John Hughes, WALL-E, and writing for a real person

I was a teenager at that magical time when John Hughes was doing his best work. I was 14 for “Sixteen Candles,” 15 for “The Breakfast Club,” 16 for “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” and “Pretty in Pink,” and 17 for “Some Kind of Wonderful.” (Yeah, I’ll wait for you to check IMDB and calculate my age.) I felt like he was writing to me, for me, and about me.

Turns out, he had a secret weapon. Her name was Alison.

After a teenaged Alison’s angst-filled letter to John Hughes was met with a form letter as a response, she angrily called him out on it. He responded – really this time – and the result was two years of correspondence.

Though the letters tapered off, they did have a phone conversation years later:

“…he was glad I had gotten in touch and that he was proud of me for what I was doing with my life. He told me, again, how important my letters had been to him all those years ago, how he often used the argument ‘I’m doing this for Alison’ to justify decisions in meetings.”

This reminded me of a similar story about WALL-E and the girl who cried. It seemed a woman named Courtney would cry every time she watched the WALL-E trailer, so she videoed her reaction and posted it on YouTube. It found its way to the Pixar offices, and was passed around:

“Six months ago, when the first trailer for WALL-E came out, we were only halfway done with the film, and we weren’t exactly sure how we were going to get it done. We were exhausted. And then, one day, a movie showed up on YouTube showing a girl watching the trailer for WALL-E. And every time she watched it, she would cry on cue. When we saw that, we knew we were on the right track.”

The people at Pixar sent her multiple emails during production, and when WALL-E was finally released, flew her in for the wrap party. They even introduced her during the speech before the movie, and she stood up to thunderous applause.

These were real people with real emotions and real opinions engaging with products and those who created them. How much more powerful would it be to say, “I’m writing this for Alison” or, “How would Courtney react” than it would be to say, “What would this made-up persona think of this”? How much more interesting would it be to strike up a conversation with a living human being than it would be to hang stock photos on the wall and pretend you’re having a conversation with them?

Personas are fine. Not suggesting you toss their lovely, modelesque faces in the shredder. But what if you supplement the personas with someone you actually know? Are you more apt to focus and fight for content that will benefit your brother than you would some dude ripped from the archives at iStockPhoto? I’m going to guess you would.

Find the people you’re writing for. Ask for their opinions. Mention their names in meetings. Fight for them.

Ferris would have wanted it that way.

Measuring your content with user data

I wanted to build on Keri’s recent insightful post on measuring content strategy, and talk about possible ways to measure the effectiveness of content changes on e-commerce sites.  More specifically, how do you select the best content if you have a variety of different alternatives, each with its own group of fans who want to get it on the site right away?  Since the voice of a web site can be such an abstract, arbitrary decision, how can we apply methodologically robust research methods to help make these decisions?

First, I would define “effectiveness” in this context as the optimization of the following three concepts:

• Do users understand what you are trying to tell them and what action they should take to be successful in their task?
• Are you invoking the desired emotions with your content?
• Does the proposed content result in higher conversion rates than other alternatives?

It’s so important to combine the user perception data (the first two bullets) with business metrics (the last bullet).  From my experience the only way for user experience professionals to affect change is if we can show the positive impact these changes have on engagement/revenue metrics.

It seems to me that you will be well served by using the following three methodologies to measure the relative effectiveness of different versions of the same content.  This is also a really nice way to progressively reduce the number of alternatives down to the best solution:

• Usability testing. Start with several different version of the content (~10), along with the current version (if it exists).  Ask users in a lab setting what they understand the content to mean, and any other thoughts they have on the way it sounds.  This should help narrow down the alternatives to 4-6 possibilities.
• Desirability testing.  Use the Desirability method, but adjust it for use in large sample online surveys by turning it into a between-subjects experimental design.  In the survey, users are asked to rate the content on different brand and design attributes.  This way you can determine what emotional response the content extracts out of users.  You’d also be able to ask users which version of the content they’d prefer, and why.  This method has the added benefit of large numbers to give you confidence in the statistical significance of the results.
• A/B testing.  Once you’ve narrowed the alternatives down to two or three, live A/B testing can help you determine which of the alternatives perform better from a revenue or engagement perspective, by looking at differences that can be attributed purely to content changes.  This obviously works easiest when the content is directly related to a revenue-generating task, like the call to action on a checkout page, for example.  But it’s not just about revenue — there are great ways to measure metrics of engagement with the page, which is just as powerful.

