Learn how a band of fearless library professionals are ripping the guts out of their website using content strategy.
When we started this project in early 2014, the University of Arizona Libraries website was a monster—5,000 unwieldy web pages of outdated, irrelevant, and unfriendly content. After sorting through all of the squishy entrails captured in our content audit, we left the lab to learn about our users and stakeholders—their needs, expectations, and priorities. With data in hand, we decided what content to kill and bury, what could be resurrected, and how to focus our content efforts going forward.
We are now working with a dozen content managers to revamp the web pages they hold dear and make our content more human. To keep the beast at bay, we are creating a system of workflows, standards, and accountability and giving our managers the training and tools they need to be successful.
Presented by Rebecca Blakiston and Shoshana Mayden at edUi 2014 in Richmond, Virginia, September 30th.
ICT Role in 21st Century Education & its Challenges.pptx
Content Strategy in Action: Taming a 5,000 Page Franken-site
1. Content Strategy in Action
Taming a 5,000 Page Franken-site
Rebecca Blakiston
User Experience Librarian
Shoshana Mayden
Web Content Strategist
#edui_frankensite
University of Arizona Libraries September 30, 2014
10. Principles & Plan
1. Do user research.
2. Get stakeholder feedback.
3. Define audience and primary tasks.
4. Get a grip on our content.
5. Content first, design second.
6. Integrate franken-parts into Drupal.
7. Make it easy & fun.
8. Provide workflows & training.
9. Only create what we can maintain.
10. Take the time to do it right.
11. We will evaluate every piece of content.
We
will not
migrate content.
20. Personas
The Monster
Nicknames: Frankie
Age: 6 months
Major: Undeclared
Lives: Dungeon off-campus
Uses the library for:
• Terrifying freshman
• Quiet study space
Challenges:
• Tech novice
• Afraid of fire
43. We champion student and
faculty success by giving them
access to the spaces,
technology, collections and
expertise needed for their
research, teaching, studying
and collaboration.
44.
45. We will capture your ideas then
send to all staff for a sort.
helpful
friendly
reliable
people-focused
traditional
unmoving
fun
Who we are
fun
Start: 11:00 (Intro 7 minutes)
Rebecca – welcome
Today we’re going to talk about our efforts to tame our website for the University of Arizona Libraries - what we fondly call our franken-site. It’s a monster.
Rebecca
Have been the web product mgr at the UA Libraries since 2010, recently restructured and am now a librarian within our User Experience Dept.
Managed website redesigns including our Special Collections website and the Center for Creative Photography
Rebecca
Rebecca
Created a website in 1994, has been redesigned at least 3 times but never really touched the content or architecture seriously
Library has 200 staff, 6 buildings, 13 content managers, and website gets 2.5 million visits a year (includes 1 million unique visitors).
Icebreaker questions
Rebecca – so many stand-alone and interconnected parts – it is a complicated, complicated beast.
Rebecca - To tackle this overwhelming amount of content, we began what we names Project Redux. Initially we were calling it a website redesign, but we wanted to psychologically get away from the “design” focus because we really have a much, much broader mission. Over lunch during our project kickoff meeting, we kept talking about how we wanted to take this opportunity to not just redesign, but to rebuild, rebrand, rethink, reorganize, and reenergize the entire digital user experience. So this is how we came up with the project’s name: Redux.
band of fearless library professionals: identify who is on the project (roles)
Rebecca - Before Redux, it was more like Franken-dux – a non-integrated, complicated digital user experience with many parts, none of them quite perfect.
Rebecca – here are the goals we established for Project Redux. Number one is the focus on content, and several other point to content as being at the forefront. Our content needs to be accessible, usable, and findable. We want there to be a familiarity. We want the content to be engaging, understandable, and credible. We also want it to be human: we want the library’s personality and identity to come through in our content.
http://antiscribe.files.wordpress.com/2012/06/the-monster-in-the-graveyard.jpg
Rebecca – here is a snapshot of some of our principles and plan of action. User research is absolutely essential to guiding our decision making, as well as stakeholder feedback: feedback gathered from library staff who use the website daily, in particular the front-line staff who access our content to help students & faculty directly.
We recognized that we needed to clearly define our audience and tasks.
