{"rowid": 172, "title": "The Construction of Instruction", "contents": "If the world were made to my specifications, all your clients would be happy to pay for a web writer to craft every sentence into something as elegant as it was functional, and the client would have planned the content so that you had it just when you asked, but we both know that won\u2019t happen every time. Sometimes you just know they are going to write the About page, two company blog pages and a Facebook fan page before resigning their position as chief content writer and you are going to end up filling in all the details that will otherwise just be Lorem Ipsum.\n\nWelcome to the big world of microcopy:\n\n\n\tA man walks into a bar. The bartender nods a greeting and watches as the man scans the bottles behind the bar. \n\u201cEr, you have a lot of gin here. Is there one you would recommend?\u201d \n\u201cYes sir.\u201d\nLong pause. \n\u201c\u2026 Never mind, I\u2019ll have the one in the green bottle.\u201d \n\u201cCertainly, sir. But you can\u2019t buy it from this part of the bar. You need to go through the double doors there.\u201d \n\u201cBut they look like they lead into the kitchen.\u201d \n\u201cReally, sir? Well, no, that\u2019s where we allow customers to purchase gin.\u201d \nThe man walks through the doors. On the other side he is greeted by the same bartender. \n\u201cY-you!\u201d he stammers but the reticent bartender is now all but silent. \nUnnerved, the man points to a green bottle, \u201cEr, I\u2019d like to buy a shot of that please. With ice and tonic water.\u201d \nThe bartender mixes the drink and puts it on the bar just out of the reach of the man and looks up. \n\u201cUm, do you take cards?\u201d the man asks, ready to present his credit card. \nThe bartender goes to take the card to put it through the machine. \n\u201cWait! How much was it \u2013 with sales tax and everything? Do you take a gratuity?\u201d \nThe bartender simply shrugs. \nThe man eyes him for a moment and decides to try his luck at the bar next door.\n\n\nIn the Choose Your Own Adventure version of this story there are plenty of ways to stop the man giving up. You could let him buy the gin right where he was; you could make the price more obvious; you could signpost the place to buy gin. The mistakes made by the bar and bartender are painfully obvious. And yet, there are websites losing users everyday due to the same lack of clear instruction.\n\nA smidgen of well written copy goes a long way to reassure the nervous prospect. Just imagine if our man walked into the bar and the bartender explained that although the bar was here, sales were conducted in the next room because people were not then able to overhear the man\u2019s card details. Instead, he is left to fend for himself. Online, we kick customers through the anonymous double doors with a merry \u2018Paypal will handle your transaction!\u2019.\n\nRecently I worked on a site where the default error message, to account for anything happening that the developers hadn\u2019t accounted for, was \u2018SOMETHING HAS GONE WRONG!\u2019. It might have been technically accurate but this is not how to inspire confidence in your customers that they can make a successful purchase through you. As everyone knows they can shop just fine, thank you very much, it is your site they will blame. Card declined? It\u2019s the site. Didn\u2019t know my email address has changed? It\u2019s the site. Can\u2019t log in? It\u2019s the site.\n\nYes, yes. I know. None of these things are related to your site, or you the developer, but drop outs will be high and you\u2019ll get imploring emails from your client asking you to wade knee deep into the site analytics to find a solution by testing 41 shades of blue because if it worked for Google\u2026? Before you try a visual fix involving the Dulux paint chart breeding with a Pantone swatch, take an objective look at the information you are giving customers. How much are you assuming they know? How much are you relying on age-old labels and prompts without clarification?\n\nHere\u2019s a fun example for non-North Americans: ask your Granny to write out her billing address. If she looks at you blankly, tell her it is the address where the bank sends her statements. Imagine how many fewer instances of the wrong address there would be if we routinely added that information when people purchased from the UK? Instead, we rely on a language convention that hasn\u2019t much common usage without explanation because, well, because we always have since the banks told us how we could take payments online.\n\nSo. Your client is busying themselves with writing the ultimate Facebook fan page about themselves and here you are left with creating a cohesive signup process or basket or purchase instructions. Here are five simple rules for bending puny humans to your will creating instructive instructions and constructive error messages that ultimately mean less hassle for you.\n\nPlan what you want to say and plan it out as early as possible \n\nThis goes for all content. Walk a virtual mile in the shoes of your users. What specific help can you offer customers to actively encourage continuation and ensure a minimal amount of dropouts? Make space for that information. One of the most common web content mistakes is jamming too much into a space that has been defined by physical boundaries rather than planned out. If you manage it, the best you can hope for is that no-one notices it was a last-minute job. Mostly it reads like a bad game of Tetris with content sticking out all over the place.\n\nUse your words\n\nMicrocopy often says a lot in a few words but without those words you could leave room for doubt. When doubt creeps in a customer wants reassurance just like Alice:\n\n\n\tThis time (Alice) found a little bottle\u2026 with the words \u2018DRINK ME\u2019 beautifully printed on it in large letters. It was all very well to say \u2018Drink me,\u2019 but the wise little Alice was not going to do that in a hurry. \u2018No, I\u2019ll look first,\u2019 she said, \u2018and see whether it\u2019s marked \u201cpoison\u201d or not\u2019\n\n\nAlice in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll.\n\nValue clarity over brevity. Or a little more prosaically, \u201cIf in doubt, spell it out.\u201d Thanks, Jeremy!\n\nBe prepared to help\n\n\n\t\u2018Login failed: email/password combination is incorrect.\u2019\n\n\nOh.\n\n\n\t\u2018Login failed: email/password combination is incorrect. \nAre you typing in all capitals? Caps Lock may be on. \nHave you changed your email address recently and not updated your account with us? Try your old email address first. \nCan\u2019t remember your password? We can help you reset it.\u2019 \n\n\nAh!\n\nBe direct and be informative\n\nThere is rarely a site that doesn\u2019t suffer from some degree of jargon. Squash it early by setting a few guidelines about what language and tone of voice you will use to converse with your users. Be consistent. Equally, try to be as specific as possible when giving error messages or instructions and allay fears upfront.