welcome”
>>> > >

45
Applying your models, part 1
Models have value when applied systematically:
They enable IAs to develop usable architectures that in turn make it easy
for users to accomplish their goals with your product, project, solution or
other kind of offering.
They provide a consistent information experience across multiple
products, product families, or enterprises—even if information in various
places are developed by different writers and architects, or if offerings
have different product strategies or goals.
They also help writing teams by providing a framework for discovering
important details such as:
The order of user tasks
Which tasks to emphasize (and not)
The appropriate level of detail to include
The type of information to provide (expertise vs. “click this”)
The potential for gaps between tasks or across components
or products
Content to include in any examples or samples

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Applying your models, part 2
It’s important to validate across several different instances of the
applied model to ensure that the model works when instantiated with
various types of products or systems.
The key to applying the models is in the process of developing your
offering-specific information architecture.
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What content will you provide, and how will the user
experience it?
Using the business scenario and the results of the prior exercise:
Apply the models to design a concrete information architecture
Describe what content is needed
Describe where content is delivered
In the product
Installed (separate from the product)
Hosted/Web
Code
Describe how the content is delivered
Delivery mechanisms
Customization and personalization
Mock up a use case to illustrate all content in the appropriate
experience

References and resources

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References
Building a Content Strategy Ecosystem,
LavaCon Unified Content Strategy Workshop, April 2013:
http://slidesha.re/17S782A
(or http://www.slideshare.net/aames/creating-a-content-strategy-ecosystem)
Strategic Information Architecture Boot Camp,
STC Summit, May 2013:
http://slidesha.re/1t4o7eu
(or http://www.slideshare.net/akriley/stc2013-strategic-iacertcourseallchartsamesriley)

51
Additional resources
Web resources:
The Society for Technical Communication—http://www.stc.org
Be sure to check out Intercom magazine’s regular column, “The Strategic IA,” written by Andrea Ames and
Alyson Riley. In particular, check out and leave your thoughts on the January 2012 edition—a special
edition devoted to information architecture!
Boxes and Arrows—http://www.boxesandarrows.com
The Information Architecture Institute—http://iainstitute.org
Print resources:
James Kalbach. “Designing for Information Foragers: A Behavioral Model for Information Seeking
on the World Wide Web.” Internetworking, Internet Technical Group newsletter. 27 January 2001.
Available at http://www.internettg.org/newsletter/dec00/article_information_foragers.html.
William Lidwell, Kritina Holden, and Jill Butler. (2010) Universal Principles of Design. Beverly, MA:
Rockport Publishers. (ISBN 978-1592535873)
Peter Morville and Louis Rosenfeld. (1998) Information Architecture for the World Wide Web.
Sebastopol, CA: O'Reilly Media. (ISBN 978-0596527341)
Jeffrey Rubin and Dan Chisnell. (2008) Handbook of Usability Testing, 2nd ed. Indianapolis: Wiley
Publishing, Inc. (ISBN 978-0470185483)
Richard Saul Wurman. (1997) Peter Bradford, ed. Information Architects. New York: Graphis.
(ISBN 978-1888001389)

Backup
Model-development details

and how content teams can apply product-, solution-, project- or
other kinds of offering-specific details to produce a concrete, project-
53
Key types of models
Content Model
Access Model
Information Model
Defines ideal interactions between users and information—what
they need, why they need it, what they’re doing when they need
it, and how they’ll use it.
metadata.
Use Model

54
Developing a Use Model, part 1
1. Develop use scenarios
Describe user interactions with the system.
Develop a scenario for each type of system/subsystem in
offering/solution.
Be sure the scenarios provide insight into questions such as:
Who are the users? What are their goals?
What’s the purpose of the product, system or solution?
What tasks will users do with the product? (Be sure to
decompose high-level tasks into lower-level tasks or
procedures. Identify prerequisite tasks and any dependencies
for successful task completion.)
Which tasks are the high-value ones necessary for achieving
a broader goal, and which ones are tasks merely required as
a result of product design or system features?

55
2. Develop information-use scenarios
Describe the ideal user interaction with content.
Ensure that information scenarios follow use scenarios.
Be sure the scenarios provide insight into questions such as:
What information do users need to complete the tasks defined in the
product- or system-usage scenarios, and at what points during product
use is the information needed?
What information do users need to achieve their broader business or
personal objectives?
How will users experience or interact with that information, both for their
own goals and as required by product or system tasks? Be sure to
address this question for each of the necessary tasks you have defined in
your product or system lifecycle.
How close to the product or system user interface does the information
need to be? Is it the interface? Or does it support the interface? Is it
task-disruptive to take the user away from the primary product or system
interface to access the information they need?