Rebecca – we knew that we wanted to closely evaluate every piece of content. No stone would be left unturned. We wanted to avoid just migrating content – all content was up for discussion and review. Remember, we were Reduxing, and simply migrating poor content from the old site to the new site was not an option.
http://www.halloweenmoviesontv.com/wp-content/gallery/frankenstein-1931/frankenstein-1931d.jpg
Rebecca - In other words, we wanted to rip the guts out of our Franken-site. Sorry, Franken-site.
End by 11:07
Start: 11:07 (User Research 5 minutes)
Rebecca
http://images4.fanpop.com/image/photos/19700000/Stills-bride-of-frankenstein-19762014-1872-1442.jpg
Rebecca
Focus groups – identifying primary tasks
Different audience segments, english 102, faculty, undergrads, grads
Pretty easy to recruit, gave them lunch
Some of what they want we already offer. Fail! E.g. databases by subject
Rebecca
Card sorting for coming up with labels, groupings, categories
Rebecca
Optimal sort
Shout out to Alan from New Zealand
Rebecca
Treejack to validate information architecture – asking users to complete a task and they navigate labels within a structure, can see the paths of navigation
Rebecca
Survey – primary tasks
Rebecca
Helped us later on as we thought about finding particular types of materials – will hear more in our example of databases
End 11:12
Shoshana – Personas intro
We used all of the data we gathered in our user research to create personas representing our users
I’m not going to spend too long talking about this portion, but there is a great talk on persona building at 2pm today
Start 11:12 (Personas 3 min)
Shoshana – Persona details
We built seven personas based on different audience segments: a freshman, two grad students, a faculty member, a community visitor, a donor, and a library staff member
We based each profile on the user research incorporating quotes from users and details about their time on campus, motivations, and challenges
Gave each persona personal details and backstory (work, hobbies, pets, family members, etc.) to help make our staff remember them and care about these “users” For example everyone remembers that our faculty member Renee is studying how to use dance to teach mathematics and that Brandon is sleep-deprived due his new infant at home.
Presented the personas at large staff meetings, content manager trainings etc.
Also looking out we can use these personas beyond the digital experience
Rebecca – Personas in use
We involved our development team in using the personas and they’ve incorporated them into their agile development process
We had a mega-brainstorming session where we connected the personas to primary tasks and generated “user stories”
These are simple ___ wants to ___ because _____ stories, but we are using the actually personas rather than generic student, faculty, staff stories.
E.g. Emily wants to search for images; Cheyenne wants to reserve a study room
We grouped them into categories (e.g study spaces, equipment lending, finding books)
End by 11:15
Start 11:15 (Content Audit/Model 8 minutes)
Shoshana: Content audit intro
Before we could rebuild the site we needed to inventory all our grisly body parts.
This built on a content audit/inventory that Rebecca had done in 2011/2012 when the library was first setting up its web governance system
So we started with existing content inventories for our 12 content managers - about 700 individual pages, but we knew there were many other pages/page views out there on related sites, exhibits, and from our numerous applications.
How did we find stuff? Existing inventory, Siteimprove inventory, Google analytics, Drupal module that showed us all the nodes, lots of navigating (and still months later find random stuff). Black Widow?
Shoshana - Content audit basics
The earlier content inventory was primarily quantitative, metadata about what pages were out
Once again we captured this basic info: Page title. URL. The assigned manager/provider (say a little about governance in place)
We assigned each page an ID # to help us keep track of where it was situated in the our information architecture. For example all of these pages start with 3.1 because they are part of the section on Finding stuff.
We also captured new quantitative info about what formats the page included (text, links, images, video, forms) and categorized potential structured content.
Shoshana – content audit expanded
We added some qualitative information to evaluate our content.
Who is the audience? We tracked whether it related to the primary tasks and audience segments we defined in our user research (more on this in a bit)
Is the content usable? We rated this on a scale of 1-3 (3 being bad), included things like understandability, editorial standards, findability
Is it the content relevant? Is it duplicative of other content on the site? Is it out of date? Would anyone want to read it? (link to analytics)
For that last piece, we also pulled google analytic data for the previous two semester tracking page view/unique page views
And yes, this took a long time. We had student help, especially for the quantitative and analytic data portions.