\n\nCard payments are handled by paypal but you do not need a paypal account to pay.\n\nWe will not display your email address but we might need it to contact you.\n\nSign up for our free trial (no credit card required).\n\nCombine copy and visual cues, learn from others and test new combinations\n\nWhile visual design and copy can work independently, they work best together. New phrases and designs are being tested all the time so take a peek at abtests.com for more ideas, then test some new ideas and add your own results. Have a look at the microcopy pool on Flickr for some wonderful examples of little words and pictures working together. And yes, you absolutely should join the group and post more examples.\n\n\n\tA man walks into a bar. The bartender greets him in a friendly manner and asks him what he would like to drink. \n\u201cGin and Tonic, please.\u201d \n\u201cYes sir, we have our house gin on offer but we also have a particularly good import here too.\u201d\n\u201cThe import, please.\u201d \n\u201cHow would you like it? With a slice of lemon? Over ice?\u201d \n\u201cBoth\u201d \n\u201cThat\u2019s \u00a33.80. We accept cash, cards or you could open a tab.\u201d \n\u201cCard please.\u201d \n\u201cCertainly sir. Move just over here so that you can\u2019t be observed. Now, please enter your pin number.\u201d \n\u201cThank you.\u201d \n\u201cAnd here is your drink. Do let me know if there is a problem with it. I shall just be here at the bar. Enjoy.\u201d\n\n\nCheers!", "year": "2009", "author": "Relly Annett-Baker", "author_slug": "rellyannettbaker", "published": "2009-12-08T00:00:00+00:00", "url": "https://24ways.org/2009/the-construction-of-instruction/", "topic": "content"}
{"rowid": 198, "title": "Is Your Website Accidentally Sexist?", "contents": "Women make up 51% of the world\u2019s population. More importantly, women make 85% of all purchasing decisions about consumer goods, 75% of the decisions about buying new homes, and 81% of decisions about groceries. The chances are, you want your website to be as attractive to women as it is to men. But we are all steeped in a male-dominated culture that subtly influences the design and content decisions we make, and some of those decisions can result in a website that isn\u2019t as welcoming to women as it could be.  \nTypography tells a story\nStudies show that we make consistent judgements about whether a typeface is masculine or feminine: Masculine typography has a square or geometric form with hard corners and edges, and is emphatically either blunt or spiky. Serif fonts are also considered masculine, as is bold type and capitals.\nFeminine typography favours slim lines, curling or flowing shapes with a lot of ornamentation and embellishment, and slanted letters. Sans-serif, cursive and script fonts are seen as feminine, as are lower case letters. \nThe effect can be so subtle that even choosing between bold and regular styles within a single font family can be enough to indicate masculinity or femininity.\nIf you want to appeal to both men and women, search for fonts that are gender neutral, or at least not too masculine. When you\u2019re choosing groups of fonts that need to work harmoniously together, consider which fonts you are prioritising in your design. Is the biggest word on the page in a masculine or feminine font? What about the smallest words? Is there an imbalance between the prominence of masculine and feminine fonts, and what does this imply? \nTypography is a language in and of itself, so be careful what you say with it. \nColour me unsurprised\nColour also has an obvious gender bias. We associate pinks and purples, especially in combination, with girls and women, and a soft pink has become especially strongly related to breast cancer awareness campaigns. On the other hand, pale blue is strongly associated with boys and men, despite the fact that pastels are usually thought of as more feminine. \nThese associations are getting stronger and stronger as more and more marketers use them to define products as \u201cfor girls\u201d and \u201cfor boys\u201d, setting expectations from an incredibly young age \u2014 children as young as four understand gender stereotypes. It should be obvious that using these highly gender-associated colours sends an incredibly strong message to your visitors about who you think your target audience is. If you want to appeal to both men and women, then avoid pinks and pale blues.\nBut men and women also have different colour preferences. Men tend to prefer intense primary colours and deeper colours (shades), and tolerate greys better, whilst women prefer pastels (tints). When choosing colours, consider not just the hue itself, but also tint, tone and shade.\nSlightly counterintuitively, everyone likes blue, but no one seems to particularly like brown or orange. \nA picture is worth a thousand words, or none\nStock photos are the quickest and easiest way to add a little humanity to your website, directly illustrating the kind of people you believe are in your audience. But the wrong photo can put a woman off before she\u2019s even read your text. \nA website about a retirement home will, for example, obviously include photos of older people, and a baby clothes retailer will obviously show photos of babies. But, in the latter case, should they also show only photographs of mothers with their children, or should they include fathers too? It\u2019s true that women take on the majority of childcare responsibilities, but that\u2019s a cultural holdover from a previous era, rather than some rule of law. We are seeing increasing number of stay at home dads as well as single dads, so showing only photographs of women both enforces the stereotype that only women can care, as well as marginalising male carers.  \nEqually, featuring prominent photographs of women on sites about male-dominated topics such as science, technology or engineering help women feel welcomed and appreciated in those fields. Photos really do speak volumes, so make sure that you also represent other marginalised groups, especially ethnic groups. If people do not see themselves represented on your site, they are not going to engage with it as much as they might. \nAnother form of picture that we often ignore is the icon. When you do use icons, make sure that they are gender neutral. For example, avoid using a icon of a man to denote engineers, or of a woman to denote nurses. Avoid overly masculine or feminine metaphors, such as a hammer to denote DIY or a flower to denote gardens. Not only are these gendered, they\u2019re also trite and unappealing, so come up with more exciting and novel metaphors. \nUse gender-neutral language\nLast, but not least, be very careful in your use of gender in language. \nPronouns are an obvious pitfall. A lot of web content is written in the second person, using the cleary gender neutral \u2018you\u2019, but if you have to write in the third person, which uses \u2018she\u2019, \u2018he\u2019, \u2018it\u2019, and \u2018they\u2019, then be very careful which pronouns you