Now, I can see two issues that make this a pretty difficult task, and it’s the reason why the above three methods should not be used in isolation.  In combination, they help tell the whole story.

• It is difficult to know what users really read on a page.  In the first two methods you pretty much have to show people what to read — that doesn’t happen when they visit your site organically with no one looking over their shoulder.  This is why A/B testing is so important as it gives you a sense of how behavior will change based on content.
• It is difficult to isolate the effect of content changes from the other influencing factors on a page.  This is the really difficult part.  How do you know that conversion/engagement improved because of the content and not of some other factor on the page, like visual design changes?  That is why it is important to keep the rest of the page exactly the same, and also why usability and desirability testing is important to bring out the perceptual data from users.

And the biggest problem is of course that this is an idealistic approach.  Finding the resources/time/money to do this for every content change is obviously not feasible.  But for major changes to the site, this approach could be well worth the investment.

This is also by no means the only way to measure content effectiveness, but I think it’s a good approach that balances methodological rigor with the dangers of not overdoing it.  I’d be curious if anyone has any thoughts or ideas on how to improve on this approach…

Measuring content strategy: Not a piece of cake

I was recently approached by a member of my team to think through a content issue. We are redesigning a major experience on our website, and the “sacred cows” were ripe for tipping. Did I wish to tip? Why yes, yes I did, thank you.

It’s a minor change. Minuscule. But I was positive it would make the user experience better. It would change the tone for this particular experience from robotic to something more human, and “human” is among our core values. It wouldn’t necessarily make the content easier to understand, but it would certainly bring it more in line with our brand.

But when I started looking into it, it was mentioned the change might not be worth the effort. It was reasoned this change would be a lot of work to ferret out every time it appeared on our sprawling website, and may require reengineering and redesigning.

In essence, even if it was the right thing to do, since there was no way to measure the effect of the new content in terms of conversions, it wasn’t really worth doing.

And this, my friends, made me sad.

At my company (and I’m sure at lots of other companies) changes in content, interaction design, and visual design are usually launched at the same time. Since we rarely launch a content change on its own, we are left to ponder how, exactly, do we measure for our content? It’s like baking an awesome cake and asking the diner, “So, how did that particular brand of flour affect your overall cake-eating experience?”

So what do we do?

I suggest we don’t measure content in terms of conversions as the only measurement. I propose we measure our content against ourselves. Our brand. What we want to accomplish. What we want our company to sound like. Feel like. Taste like (you know, if your company actually bakes cakes or something). We need to recognize content is the voice of our brand, and we have to take responsibility for what we say to our customers and how we say it. I want us to ask ourselves not, “Will this new content make us more money?” but, “Is this new content right for our brand?”

I understand we’re all looking for ways to cut costs, and since content isn’t as visible as visual design, it would be easy to dismiss it. After all, if we can’t always directly measure how much money we’re making off our content, why bother?

Because I think it matters now more than ever.

Just as companies are evaluating how every dollar is spent, so are our customers. Our websites are perhaps our only opportunity to show prospective customers exactly who we are and what we can offer them. Now is not the time to neglect content. Now is the time to make sure that every word is relevant, influential, and enticing. If a customer lands on a website and leaves because the content was irrelevant or unprofessional, we won’t have the chance to say, “Hey! Come back! That’s not really us. We just threw some stuff up there until we have money for good content.” That person is gone, baby. And we may never know it.

So fight the good fight at your company. I’m not sure how my situation will turn out, but I’ll let you know. In the meantime, I’m having a huge piece of cake.

Champagne and Wii, not made for each other

Keri and I had an interesting discussion last week.  Well, I think it was interesting. I believe she thought it was pretty stupid.  We’ll let you be the judge.

It started with a seemingly innocent story she told about having champagne while playing Wii.  I would like to lay out my argument here for why I think champagne should not be consumed while playing Wii.  It’s like this:

• Champagne is a pretentious drink.  It is all bubbly and alcoholly, like a beauty queen at a party.  Champagne is aloof, as if it’s better than all the other drinks.  It sometimes hangs out with less fancy drinks like orange juice, but that’s just like celebrities doing charity work.  It’s all about appearances with champagne.
• Wii is a down-to-earth, everyday, life-is-good type of activity.  Wii is the guy who shows up at the party and brings the music everyone has been waiting for.
• These 2 activities don’t mix.  Champagne is for the artifical inflation of events like baby showers and brunch at a fancy hotel.  Wii is for celebrating the simplicity of life.  Consuming the two together sends a confused message that our brains shouldn’t have to be subjected to.