This is an ongoing process, still working on audits for some parts of our Frankensite, course guides, subject guides tutorials
Shoshana – Audit results, usability
20% of pages were rated as a “3” for usability (doesn’t mean the other 80% were that great either). This was due to editorial standards issues, hard to understand, formatting issues
Shoshana – Audit results, usability
We a lot of rogue content that doesn’t follow our editorial standards that help ensure usable content
In this case, a content manager has used a table to create two columns of content. They add bold right and left to make things stand out, not to mention all caps
The screen shot is in black and white, but they even added some clashing pastel colors here (why? I do not know)
We have systems in place to try to keep this kind of stuff from happening, but it is a constant battle (plus a lot of legacy content)
Shoshana – Audit results usability
Instructions, so, so many instructions – this used to be a print hand out that was put on the website
Librarians by nature want to teach our users how to find information and will expound upon it at length
In our new site, we want to have more tools that are easy for our users rather than long pages of instructions far removed from the tool (e.g. scoped search boxes)
Shoshana – Audit results, relevance
25% of our content was rated as a “3” for relevance – meaning content we think no one wants (at least in its current form). In fact less than a third of our content even relates to the primary tasks that we defined from user research.
Numbers actually higher due to A to Z pages
This was backed up with analytic data. 20% of our content had very little traffic (less than 100 views in 2013) and there was lot of overlap in this data between poor relevance rating and low traffic.
In fact 84% had less than than 1000 views.
Shoshana – Audit results, relevance
For example, we have a lot of out of date content that is difficult to maintain
In this example, you see a workaround for a shortcoming for our catalog system. In this case some film listings were created since subject terms aren’t easily findable in our catalog. There were 29 pages just for this subject alone, plus dozens and dozens more for other subjects.
A lot of these are old films that have actually been removed from the library. So the pages are seriously out of date. They also are very difficult to use. Maybe that’s why this page only had 7 views last year
Shoshana – Audit results, relevance
We also have a lot of library-centric info
Like this long page on library history and trivia, does anyone outside the library care?
It is the kind of content that one card sorting participant put all together in one category and labeled “Stuff I’d never go to.”
. But does anyone actually want to read this? It is the type of content that one card sort participant putinfo that might in a category called stuff I would never go to.
Shoshana – Audit results, relevance
The audit also brought up the question how long should content be kept on our site?
Up until recently we had a feedback application that allowed our customers to submit feedback and also gave a public view to the comments and resulting library action.
Useful in the short term? Yes? But do we still need to know that the rain gutters were breeding mosquitoes back in 2009? Or that this student was unhappy with a $77 fine?
Shoshana – Audit results – Die, die, die bad content
Our first content audit resulted in us deleting 200+ pages
We recently buried about 100 more in this audit, with more to come.
Currently working with content managers to review the audit and determine what else can be deleted
Shoshana – Audit results – Die, die, die bad content
We are burying a lot of zombie content that never seems die.
This example of duplicative content is an old location map from 2009 that shows units that are no longer even part of our organization.
Shoshana – Audit results – Die, die, die bad content
We also deleted things that never should have been born in the first place!
Shoshana – Audit results – Die, die, die bad content
PDFs especially seem to never die!
Like this old map
We are planning to fix workflow issues around this
Shoshana – Structured content intro
We are also using the audit to:
Determine the highest priority content to breathe new life into
Figure out where things fit in our new information architecture
Figure out how rebuild, rewire content. Structured content!
Shoshana – Content modeling
One of the first things we did to rewire our monster was a content modeling exercise involving our redesign team and all content managers
Looked at the whole ecosystem of our content, put everything up on the board and drew lines of what relates to what.
Shoshana – Content modeling
We next took our work and used LucidChart to make an electronic version that we could edit and share more widley
Shoshana - Content modeling
This is a closer view.