use. The singular \u2018they\u2019 is becoming more widely acceptable, and is a useful gender-neutral option. If you must use generic \u2018he\u2019 and \u2018she\u2019, (as opposed to talking about a specific person), then vary the order that they come in, so don\u2019t always put the male pronoun first. \nWhen you are talking about people, make sure that you use the same level of formality for both men and women. The tendency is to refer to men by their surname and women by their first name so, for example, when people are talking about Ada Lovelace and Charles Babbage, they often talk about \u201cAda and Babbage\u201d, rather than \u201cLovelace and Babbage\u201d or \u201cAda and Charles\u201d. As a rule, it\u2019s best to use people\u2019s surnames in formal and semi-formal writing, and their first names only in very informal writing. \nIt\u2019s also very important to make sure that you respect people\u2019s honorifics, especially academic titles such as Dr or Professor, and that you use titles consistently. Studies show that women and people of colour are the most likely to have their honorifics dropped, which is not only disrespectful, it gives readers the idea that women and people of colour are less qualified than white men.\nIf you mention job titles, avoid old-fashioned gendered titles such as \u2018chairman\u2019, and instead look for a neutral version, like \u2018chair\u2019 or \u2018chairperson\u2019. Where neutral terms have strong gender associations, such as nurse or engineer, take special care that the surrounding text, especially pronouns, is diverse and/or neutral. Do not assume engineers are male and nurses female. \nMore subtle intimations of gender can be found in the descriptors people use. Military metaphors and phrases, out-sized claims, competitive words, and superlatives are masculine, such as \u2018ground-breaking\u2019, \u2018best\u2019, \u2018genius\u2019, \u2018world-beating\u2019, or \u2018killer\u2019. Excessive unnecessary factual detail is also very masculine. \nWomen tend to relate to more cooperative, non-competitive, future-focused, and warmer language, paired with more general information. Women\u2019s language includes word like \u2019global\u2019, \u2018responsive\u2019, \u2018support\u2019, \u2018include\u2019, \u2018engage\u2019 and \u2018imagine\u2019. Focus more on the kind of relationship you can build with your customers, how you can help make their lives easier, and less on your company or product\u2019s status. \nSmash the patriarchy, one assumption at a time\nWe\u2019re all brought up in a cultural stew that prioritises men\u2019s needs, feelings and assumptions over women\u2019s. This is the patriarchy, and it\u2019s been around for thousands of years. But given women\u2019s purchasing power, adhering to the patriarchy\u2019s norms is unlikely to be good for your business. If you want to tap into the female market, pay attention to the details of your design and content, and make sure that you\u2019re not inadvertently putting women off. A gender neutral website that designs away gender stereotypes will attract both men and women, expanding your market and helping your business flourish.", "year": "2017", "author": "Suw Charman-Anderson", "author_slug": "suwcharmananderson", "published": "2017-12-20T00:00:00+00:00", "url": "https://24ways.org/2017/is-your-website-accidentally-sexist/", "topic": "content"}
{"rowid": 227, "title": "A Contentmas Epiphany", "contents": "The twelve days of Christmas fall between 25 December, Christmas Day, and 6 January, the Epiphany of the Kings. Traditionally, these have been holidays and a lot of us still take a good proportion of these days off. Equally, a lot of us have a got a personal site kicking around somewhere that we sigh over and think, \u201cOne day I\u2019ll sort you out!\u201d Why not take this downtime to give it a big ol\u2019 refresh? I know, good idea, huh?\n\nHEY WAIT! WOAH! NO-ONE\u2019S TOUCHING PHOTOSHOP OR DOING ANY CSS FANCYWORK UNTIL I\u2019M DONE WITH YOU!\n\nBe honest, did you immediately think of a sketch or mockup you have tucked away? Or some clever little piece of code you want to fiddle with? Now ask yourself, why would you start designing the container if you haven\u2019t worked out what you need to put inside?\n\nAnyway, forget the content strategy lecture; I haven\u2019t given you your gifts yet.\nI present The Twelve Days of Contentmas!\n\nThis is a simple little plan to make sure that your personal site, blog or portfolio is not just looking good at the end of these twelve days, but is also a really useful repository of really useful content.\n\nWARNING KLAXON: There are twelve parts, one for each day of Christmas, so this is a lengthy article. I\u2019m not expecting anyone to absorb this in one go. Add to Instapaper. There is no TL;DR for this because it\u2019s a multipart process, m\u2019kay? Even so, this plan of mine cuts corners on a proper applied strategy for content. You might find some aspects take longer than the arbitrary day I\u2019ve assigned. And if you apply this to your company-wide intranet, I won\u2019t be held responsible for the mess.\n\nThat said, I encourage you to play along and sample some of the practical aspects of organising existing content and planning new content because it is, honestly, an inspiring and liberating process. For one thing, you get to review all the stuff you have put out for the world to look at and see what you could do next. This always leaves me full of ideas on how to plug the gaps I\u2019ve found, so I hope you are similarly motivated come day twelve.\n\nLet\u2019s get to it then, shall we?\n\nOn the first day of Contentmas, Relly gave to me:\n\n1. A (partial) content inventory\n\nI\u2019m afraid being a site owner isn\u2019t without its chores. With great power comes great responsibility and all that. There are the domain renewing, hosting helpline calls and, of course, keeping on top of all the content that you have published.\n\nIf you just frowned a little and thought, \u201cWell, there\u2019s articles and images and\u2026 stuff\u201d, then I\u2019d like to introduce you to the idea of a content inventory. \n\nA content inventory is a list of all your content, in a simple spreadsheet, that allows you to see at a glance what is currently on your site: articles; about me page; contact form, and so on.\n\nYou add the full URL so that you can click directly to any page listed. You add a brief description of what it is and what tags it has. In fact, I\u2019ll show you. I\u2019ve made a Google Docs template for you. Sorry, it isn\u2019t wrapped.\n\nDoes it seem like a mammoth task? Don\u2019t feel you have to do this all in one day. But do do it. For one thing, looking back at all the stuff you\u2019ve pushed out into the world gives you a warm fuzzy feeling which keeps the heating bill down.\n\nGrab a glass of mulled cider and try going month-by-month through your blog archives, or project-by-project through your portfolio. Do a little bit each day for the next twelve days and you\u2019ll have done something awesome. The best bit is that this exploration of your current content helps you with the next day\u2019s task.