Why am I posting this in a content blog?  Another conversation Keri and I had recently was about the role of tone in representing meaning.  I think part of my (admittedly tantrum-like) view on the champagne vs. Wii issue, is the words and what they represent.

Champagne has an elitist sound to it (but ironically comes from a French word that means “open country”).  Wii, on the other hand, is a totally made up word meant to represent fun (and also work in multiple languages – see this article on the history behind this).  Words have personas well beyond their meaning.  I guess I just want those personas to mix with their own kind.

Content strategy in the house

I’m back from the 2009 IA Summit and Content Strategy Consortium. I’ve caught up on sleep, put away my Graceland souvenirs, and watched “Twilight” (ah, shaddap…  you know you will too). I’ve had time to reflect on all the presentations, conversations, and ideas, peruse my notes, and crystallize what I plan to report back to my colleagues and readers (all 24 of the latter).

I was excited and flattered to be included in the first (as far as we knew) Content Strategy Consortium. There were 22 of us there, all committed to exploring and evangelizing the practice of content strategy. We talked and argued and presented and kvetched and ate and tired and rallied and talked and argued some more, and it was fabulous. So much passion and talent in that room; my content peeps are incredibly intelligent, articulate, and engaging.

Since the consortium, I’ve been asked several times, “What did you decide?” But really, I hadn’t expected to come away with a list of iron-clad decisions and rules for content strategy. It was a day of discussion and identifying questions and next steps.

For instance, what is the definition of content strategy? How are we different from information architecture? Are we different from information architecture? Is search engine optimization part of content strategy? Do we want to form an association? Do we want a whole content conference, or a track at an existing conference? Why are all these cookies shaped like ducks? (We figured that one out later.)

So, what did I come away with? I left knowing this is the start of something good. Content strategy has always existed on the web; it’s been handled by visual designers, copywriters, information architects, marketing, and engineers. Even having no content strategy is a strategy – just a really, really bad one. We’re at the forefront of the emergence and recognition of content strategy as a true discipline, with professionals dedicated to making sure everything that goes into a website has a purpose, fulfills the appropriate needs, engages the user, and works within a thoughtful user experience design plan.

I also came away with a great new network of people. These are seriously smart people, folks. (See Rachel Lovinger’s blog post for the list of attendees and their Twitter handles.) It was so much fun to get to know them and talk about content, user experience, and Ben & Jerry’s ice cream.

I want to thank Kristina Halvorson at Brain Traffic and Karen McGrane from Bond Art + Science for initiating this effort and getting us all together.

I’m really excited about the future content strategy. Are you?

Making up twords

I guess we should have seen it coming when e-commerce first became a word.  E-business, E-marketing, E-mail, E-vites (and the inevitible bastardizations – “how do you un-evite someone??”).

Next came the i-words.  iPod, iPhone, iHome, iRanOutOfBrandNamesSoIPrefixEverythingWithI.

But I guess those are still all reasonably ok.  It’s this Twitter thing that finally threw us off a cliff and into an endless abyss of grotesque word-concoctions (in my humble opinion, of course).  I mean, really.  Do we need a “twictionary”?  Well, whether we need one or not, apparently a bunch of people cared enough to make one:
http://twictionary.pbwiki.com

So what’s your least favorite tword?  I’m gonna go with Puntwitocracy.  What a blotch on the English language.

And while we’re on the subject of Twitter.  I’m assuming everyone has seen this video by now.  But it’s still good to laugh at ourselves – especially since @deliciouswords is pretty active over there in the twitverse…

The content strategist elevator pitch

I thought I’d follow up on this post where I was given the opportunity to share with a colleague what I do and how we can work together efficiently. It’s a beautiful gift, really. How often are we given that opportunity? Most of us (yeah, I’m including myself in the “most”) are often so wrapped up in our own disciplines we forget to inquire about what others bring to the table. And yet, how indignant we become when those others just don’t get what we do (um… guilty again).

So it’s great to have a little 90-second elevator pitch ready to go for those times when you’re invited to talk about what you do (or even when you’re not). It’s also handy to have a version of this speech at the ready when someone outside of your industry, like a family member, asks what you do for a living (see Brain Traffic’s awesome example of this).