We used verbs to define the relationships between different types of content and started to capture some of the attributes relate to some pieces of content
We are using the model to help inform our development work and road map as the project goes along
End by 11:22
Start 11:22 (Content strategy 5 minutes)
Shoshana – Content strategy intro
So once we had a pretty good handle on our existing content it was time to think about content strategy and our vison for the future
Although my position as content strategist is new to the library Rebecca had already done a lot of work in this area, particularly with web governance
Shoshana – Content Strategy Intro
But in some ways our messaging is not consistent, with different parts of the site pulling in different directions
Kind of like Frankie here…
We need to revamp our content strategy to bring it all together.
http://lowres.cartoonstock.com/literature-frankenstein-brides-ambition-goal-life_goal-bwhn239_low.jpg
Shoshana – Content Strategy Statement
Our original content strategy focused on make a usable, easy experience for users
A lot has been changing on or campus (new president, strategic plan, branding) and the library is working hard to align our own strategic plans with campus
This strategy statement is a work in progress but reflects how the library is a value to campus
I’m working with our head of marketing and public relations to define from here key messages that we want our website, social media, donor relations etc. to reflect
Shoshana – Voice and Tone
A big part of this is figuring out how we can be more human on the site
In the past the human element was purposely taken out of our site as staff was shrinking
We now have new college/department liaisons and stronger campus partnerships
So we want our voice and tone to reflect our friendly, professional expertise and real people
http://prettyfrank.files.wordpress.com/2008/03/pretty_frank.jpg
Shoshana – Library Identity
Part of developing our content strategy has been gathering feedback on the identity of the library
We did an exercise adapted from Margot Bloomstein’s Content Strategy at Work to get feedback from library staff on adjectives they’d use to describe the library now, as well as what they’d want to see in the future and what we should never be.
We did this both in person with some staff and through an online card sort (OptimalSort)
Shoshana – Library Identity
We also got feedback from students and faculty
We did a similar brief exercise with adjectives to describe the library with focus groups and card sorting participants
We also set up some easels in the library lobby to get feedback of their ideal library
Shoshana – Library Identity
What we find out – from users we heard a lot about our physical space with a focus on accessibility and comfort (we are too dark and cold!)
Right now we are seen as knowledgeable and friendly (score: that’s what we’ve been going for!)
In the future there was an emphasis on being innovative, engaging and people-focused
http://www.designstack.co/2014/07/facebook-hand-thumbs-up-art.html
Shoshana – Library Identity
What should we never be?
That was pretty clear: NOT exclusive or traditional
Shoshana – Library Identity
On some things the verdict was split
Can we be witty or cool? Not so much
Funny? No. Fun? Yes.
End by 11:27 http://www.netanimations.net/FrankDancesWild.gif
Start 11:28 – Database example 7 minutes
I want to take you through one specific area of our website content to show all of the elements we’ve been talking about in more detail
It is called our database of database and is one of the most grisly parts of the site
Case in point: this is an actual user attempting to use our DOD
https://dorkforty.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/bride-scream.jpg
Shoshana – What are databases?
For those you who’ve blocked out your days doing research papers in English 101 – library databases are tools used for finding and accessing scholarly stuff like books, articles, etc.
We have more than 500 of them accessible on our site both by name (A-Z list) and subject
They are also frequently used in research guides – content put together by librarians to help students/faculty find info on a particular topic or course
Like on Frankenstein….! as in this topic guide example from another library
Shoshana: Databases Audit
You might think the content strategy around something like databases would be pretty straightforward (or at least I did when I started the project)
But as we audit what all was actually in our database application it became clear that the library has been using the tool to keep track of lots of different content:
Encyclopedias and other reference resources
Citation tools and productivity software
Websites that might be useful to someone somewhere (e.g. scholarship websites)
Individual journals and newspapers
Redundant titles (abbreviations, former titles.
There were 1200+ records and it was all a huge jangled mess!
Shoshana – Databases Content Strategy
So we needed some strategy and started by defining what databases are
Some of our librarians are still a little nervous about not including everything but we have reassured them that there will be other tools for content that doesn’t fit this…
Shoshana – Database User Stories
We also looked to our personas and user stories to spec out what features we should include in the redesign
In addition to finding databases by subject, our users wanted to see databases for particular formats, trial/new databases, and popular/recommended databases
Shoshana – Database UI Prototyping
Our Redux team came together with library stakeholders to sketch out the interface for the new design
A lot of content decisions came up at this point, like what metadata should we include?
We are now trying to work out more of the content requirements before we get to sketches and wireframes
Shoshana: Database UI
You can see some of these elements in our prototype we’ve built out
Rebecca and I worked to remap the subject listings to better match campus units and to also be organized in to broader topics like history or business
The find by format is also now evident (we had metadata about this before but not in the public view)
The page highlights things like trial databases
Shoshana – Database content
But what about the database content?