\n\nBonus gift: for more on content auditing and inventory, check out Jeff Veen\u2019s article on just this topic, which is also suitable for bigger business sites too.\n\nOn the second day of Contentmas, Relly gave to me:\n\n2. Website loves\n\nRemember when you were a kid, you\u2019d write to Santa with a wish list that would make your parents squirm, because your biggest hope for your stocking would be either impossible or impossibly expensive. Do you ever get the same thing now as a grown-up where you think, \u201cWouldn\u2019t it be great if I could make a video blog every week\u201d, or \u201cI could podcast once a month about this\u201d, and then you push it to the back of your mind, assuming that you won\u2019t have time or you wouldn\u2019t know what to talk about anyway?\n\nTrue fact: content doesn\u2019t just have to be produced when we are so incensed that we absolutely must blog about a topic. Neither does it have to be a drain to a demanding schedule. You can plan for it. In fact, you\u2019re about to.\n\nSo, today, get a pen and a notebook. Move away from your computer. My gift to you is to grab a quiet ten minutes between turkey sandwiches and relatives visiting and give your site some of the attention it deserves for 2011.\n\nWhat would you do with your site if you could? I don\u2019t mean what would you do purely visually \u2013 although by all means note those things down too \u2013 but to your site as a whole. Here are some jumping off points:\n\n\n\tWould you like to individually illustrate and design some of your articles?\n\tWhat about a monthly exploration of your favourite topic through video or audio?\n\tWho would you like to collaborate with?\n\tWhat do you want your site to be like for a user?\n\tWhat tone of voice would you like to use?\n\tHow could you use imagery and typography to support your content?\n\tWhat would you like to create content about in the new year?\n\n\nIt\u2019s okay if you can\u2019t do these things yet. It\u2019s okay to scrub out anything where you think, \u201cNah, never gonna happen.\u201d But do give some thought to what you might want to do next. The best inspiration for this comes from what you\u2019ve already done, so keep on with that inventory.\n\nBonus gift: a Think Vitamin article on podcasting using Skype, so you can rope in a few friends to join in, too.\n\nOn the third day of Contentmas, Relly gave to me:\n\n3. Red pens\n\nShock news, just in: the web is not print!\n\nOne of the hardest things as a writer is to reach the point where you say, \u201cYeah, okay, that\u2019s it. I\u2019m done\u201d and send off your beloved manuscript or article to print. I\u2019m convinced that if deadlines didn\u2019t exist, nothing would get finished. Why? Well, at the point you hand it over to the publishing presses, you can make no more changes. At best, you can print an erratum or produce an updated second edition at a later date. And writers love to \u2013 no, they live to \u2013 tweak their creations, so handing them over is quite a struggle. Just one more comma and\u2026\n\nOnline, we have no such constraints. We can edit, correct, test, tweak, twiddle until we\u2019re blooming sick of it. Our red pens never run out of ink. It is time for you to run a more critical eye over your content, especially the stuff already published. Relish in the opportunity to change stuff on the fly. I am not so concerned by blog articles and such (although feel free to apply this concept to those, too), but mainly by your more concrete content: about pages; contact pages; home page navigation; portfolio pages; 404 pages.\n\nNow, don\u2019t go running amok with the cut function yet. First, put all these evergreen pages into your inventory. In the notes section, write a quick analysis of how useful this copy is. Example questions:\n\n\n\tIs your contact page up-to-date?\n\tDoes your about page link to the right places?\n\tIs your portfolio current?\n\tDoes your 404 page give people a way to find what they were looking for?\n\n\nWe\u2019ll come back to this in a few days once we have a clearer idea of how to improve our content.\n\nBonus gift: the audio and slides of a talk I gave on microcopy and 404 pages at @media WebDirections last year.\n\nOn the fourth day of Contentmas, Relly gave to me:\n\n4. Stalling nerds\n\nActually, I guess more accurately this is something I get given a lot. Designers and developers particularly can find a million ways to extract themselves from the content of a site but, as the site owner,  and this being your personal playground and all, you mustn\u2019t. You actually can\u2019t, sorry. \n\nBut I do understand that at this point, \u2018sorting out your site\u2019 suddenly seems a lot less exciting, especially if you are a visually-minded person and words and lists aren\u2019t really your thing. So far, there has been a lot of not-very-exciting exercises in planning, and there\u2019s probably a nice pile of DVDs and video games that you got from Santa worth investigating. \n\nStay strong my friend. By now, you have probably hit upon an idea of some sort you are itching to start on, so for every half-hour you spend doing inventory, gift yourself another thirty minutes to play with that idea.\n\nBonus gift: the Pomodoro Technique. Take one kitchen timer and a to-do list and see how far you can go.\n\nOn the fifth day of Contentmas, Relly gave to me:\n\n5. Golden rules\n\nHere are some guidelines for writing online:\n\n\n\tMake headlines for tutorials and similar content useful and descriptive; use a subheading for any terrible pun you want to work in.\n\n\n\n\tCreate a broad opening paragraph that addresses what your article is about. Part of the creative skill in writing is to do this in a way that both informs the reader and captures their attention. If you struggle with this, consider a boxout giving a summary of the article.\n\n\n\n\tUse headings to break up chunks of text and allow people to scan. Most people will have a scoot about an article before starting at the beginning to give it a proper read. These headings should be equal parts informative and enticing. Try them out as questions that might be posed by the reader too.\n\n\n\n\tFinish articles by asking your reader to take an affirmative action: subscribe to your RSS feed; leave a comment (if comments are your thing \u2013 more on that later); follow you on Twitter; link you to somewhere they have used your tutorial or code. The web is about getting excited, making things and sharing with others, so give your readers the chance to do that.\n\n\n\n\tFor portfolio sites, this call to action is extra important as you want to pick up new business. Encourage people to e-mail you or call you \u2013 don\u2019t just rely on a number in the footer or an e-mail link at the top. Think up some consistent calls-to-action you can use and test them out.\n\n\nSo, my gift to you today is a simplified page table for planning out your content to make it as useful as possible.