What is content design and why is it important?

Content design is about putting the user first. It’s not about simply creating copy, but rather about what the reader needs, how the content is structured, and whether it is accessible and easy to understand. It’s about designing content so that people can find what they need to know, or do, quickly and easily.

 

Jack Garfinkel, Content Designer at Content Design London, describes content design as, “... the most effective way to make and maintain content that helps people to solve problems. It often means helping organisations to use the knowledge they already have about what their users need, as much as it is about doing new research and testing”. 

 

 

Why is content design so important?

 

Often organisations create content that they want their audience to know. Content design shifts this way of thinking. By creating content based on what users need, we offer a better experience, reduce barriers, and increase understanding and action.

 

 

What can content design be applied to?

 

Everything! It’s particularly useful and important for advice and information pages, support pages, campaigns and services but it can even be applied to your donation page.

 

If someone wants to donate to your charity, then it should be as easy as possible to do so. Good content design on a donation page can help remove barriers, provide a good user experience, and increase conversions.

 

 

Content design example: The Kinship Care Guide

 

Rachel Nelligan, Senior Content Designer at Kinship, shares how the charity took a content design approach to creating a new edition of their printed guide for kinship carers.

 

“When people need help, they often come to charities because they’ve found it hard to find that help elsewhere. They’re already stressed and frustrated. We know how stress affects people’s ability to read and take in information, so writing concise information in plain English is vital. They might be going through something that we haven’t experienced ourselves and so finding out what information people need – and when – is really important.

 

At Kinship, we applied a content design approach to creating a new edition of our printed guide for kinship carers. We asked our Participation Manager to send out a request to people in our Kinship Community, which is made up of kinship carers who have agreed to contribute to our work, and who are compensated for their time.

 

We started with around seven people and did online interviews with them about how they used the current guide, what they would have found helpful, and what should be changed or added. After analysing their feedback, we then started drafting the content.

 

The draft was shared with another seven people (a combination of people we’d originally spoken to, plus a couple of new people) to review whether the content and the structure was right. For the second round we did a mixture of online interviews, allowing comments on a shared online document, and one in-person discussion with a draft chapter of the guide in front of us.

 

The result is a printed guide for kinship carers with accurate information that is practical and easy to read and understand.”

 

 

Content design tips to get you started

 

You don’t need to be a content designer to do content design. These tips will help you to think like a content designer and improve content for your users. GOV.UK also has a great guide to content design to help you plan, write, and manage content.

 

 

Spend time with other teams

 

No one understands problems that users need to solve better than those who speak to them directly. Jack recommends finding a way to spend time with people who work directly with users. For example, people running your charity’s helpline, people in the supporter engagement team or those who work directly in services.

 

“Start by going to a meeting that already exists, like a weekly planning meeting – anything that will help you to start to understand what’s going on. When you need to understand more, follow up with a more informal conversation.”

 

 

Gather insights and visualise them

 

Once you’ve gathered all your insights, Jack suggests mapping those insights to content you’ve already got or content you’re going to make. “A ‘continuous improvement’ method using Kanban, a visual project management framework, can work well.”

 

 

Do some user testing

 

Even with limited resources, you can test your existing content as a simple way of doing user research. Jack suggests running a highlighter test with your advice content. “This will show you the bits of your content that are harder to understand, so that you can make it clearer.”

 

 

Improve the content you already have

 

The Kinship case study above is a great example of how you can apply content design principles to existing content to improve it for the user. But how do you know what content could be improved? “Use web analytics to find out what content is prompting people to contact you. These may be areas you can improve.”, says Jack.

 

If you have a helpline, ask them what their top queries are to see how they compare to your web analytics. It may be that people are contacting the helpline because they can’t find the information they need on the website. Knowing what their pain points are will help to improve your existing content.