As I mentioned we started with a mess of 1200 records
We reviewed those to take out duplicates and canceled titles
Also mapped the new subjects and formats and assigned to librarians based on this
Our team of subject librarians have just finished reviewing the other metadata, including writing new descriptions
Shoshana – Database Descriptions
As part of this we developed database standards for titles, descriptions, and what should be included overall
For example a lot of our existing descriptions our wordy (some even much longer than what is shown here, with more detail than the user needs
We asked the librarians to focus on what someone needs to decide to use the resource and to keep it short. No more than 2 sentences
We’ll also be editing there work to ensure consistency.
Shoshana – Database Wokflows
A lot of people are involved with databases, so we are also trying to think about workflows for the future
We assigned a database lead from the librarian team to help us define things and wrangle these providers
Shoshana – Workflows
We also sketched out the details for how new content will get added, edited, and deleted
This last one is important since as we discovered in other areas of the site nothing ever seems to get deleted
Shoshana – Database CMS – smarts
We are also trying to be smart and let our CMS manage workflow steps on our site wherever possible
For databases, this means the system will send alerts when humans need to take action and review things
We’ll give meaningful help text wherever possible that helps guide content providers in our standards and voice/tone
Content that has a defined life cycle like trial databases will automatically expire from the site
For the site as a whole, we are also customizing the WYSIWYG to add features our content managers want (good spell check, integrated standards documents) and take away the things we don’t want them doing (no underline button)
http://www.pinterest.com/pin/156640893263038246/
End by 11:35
Start by 11:35 (Wrap up 5 minutes)
Rebecca – 5 mins to wrap up
Wrapping up – where we are at with implementation – 9 months in, not as far along as we’d like. We have tackled some of the biggies: created a new databases of databases within Drupal, created a new staff directory in Drupal (previously a PHP application), and new content and functionality for our technology lending content (previously just static content and didn’t address the primary task: what equipment is available now). But there is no way we are going to be ready to launch a brand new website over winter break, as originally planned. It’s a huge, complex site.
And plus! Other distractions got in the way and took a lot of our web developers time.
But – we have created a new incremental deployment process. So rather than a “big launch day,” we are embracing incremental deployment: going live with parts of our new franken-site as they are ready for public consumption.
Here is an example – on our website we have deployed a new “megabox” for searching for library materials – launched this in conjunction with our launch of Summon, a new discovery tool, over the summer. While we aren’t yet ready to deploy our brand new database of databases, we have added the ability to search for database names, to browse subjects areas more easily, and we now feature some of our most commonly used databases on the homepage. We also have updated the descriptions of the databases that were re-written by librarians.
When we have good content/functionality, we will push it out to users as soon as possible.
We are building a new site in Drupal 7: new.library.arizona.edu, and as pieces are ready to share with the world, we will link to the new website from the existing site. Slowly but surely, the new site will take over the old site.
We have a plan on how to sequence content and structural updates to the website – there are many interdependencies, so thinking through what to do when has been challenging but very important to make sure we don’t break the user experience. Communication with stakeholders, content managers in particular, and assigning point people for each particular piece of the Franken-site has also been important. And brown bags with the entire library staff.
One of the great benefits of deploying in pieces, we are able to incorporate usability testing and gather feedback as we go – allowing a more iterative development and deployment process.
Usability testing is incorporated into the process – everything that impacts a primary task for our audience will be tested with actual users. By having changes go live on the site, we can gather this feedback in the real environment, incorporate “give us feedback” options on the live site, and make changes based on those results.
Shameless self-promotion
Overwhelming amount of things – being careful to define our scope up front was important –yes, we will touch all Drupal web pages, all legacy applications integrated into the site, but we won’t touch static web exhibits, the repository, the intranet, etc.
You might be overwhelmed by the amount of content you have. Prioritize based on the biggest impact for your users. In order to do this, you need to know your audience and know your content.
Also realizing that not everything will be perfect and that’s ok. If it’s better than what we have now, let’s push it out. Don’t punish the users – they will appreciate an improvement and can make big impact on usability.
Also important to stay flexibility, feel free to iterate on your own process, and be patient as things don’t go as planned.