\n\nFeel free to write a new article or tutorial, or work on that great idea from yesterday and try out these guidelines for yourself. \n\nIt\u2019s a simple framework \u2013 good headline; broad opening; headings to break up volume; strong call to action \u2013 but it will help you recognise if what you\u2019ve written is in good shape to face the world. It doesn\u2019t tell you anything about how to create it \u2013 that\u2019s your endeavour \u2013 but it does give you a start. No more staring at a blank page.\n\nBonus gift: okay, you have to buy yourself this one, but it is the gift that keeps on giving: Ginny Reddish\u2019s Letting Go of the Words \u2013 the hands down best guide to web writing there is, with a ton of illustrative examples.\n\nOn the sixth day of Contentmas, Relly gave to me:\n\n6. Foundation-a-laying\n\nYesterday, we played with a page table for articles. Today, we are going to set the foundations for your new, spangly, spruced up, relaunched site (for when you\u2019re ready, of course). We\u2019ve checked out what we\u2019ve got, we\u2019ve thought about what we\u2019d like, we have a wish list for the future. Now is the time for a small reality check. \n\nBe realistic with yourself. Can you really give your site some attention every day? Record a short snippet of audio once a week? A photo diary post once a month? Look back at the wish list you made.\n\n\n\tWhat can you do?\n\tWhat can you aim for?\n\tWhat just isn\u2019t possible right now?\n\n\nAs much as we\u2019d all love to be producing a slick video podcast and screencast three times a week, it\u2019s better to set realistic expectations and work your way up.\n\nWhere does your site sit in your online world?\n\n\n\tDo you want it to be the hub of all your social interactions, a lifestream, a considered place of publication or a free for all?\n\tDo you want to have comments (do you have the personal resource to monitor comments?) or would you prefer conversation to happen via Twitter, Facebook or not at all?\n\tDoes this apply to all pages, posts and content types or just some?\n\tGet these things straight in your head and it\u2019s easier to know what sort of environment you want to create and what content you\u2019ll need to sustain it.\n\n\nGet your notebook again and think about specific topics you\u2019d like to cover, or aspects of a project you want to go into more, and how you can go ahead and do just that. A good motivator is to think what you\u2019ll get out of doing it, even if that is \u201cAnd I\u2019ll finally show the poxy $whatever_community that my $chosen_format is better than their $other_format.\u201d\n\nWhat topics have you really wanted to get off your chest? Look through your inventory again. What gaps are there in your content just begging to be filled?\n\nToday, you\u2019re going to give everyone the gift of your opinion. Find one of those things where someone on the internet is wrong and create a short but snappy piece to set them straight. Doesn\u2019t that feel good? Soon you\u2019ll be able to do this in a timely manner every time someone is wrong on the internet!\n\nBonus gift: we\u2019re halfway through, so I think something fun is in order. How about a man sledding naked down a hill in Brighton on a tea tray? Sometimes, even with a whole ton of content planning, it\u2019s the spontaneous stuff that is still the most fun to share.\n\nOn the seventh day of Contentmas, Relly gave to me:\n\n7. Styles-a-guiding\n\nNot colour style guides or brand style guides or code style guides. Content style guides. You could go completely to town and write yourself a full document defining every aspect of your site\u2019s voice and personality, plus declaring your view on contracted phrases and the Oxford comma, but this does seem a tad excessive. Unless you\u2019re writing an entire site as a fictional character, you probably know your own voice and vocabulary better than anyone. It\u2019s in your head, after all.\n\nInstead, equip yourself with a good global style guide (I like the Chicago Manual of Style because I can access it fully online, but the Associated Press (AP) Stylebook has a nifty iPhone app and, if I\u2019m entirely honest, I\u2019ve found a copy of Eats, Shoots and Leaves has set me right on all but the most technical aspects of punctuation). Next, pick a good dictionary and bookmark thesaurus.com. Then have a go at Kristina Halvorson\u2019s \u2018Voice and Tone\u2019 exercise from her book Content Strategy for the Web, to nail down what you\u2019d like your future content to be like:\n\nTo introduce the voice and tone qualities you\u2019re [looking to create], a good approach is to offer contrasting values. For example:\n\n\n\tProfessional, not academic.\n\tConfident, not arrogant.\n\tClever, not cutesy.\n\tSavvy, not hipster.\n\tExpert, not preachy.\n\n\n\nTake a look around some of your favourite sites and examine the writing and stylistic handling of content. What do you like? What do you want to emulate? What matches your values list?\n\nToday\u2019s gift to you is an idea. Create a \u2018swipe file\u2019 through Evernote or Delicious and save all the stuff you come across that, regardless of topic, makes you think, \u201cThat\u2019s really cool.\u201d This isn\u2019t the same as an Instapaper list you\u2019d like to read. This is stuff you have read or have seen that is worth looking at in closer detail.\n\n\n\tWhy is it so good?\n\tWhat is the language and style like?\n\tWhat impact does the typography have?\n\tHow does the imagery work to enhance the message?\n\n\nThis isn\u2019t about creating a personal brand or any such piffle. It\u2019s about learning to recognise how good content works and how to create something awesome yourself. Obviously, your ideas are brilliant, so take the time to understand how best to spring them on the unsuspecting public for easier world domination.\n\nBonus gift: a nifty style guide is a must when you do have to share content creation duties with others. Here is Leeds University\u2019s publicly available PDF version for you to take a gander at. I especially like the Rationale sections for chopping off dissenters at the knees. \n\nOn the eighth day of Contentmas, Relly gave to me:\n\n8. Times-a-making\n\nYou have an actual, real plan for what you\u2019d like to do with your site and how it is going to sound (and probably some ideas on how it\u2019s going to look, too). I hope you are full of enthusiasm and Getting Excited To Make Things. Just before we get going and do exactly that, we are going to make sure we have made time for this creative outpouring.\n\nHave you tried to blog once a week before and found yourself losing traction after a month or two? Are there a couple of podcasts lurking neglected in your archives? Whereas half of the act of running is showing up for training, half of creating is making time rather than waiting for it to become urgent. It\u2019s okay to write something and set a date to come back to it (which isn\u2019t the same as leaving it to decompose in your drafts folder).