Sarah Johnson: Moving Content Forward with “Content-first Design” – Episode 209

Content Strategy Insights

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Sarah Johnson Sarah Johnson asks, "If a digital experience is a conversation with a user, how can you have that conversation if you don't know what the words are?" Sarah addresses the crucial role of content in her new book, "Content-first Design," tackling both the pragmatic aspects of a content-first approach to design as well as how to advocate for content practice. We talked about: her new book, "Content-first Design" her definition of content-first design her decision to include case studies provided by multiple content experts, part of her efforts to build a community around the "content-first" idea how she shows the business benefits of a content-first approach to stakeholders her brilliant observation that "digital experience is a conversation with a user and how can you have a conversation if you don't know what the words are?" her practice of sitting in on call centers to discover user concerns and language how working with financial and healthcare products and experiences have shaped her content-first approach the importance of starting slowly and building good relationships with stakeholders all along the way her appreciation for the "Search Inside Yourself" leadership program her desire to create a community around the idea of "moving content forward" Sarah's bio Sarah Johnson, a content design leader and teacher with over 20 years of experience, has worked for industry leaders such as Fidelity Investments, Banks of America, TIAA, CVS, and Bentley University User Experience Design Center. She is the author of six books, including Content-First Design, and the founder and director of ContentFirstDesign.com. Content-first Design, the company, offers content services built on actionable, data-driven insights, and workshops designed to enhance practical skills in areas such as content design, AI integration, and more. Connect with Sarah online LinkedIn ContentFirstDesign.com Video Here’s the video version of our conversation: https://youtu.be/2OxYts6_n-4 Podcast intro transcript This is the Content Strategy Insights podcast, episode number 209. Anyone who works with content knows how important and impactful it is. We also know how difficult it can be to convey the value of content to our colleagues and collaborators. Sarah Johnson tackles this dynamic in her new book, "Content-first Design." Along with addressing the practical aspects of a content-first approach, she asks: "if a digital experience is a conversation with a user, how can you have that conversation if you don't know what the words are?" Interview transcript Larry: Hi everyone. Welcome to episode number 209 of the Content Strategy Insights podcast. I am really delighted today to welcome to the show Sarah Johnson. Sarah is the principal and founder and director at content-first design, a company she runs in Provincetown, Massachusetts in the US. Welcome, Sarah, tell the folks a little bit more about what you're doing these days. Sarah: Thank you, Larry. Thanks for having me on the show. I'm a big admirer and what I'm doing is I've just written a book called content-first design, which is one methodology and lens through which you can look at this process for developing content and developing digital products. I'm also starting a business called content-first design, which offers all kinds of content services and workshops and content-first design and other content related things including AI. So those two things dovetail nicely together and it's a lot of fun and I'm excited for the book to come out, it comes out February 13th. Larry: Which will probably be, I think if I stay on schedule, that'll be about two or three weeks after this episode drops, so people will be able to get it right away. I want to start, I want to read there's, I don't know if this is your official definition, but there was a passage in the introduction to the book that just to me summed up the whole thing that you say, "Content-first design is the process by which research, exploration and evaluation of content requirements and user needs inform the structure, layout, flow and visuals for a digital product." That is music to my content ears. How did you come up with that approach and that definition? Sarah: I think it started, I mean I've been on this topic in my brain for a long time and it started, I first got the idea working at TIAA when we were doing a redesign and re-everything of the website there and some people there went to the D school and came back with design thinking. And one of the things I learned from that was that when I was working with product people, they were trying to write content and I would always have to smooth the road to help them understand that I could write it and make it work. And when I went on to other companies, this continued to be the truth and other companies weren't having it, they were design-first. And I was asked to teach at Bentley University User Experience Design Center and I had to come up with a course for that. Sarah: And in developing the course I noticed that what I was doing was examining and doing exactly what you said in that quote, research on content and then having the students redesign a website. And it was fascinating to see what they came up with. They came up with the greatest things. Now they had a background, they were at the User Experience Design Center, but they also were amazed at what they were able to do by understanding content first. And I realized I was really onto something and I outlined the book and started writing it with the encouragement of Melinda Belcher who was great and I got sick from long COVID and had to put it down for three years. And then I went back to work and I was lucky enough to get laid off and have six months to finish the book and shape it out. Sarah: And I had the help of Shannon Geis who wrote the case study, and that's sort of where it came from. And the other idea around it was that I didn't want it to be just me, I wanted to include community in it. And that's why I have the sections called From the Experts. I wanted it to be one take on content-first design, here's one methodology, one way of doing this thing we've been talking about for years, and to both encourage it and to create the conversation. Let's be talking about this. Let's broaden the conversation to include more people. And another way I do that, I'm going on and on, is through the blog Moving Content Forward, which you'll see on our website, and that's to create community around what are you doing to help move our practice forward? I want to hear about that. And we also do a bi-weekly talk on that. So the idea of the whole enterprise is to create community around content-first design and what people are doing to evolve the craft. Here's what I'm doing, what are you guys doing? Larry: Nice. I love that. I come out of book publishing originally and so I was always aware that it's never a lone, brilliant author toiling and obscurity and coming, it's always a team effort. But the way you just described that this is not just a team effort but a genuine community effort to get this together. I'm curious about this. So the moving content forward, I love that, the impulsive, the forward nature of that. Tell me how long have you been doing that? Sarah: That idea came as a tagline for the book and the original title of the book was Moving Content Forward. And my awesome editor Richard Hamilton was like, "No, let's call it content-first design and that can be the tagline." Because I really loved that idea because that's what I'm trying to do with the book and I'd love to do a short series of books on that topic, moving content forward. And I'm working on one right now about content-first design and AI and the human connection between content and AI. The moving content forward idea for the blog came up because I just want to so much to create community around what we're all doing to evolve the craft because I'm on LinkedIn all the time, I see people talking about what they're doing. I want to create community for all of us to talk about it, to generate ideas, to move it forward. Larry: Yeah. And is there a region because you're in the northeast of the US, is there sort of a regional focus that way or do you attract people from all over the country? Sarah: All over the country. Larry: Nice. Sarah: Yeah, and I'd like to expand that actually because there are people overseas like you doing a lot of cool things and let's hear about it. Let's all get talking about it. Let's see what we can do here. Larry: Well, I'll talk to my co-organizers first, but I help organize a meetup in Amsterdam called The Future of Content. Seems to be some natural alignment there with the way we're talking about. Sarah: Definitely. Larry: Yeah. But the other thing about that is it's like it implies progress and I think there's a lot of people in the content world who feel, people talk about all the time that there's this feeling that we're banging our head against the wall sometime and maybe not making as much progress. Have you found other people in the community, not just, I mean it's great that a lot of this stuff is showing up in the book, but have people just by dint of that community around the book, are people having better results and getting more accomplished just from having talked about it? Sarah: I think so. I had that experience at CVS with someone who was on my team who didn't know that she was doing content-first design, but she was, and I recognized it, and we did a presentation on it. But it only went so far because there's resistance from designers and product people who want their say. But what was brilliant about what she did, and she didn't even know it, was that she included all the stakeholders in every phase.

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