56
3. Validate the model.
Socialize it.
Conduct reviews with members of your IA community.
Validate with customers, in several concrete contexts, if
possible.

57
Key types of models
Use Model
Access Model
Information Model
Defines standard building blocks of content, from the atomic
level to larger “deliverables,” including subject, presentation,
taxonomy, and metadata.
Content Model

58
Developing a Content Model, part 1
1. Leverage your use model to determine users’
information needs:
The subjects and atomic units of information your users
will need
The best ways to structure and combine these building blocks
of information to reflect the user’s task flow
The best presentation style and media to communicate this
information to users given their skills and the tasks they’re
trying to accomplish, such as, interaction or information, text or
images, static images or moving images, audio, or
combinations of these
The deliverable (or delivery vehicle) that will work best, such
as, product- or system-embedded information, topics and
multimedia in a hypertext environment, animation with voice-
over, podcast

59
2. Standardize common subjects of information, or a
common collection of terms that describe what the
information is about, in an enterprise-level taxonomy.
3. Standardize your list of required atomic units of
information, or the information objects that you can’t
break down into smaller pieces without making them
meaningless.
Hint: Consider DITA (Darwin Information Typing Architecture)
and its information types (concept, task, and so on) and
specializations.

60
4. Define standard information deliverables and delivery
vehicles, or how you combine atomic units of
information and common subjects to deliver
understandable, stand-alone information products that
humans will see and touch.
5. Develop presentation templates, or how you will use
media to present the information deliverables for human
consumption.
Consider the templates necessary to ensure an integrated,
consistent user experience.
Develop new templates by starting with those that are most
impactful to your user’s information experience or that support
business priorities.

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Socialize it.
Conduct reviews with members of the enterprise-wide IA
community.
Validate with customers, in several concrete content contexts,
if possible.

62
Key types of models
Use Model
Content Model
Information Model
metadata.
Defines a vision for how users will find your information,
including organization, structure, relationships between chunks
of information and full deliverables, and a big picture view of
navigation strategies.
Access Model

Developing an Access Model, part 1
Stay informed about updates or new content
How will you ensure that users have the most
up-to-date content?
How will you communicate the availability of
fresh or refreshed content?
Evaluate information for relevance
How will you help users discover the value of
your information as it relates to their goals and
needs?
What techniques will you use to distinguish
information objects from one another?
Will you allow users to apply their own
metadata to help themselves and others with
differentiation?
Use information to achieve a goal
What techniques will you use for in-page or in-
task wayfinding and discovery?
Will you allow users to customize the
information or the space for their own use, and
if so, how?
Search for and finding relevant information
How do your chosen approaches for
information delivery impact its findability?
What are the likely entry points into your
information architecture—marketing pages,
out-of-box materials, Google, “likes” on
Facebook?
How will your information architecture promote
search engine optimization (SEO)?
Follow leads when searching
How will users find their way through your
information space once they’ve found it?
Where do your users want or need to go next?
How will you enable discovery?
Scan an information space to develop a
sense of its contents
How will you enable users to develop a good
mental model of the information within a
particular space?
How will users self-locate within a navigation
hierarchy or other structure?
63
1. Leverage your use model to determine how users are most likely to access
(or need to access) your content to:

64
Developing an Access Model, part 2
2. Define the overarching strategy for user access to
information.
3. Depict (with text, images, wireframes and prototypes) how a
collection of access methods work together to
accommodate the wide range of user behaviors when
navigating to and within an information space. Drill down
into the user experience and interface associated with
specific areas of access, and define things typically
associated with IA work like navigation patterns, labeling
schemes and linking strategies.
4. Validate your model: Socialize it. Conduct reviews with
members of the enterprise-wide IA community. Validate
with customers, in several concrete content contexts, if
possible.

65
Key types of models
Use Model
Content Model
Access Model
metadata.
Information Model Defines how all dimensions of the information experience fit together

66
Developing an Information Model, part 1
1. Start with the output of the other three modeling
processes—use each of the other models as input to the
Information Model.
2. Define a high-level information architecture that defines
the entire information strategy and experience.
3. Define one or more low-level information architectures
that are focused on the details of specific pieces of the
total information solution.
Example: Business strategy or product usability issues might
require an information architect to give particular focus to the
information strategy in support of a product out-of-box
experience—one specific piece within an overarching
information architecture.

67
Developing an Information Model, part 2
Socialize it.
Conduct reviews with members of the enterprise-wide IA
community.
Validate with customers, in several concrete content contexts,
if possible.

Content Experience Modeling: Designing Customer Value and Consistency

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