\n\nPutting a date in your calendar to do something for your site means that you have a forewarning to think of a topic to write about, and space in your schedule to actually do it. Crucially, you\u2019ve actually made some time for this content lark.\n\nTo do this, you need to think about how long it takes to get something out of the door/shipped/published/whatever you want to call it. It might take you just thirty minutes to record a podcast, but also a further hour to research the topic beforehand and another hour to edit and upload the clips. Suddenly, doing a thirty minute podcast every day seems a bit unlikely. But, on the flipside, it is easy to see how you could schedule that in three chunks weekly. \n\nPut it in your calendar. Do it, publish it, book yourself in for the next week. Keep turning up.\n\nToday my gift to you is the gift of time. Set up your own small content calendar, using your favourite calendar system, and schedule time to play with new ways of creating content, time to get it finished and time to get it on your site. Don\u2019t let good stuff go to your drafts folder to die of neglect.\n\nBonus gift: lots of writers swear by the concept of \u2018daily pages\u2019. That is, churning out whatever is in your head to see if there is anything worth building upon, or just to lose the grocery list getting in the way. 750words.com is a site built around this concept. Go have a play.\n\nOn the ninth day of Contentmas, Relly gave to me:\n\n9. Copy enhancing\n\nAn incredibly radical idea for day number nine. We are going to look at that list of permanent pages you made back on day three and rewrite the words first, before even looking at a colour palette or picking a font! Crazy as it sounds, doing it this way round could influence your design. It could shape the imagery you use. It could affect your choice of typography. IMAGINE THE POSSIBILITIES!\n\nLook at the page table from day five. Print out one for each of your homepage, about page, contact page, portfolio, archive, 404 page or whatever else you have. Use these as a place to brainstorm your ideas and what you\u2019d like each page to do for your site. Doodle in the margin, choose words you think sound fun to say, daydream about pictures you\u2019d like to use and colours you think would work, but absolutely, completely and utterly fill in those page tables to understand how much (or how little) content you\u2019re playing with and what you need to do to get to \u2018launch\u2019.\n\nThen, use them for guidance as you start to write. Don\u2019t skimp. Don\u2019t think that a fancy icon of an envelope encourages people to e-mail you. Use your words.\n\nPeople get antsy at this bit. Writing can be hard work and it\u2019s easy for me to say, \u201cGo on and write it then!\u201d I know this. I mean, you should see the faces I pull when I have to do anything related to coding. The closest equivalent would be when scientists have to stick their hands in big gloves attached to a glass box to do dangerous experiments.\n\nHere\u2019s today\u2019s gift, a little something about writing that I hope brings you comfort: \n\n\n\tTo write something fantastic you almost always have to write a rubbish draft first.\n\n\nNow, you might get lucky and write a \u2018good enough\u2019 draft first time and that\u2019s fab \u2013 you\u2019ve cut some time getting to \u2018fantastic\u2019. If, however, you\u2019ve always looked at your first attempt to write more than the bare minimum and sighed in despair, and resigned yourself to adding just a title, date and a screenshot, be cheered because you have taken the first step to being able to communicate with clarity, wit and panache.\n\nKeep going. Look at writing you admire and emulate it. Think about how you will lovingly design those words when they are done. Know that you can go back and change them. Check back with your page table to keep you on track. Do that first draft.\n\nBonus gift: becoming a better writer helps you to explain design concepts to clients.\n\nOn the tenth day of Contentmas, Relly gave to me:\n\n10. Ideas for keeping\n\nHurrah! You have something down on paper, ready to start evolving your site around it. Here\u2019s where the words and visuals and interaction start to come together. Because you have a plan, you can think ahead and do things you wouldn\u2019t be able to pull together otherwise.\n\n\n\tHow about finding a fresh-faced stellar illustrator on Dribbble to create you something perfect to pep up your contact page or visualize your witty statement on statements of work. A List Apart has been doing it for years and it hasn\u2019t worked out too badly for them, has it?\n\n\n\n\tWhat about spending this month creating a series of introductory tutorials on a topic, complete with screencasts and audio and give them a special home on your site?\n\n\n\n\tHow about putting in some hours creating a glorious about me page, with a biography, nice picture, and where you spend your time online?\n\n\n\n\tYou could even do the web equivalent of getting up in the attic and sorting out your site\u2019s search to make it easier to find things in your archives. Maybe even do some manual recommendations for relevant content and add them as calls to action.\n\n\n\n\tHow about writing a few awesome case studies with individual screenshots of your favourite work, and creating a portfolio that plays to your strengths? Don\u2019t just rely on the pretty pictures; use your words. Otherwise no-one understands why things are the way they are on that screenshot and BAM! you\u2019ll be judged on someone else\u2019s tastes. (Elliot has a head start on you for this, so get to it!)\n\n\n\n\tDo you have a serious archive of content? What\u2019s it like being a first-time visitor to your site? Could you write them a guide to introduce yourself and some of the most popular stuff on your site? Ali Edwards is a massively popular crafter and every day she gets new visitors who have found her multiple papercraft projects on Flickr, Vimeo and elsewhere, so she created a welcome guide just for them.\n\n\n\n\tWhat about your microcopy? Can you improve on your blogging platform\u2019s defaults for search, comment submission and labels? I\u2019ll bet you can.\n\n\n\n\tMaybe you could plan a collaboration with other like-minded souls. A week of posts about the more advanced wonders of HTML5 video. A month-long baton-passing exercise in extolling the virtues of IE (shut up, it could happen!). Just spare me any more online advent calendars.\n\n\n\n\tWatch David McCandless\u2019s TED talk on his jawdropping infographic work and make something as awesome as the Billion Dollar O Gram. I dare you.\n\n\nBonus gift: Grab a copy of Brian Suda\u2019s Designing with Data, in print or PDF if Santa didn\u2019t put one in your stocking, and make that awesome something with some expert guidance.\n\nOn the eleventh day of Contentmas, Relly gave to me:\n\n11. Pixels pushing\n\nOh, go on then. Make a gorgeous bespoke velvet-lined container for all that lovely content. It\u2019s proper informed design now, not just decoration. Mr. Zeldman says so.