Here’s my speech:

“My job is to help figure out what our content needs are based on business goals. I help determine if there’s old content we can repurpose, or if new content needs to be created. I also work on things like voice and tone, so we can make sure we’re using the appropriate language and creating the right feel for our audience. What works best for me is coming in at the beginning and working directly with the entire team to help shape the overall project. In my experience, what doesn’t work well is trying to determine content needs after everything’s been designed, and then trying to find, create, and place content into predetermined spaces.”

After my little speech, I then ask my own questions, including:

• What is your role?
• Have you ever worked with a content strategist before? How did it go?
• What works best for you?
• What do you think the business goals are for this project?
• Who is our audience?
• How would you like the content delivered?
• What would success look like?

Both the speech and the questions will vary depend on your own role, your audience, and the project.

Looking ahead, it’s my hope that when a content strategist walks into the project meeting, cries of, “Ah! The content strategist is here! We can begin now!” fill the air. Until then, it’s up to us to make sure our teams not only understand the value we bring to a project, but also to recognize their roles and help make it easy for all of us to work together.

Progress!

Yesterday I met with an interaction designer about a cool project. “You know,” he said, “you’re the first content strategist I’ve worked with since I’ve been here.” I found this a little odd since he’s been at the company for seven months now. Seven months and had yet to work with a content strategist? Huh.

But then he went on to say, “So, how do content strategists work? What would be best for you?”

Wow! This was interesting. He didn’t say, “Okay, here’s a space. I need a word for it” or, “Well, it’s all done, we just need to replace the lorem ipsum.” He invited me to explain what it is I do, and to suggest ways in which we could best work together. I gave him a two-minute overview of what tends to work and what doesn’t, and away we went.

Even though the whole situation wasn’t perfect — the project was well underway before I was brought in — it was really great to see content strategy being considered and explored.

It’s all about the little victories.

The hunting of the snark

I heard an interview on NPR a week or so ago with David Denby, author of the new book, Snark. My ears immediately perked up as I have, on occasion, been described as snarky (when I wasn’t being called a smart-ass). Denby maintained snark was undermining discourse, particularly on the Internet, where one can be anonymous.

Do I agree with Denby’s assessment? Depends on how one defines “snark.” In the interview, the etymology of snark is not discussed thoroughly, but I’ve always assumed it’s a portmanteau of “snide remark”  (and completely separate from Lewis Carroll’s mythical creation). But I think the definition goes further than just the resulting combination of those terms. For me, snark implies a sharp, observant intelligence (a definition I perhaps devised after being deemed snarky).

I love a well-crafted snarky comment. In the right hands, a quip blending astuteness, wit, and satire can crystallize the opinion of the writer and advance the conversation far better than a novel of dry, factual points. What I don’t appreciate is cruelty and banality delivered in a drive-by fashion with the goal to insult and harass. That’s not snark. That’s just being a mean-spirited snot.

Snark (good snark, not snot-snark) can call attention to the thing that no one wants to talk about without hitting listeners over the head. It’s a springboard for further conversation. Snark can beautifully illustrate the absurdities in our world without the need to ham-handedly state, “This is ridiculous.”  Snarkers stick around for the discussion. Snotsters run away. Snarkers can articulate what their comments mean in a larger context. Snotsters say, “YOU SUCK. DIAF.”

Humor and wit are necessary tools for social commentary. I do not wish for snark to go away, and I do not think it’s destroying intelligent conversation. However, I would like to see a more agreed-upon definition of the word, and call out spiteful and mean commentary for what it is: just spiteful and mean.

Highways, pangrams, palindromes

I know it’s a bit lame to write a post that just refers to someone else’s post, but this one is too good to let slip through the cracks.  After you go to Dictionary.com and look up the word pangram, you have to read this post about Interstate 287 in New Jersey:

A 0.8-mile stretch of northbound Interstate 287 in New Jersey contains these signs:

WASHINGTON’S HEADQUARTERS
NO TRUCKS IN LEFT LANE
LAFAYETTE AVE.
EXIT 20 MPH
BRIDGE FREEZES BEFORE ROAD SURFACE
INTERSTATE NEW JERSEY 287

To date this is the shortest reported stretch of U.S. highway whose permanent, official signs contain all 26 letters of the alphabet.

Of course a whole slew of questions come to mind:

1. Was this deliberate or an accident?
2. Did someone try to break the coveted “shortest pangram highway” record?  What’s the prize?
3. If this wasn’t deliberate, who counted the distance, the signs, and the letters?  Whoever it was, bless their hearts.

Speaking of “pa-” words…  What’s your favorite palindrome?  Mine has to be “A man, a plan, a canal – Panama.“  Can you beat that?