Content Design Explained

What is content design?

Content design digs into the goals and intent of a user experience in order to serve users the information they need, when they need it, in the most natural way possible.

Content design works hand-in-hand with other UX methods to influence the overall flow of a design, the hierarchy of a page and the priority of items on it, and the right language to use throughout your design before any of those issues turn into language “problems” that need to be solved.

Here’s an example: imagine you’re looking at a restaurant menu. What does that star mean next to the “Smash Burger”? Why are the Nachos listed under Entrees when the description says they’re perfect for sharing with a group? Why is coffee found in the Desserts section instead of Beverages? These are all issues that could lead to a frustrating dining (or user) experience, and they’re all issues that could be addressed by careful content design.

Why should I care about content design? How does content design impact UX?

Applying a content design lens to your product or design can have a huge positive impact on your user experience.

Content design builds experiences that:

• Focus on the user’s goals and needs
• Follow a clear narrative reflecting the user’s journey
• Organize information in a way that serves the user’s mental model

We do this by using a method called Content Early design.

What’s Content Early design?

Content Early design is a collection of exercises to design from scratch and analyze designs with words. Simone Erhlich, PM Director, originated this idea, based on the principles of Content First design, while she was leading content design at Workday.

While it’s nice to be first, Content Early design allows us to be more flexible, work with all of our UX partners, and consider content at any stage of the design process.

How can I use Content Early design?

The Content Design team has developed a set of exercises that use Content Early design to help teams:

• Write a narrative of a user’s product experience to inform a presentation or a prototype
• Prioritize the elements on a page according to the goal of the design
• Lay out a design using words to define the intent of each element on the page
• Script a conversation between a user and Workday’s system to imagine a potential flow

Because all of these exercises are based in words, they’re extremely low effort and low fidelity, and they result in flexible artifacts that you can easily update and build upon. You can find instructions and templates for trying all of these exercises on the Content Design Exercises page.