\n\nBonus gift: I made you a movie! If books were designed like websites.\n\nOn the twelfth day of Contentmas, Relly gave to me:\n\n12. Delighters delighting\n\nThe Epiphany is upon us; your site is now well on its way to being a beautiful, sustainable hub of content and you have a date in your calendar to help you keep that resolution of blogging more. What now?\n\n\n\tKeep on top of your inventory. One day it will save your butt, I promise.\n\tKeep making a little bit of time regularly to create something new: an article; an opinion piece; a small curation of related links; a photo diary; a new case study. That\u2019s easier than an annual content bootcamp for sure.\n\tAnd today\u2019s gift: look for ways to play with that content and make something a bit special. Stretch yourself a little. It\u2019ll be worth it.\n\n\nBonus gift: Paul Annett\u2019s presentation on Ooh, that\u2019s clever: Delighters in design from SxSW 09.\n\nAll my favourite designers and developers have their own unique styles and touches. It\u2019s what sets them apart. My very, very favourites have an eloquence and expression that they bring to their sites and to their projects. I absolutely love to explore a well-crafted, well-written site \u2013 don\u2019t we all? I know the time it takes. I appreciate the time it takes. But the end results are delicious. Do please share your spangly, refreshed sites with me in the comments.\n\nCatch me on Twitter, I\u2019m @RellyAB, and I\u2019ve been your host for these Twelve Days of Contentmas.", "year": "2010", "author": "Relly Annett-Baker", "author_slug": "rellyannettbaker", "published": "2010-12-21T00:00:00+00:00", "url": "https://24ways.org/2010/a-contentmas-epiphany/", "topic": "content"}
{"rowid": 251, "title": "The System, the Search, and the Food Bank", "contents": "Imagine a warehouse, half the length of a football field, with a looped conveyer belt down the center. \nOn the belt are plastic bins filled with assortments of shelf-stable food\u2014one may have two bags of potato chips, seventeen pudding cups, and a box of tissues; the next, a dozen cans of beets. The conveyer belt is ringed with large, empty cardboard boxes, each labeled with categories like \u201cBottled Water\u201d or \u201cCereal\u201d or \u201cCandy.\u201d \nSuch was the scene at my local food bank a few Saturdays ago, when some friends and I volunteered for a shift sorting donated food items. Our job was to fill the labeled cardboard boxes with the correct items nabbed from the swiftly moving, randomly stocked plastic bins.\nI could scarcely believe my good fortune of assignments. You want me to sort things? Into categories? For several hours? And you say there\u2019s an element of time pressure? Listen, is there some sort of permanent position I could be conscripted into.\nLook, I can\u2019t quite explain it: I just know that I love sorting, organizing, and classifying things\u2014groceries at a food bank, but also my bookshelves, my kitchen cabinets, my craft supplies, my dishwasher arrangement, yes I am a delight to live with, why do you ask?\nThe opportunity to create meaning from nothing is at the core of my excitement, which is why I\u2019ve tried to build a career out of organizing digital content, and why I brought a frankly frightening level of enthusiasm to the food bank. \u201cI can\u2019t believe they\u2019re letting me do this,\u201d I whispered in awe to my conveyer belt neighbor as I snapped up a bag of popcorn for the Snacks box with the kind of ferocity usually associated with birds of prey.\nThe jumble of donated items coming into the center need to be sorted in order for the food bank to be able to quantify, package, and distribute the food to those who need it (I sense a metaphor coming on). It\u2019s not just a nice-to-have that we spent our morning separating cookies from carrots\u2014it\u2019s a crucial step in the process. Organization makes the difference between chaos and sense, between randomness and usefulness, whether we\u2019re talking about donated groceries or\u2014there it is\u2014web content.\nThis happens through the magic of criteria matching. In order for us to sort the food bank donations correctly, we needed to know not only the categories we were sorting into, but also the criteria for each category. Does canned ravioli count as Canned Soup? Does enchilada sauce count as Tomatoes? Do protein bars count as Snacks? (Answers: yes, yes, and only if they are under 10 grams of protein or will expire within three months.) \nIs X a Y? was the question at the heart of our food sorting\u2014but it\u2019s also at the heart of any information-seeking behavior. When we are organizing, or looking for, any kind of information, we are asking ourselves:\n\nWhat is the criteria that defines Y?\nDoes X meet that criteria?\n\nWe don\u2019t usually articulate it so concretely because it\u2019s a background process, only leaping to consciousness when we encounter a stumbling block. If cans of broth flew by on the conveyer belt, it didn\u2019t require much thought to place them in the Canned Soup box. Boxed broth, on the other hand, wasn\u2019t allowed, causing a small cognitive hiccup\u2014this X is NOT a Y\u2014that sometimes meant having to re-sort our boxes.\nOn the web, we\u2019re interested\u2014I would hope\u2014in reducing cognitive hiccups for our users. We are interested in making our apps easy to use, our websites easy to navigate, our information easy to access. After all, most of the time, the process of using the internet is one of uniting a question with an answer\u2014Is this article from a trustworthy source? Is this clothing the style I want? Is this company paying their workers a living wage? Is this website one that can answer my question? Is X a Y?\nWe have a responsibility, therefore, to make information easy for our users to find, understand, and act on. This means\u2014well, this means a lot of things, and I\u2019ve got limited space here, so let\u2019s focus on these three lessons from the food bank:\n\n\nUse plain, familiar language. This advice seems to be given constantly, but that\u2019s because it\u2019s solid and it\u2019s not followed enough. Your menu labels, page names, and headings need to reflect the word choice of your users. Think how much harder it would have been to sort food if the boxes were labeled according to nutritional content, grocery store aisle number, or Latin name. How much would it slow sorting down if the Tomatoes box were labeled Nightshades? It sounds silly, but it\u2019s not that different from sites that use industry jargon, company lingo, acronyms (oh, yes, I\u2019ve seen it), or other internally focused language when trying to provide wayfinding for users. Choose words that your audience knows\u2014not only will they be more likely to spot what they\u2019re looking for on your site or app, but you\u2019ll turn up more often in search results.\n\n\nCreate consistency in all things. Missteps in consistency look like my earlier chicken broth example\u2014changing up how something looks, sounds, or functions creates a moment of cognitive dissonance, and those moments add up. The names of products, the names of brands, the names of files and forms and pages, the names of processes and procedures and concepts\u2014these all need to be consistently spelled, punctuated, linked, and referenced, no matter what section or level the user is in. If submenus are visible in one section, they should be visible in all. If calls-to-action are a graphic button in one section, they are the same graphic button in all. Every affordance, every module, every design choice sets up user expectations; consistency keeps those expectations afloat, making for a smoother experience overall.\n\nMake the system transparent. By this, I do not mean that every piece of content should be elevated at all times. The horror. But I do mean that we should make an effort to communicate the boundaries of the digital space from any given corner within. Navigation structures operate just as much as a table of contents as they do a method of moving from one place to another. Page hierarchies help explain content relationships, communicating conceptual relevancy and relative importance. Submenus illustrate which related concepts may be found within a given site section. Take care to show information that conveys the depth and breadth of the system, rather than obscuring it.\n\nThis idea of transparency was perhaps the biggest challenge we experienced in food sorting. Imagine us volunteers as users, each looking for a specific piece of information in the larger system. Like any new visitor to a website, we came into the system not knowing the full picture. We didn\u2019t know every category label around the conveyer belt, nor what criteria each category warranted. \nThe system wasn\u2019t transparent for us, so we had to make it transparent as we went. We had to stop what we were doing and ask questions. We\u2019d ask staff members. We\u2019d ask more seasoned volunteers. We\u2019d ask each other. We\u2019d make guesses, and guess wrongly, and mess up the boxes, and correct our mistakes, and learn.\nThe more we learned, the easier the sorting became. That is, we were able to sort more quickly, more efficiently, more accurately.  The better we understood the system, the better we were at interacting with it.\nThe same is true of our users: the better they understand digital spaces, the more effective they are at using them. But visitors to our apps and websites do not have the luxury of learning the whole system. The fumbling trial-and-error method that I used at the food bank can, on a website, drive users away\u2014or, worse, misinform or hurt them. \nThis is why we must make choices that prioritize transparency, consistency, and familiarity. Our users want to know if X is a Y\u2014well-sorted content can give them the answer.", "year": "2018", "author": "Lisa Maria Martin", "author_slug": "lisamariamartin", "published": "2018-12-16T00:00:00+00:00", "url": "https://24ways.org/2018/the-system-the-search-and-the-food-bank/", "topic": "content"}
{"rowid": 252, "title": "Turn Jekyll up to Eleventy", "contents": "Sometimes it pays not to over complicate things. While many of the sites we use on a daily basis require relational databases to manage their content and dynamic pages to respond to user input, for smaller, simpler sites, serving pre-rendered static HTML is usually a much cheaper \u2014 and more secure \u2014 option. \nThe JAMstack (JavaScript, reusable APIs, and prebuilt Markup) is a popular marketing term for this way of building websites, but in some ways it\u2019s a return to how things were in the early days of the web, before developers started tinkering with CGI scripts or Personal HomePage. Indeed, my website has always served pre-rendered HTML; first with the aid of Movable Type and more recently using Jekyll, which Anna wrote about in 2013.\nBy combining three approachable languages \u2014 Markdown for content, YAML for data and Liquid for templating \u2014 the ergonomics of Jekyll found broad appeal, influencing the design of the many static site generators that followed. But Jekyll is not without its faults. Aside from notoriously slow build times, it\u2019s also built using Ruby. While this is an elegant programming language, it is yet another ecosystem to understand and manage, and often alongside one we already use: JavaScript. For all my time using Jekyll, I would think to myself \u201cthis, but in Node\u201d. Thankfully, one of Santa\u2019s elves (Zach Leatherman) granted my Atwoodian wish and placed such a static site generator under my tree.\nIntroducing Eleventy\nEleventy is a more flexible alternative Jekyll. Besides being written in Node, it\u2019s less strict about how to organise files and, in addition to Liquid, supports other templating languages like EJS, Pug, Handlebars and Nunjucks. Best of all, its build times are significantly faster (with future optimisations promising further gains).\nAs content is saved using the familiar combination of YAML front matter and Markdown, transitioning from Jekyll to Eleventy may seem like a reasonable idea. Yet as I\u2019ve discovered, there are a few gotchas. If you\u2019ve been considering making the switch, here are a few tips and tricks to help you on your way1.\nNote: Throughout this article, I\u2019ll be converting Matt Cone\u2019s Markdown Guide site as an example. If you want to follow along, start by cloning the git repository, and then change into the project directory:\ngit clone https://github.com/mattcone/markdown-guide.git\ncd markdown-guide\nBefore you start\nIf you\u2019ve used tools like Grunt, Gulp or Webpack, you\u2019ll be familiar with Node.js but, if you\u2019ve been exclusively using Jekyll to compile your assets as well as generate your HTML, now\u2019s the time to install Node.js and set up your project to work with its package manager, NPM:\n\nInstall Node.js:\n\nMac: If you haven\u2019t already, I recommend installing Homebrew, a package manager for the Mac. Then in the Terminal type brew install node.\nWindows: Download the Windows installer from the Node.js website and follow the instructions.\n\nInitiate NPM: Ensure you are in the directory of your project and then type npm init. This command will ask you a few questions before creating a file called package.json. Like RubyGems\u2019s Gemfile, this file contains a list of your project\u2019s third-party dependencies.\n\nIf you\u2019re managing your site with Git, make sure to add node_modules to your .gitignore file too. Unlike RubyGems, NPM stores its dependencies alongside your project files. This folder can get quite large, and as it contains binaries compiled to work with the host computer, it shouldn\u2019t be version controlled. Eleventy will also honour the contents of this file, meaning anything you want Git to ignore, Eleventy will ignore too.\nInstalling Eleventy\nWith Node.js installed and your project setup to work with NPM, we can now install Eleventy as a dependency:\nnpm install --save-dev @11ty/eleventy\nIf you open package.json you should see the following:\n\u2026\n\"devDependencies\": {\n  \"@11ty/eleventy\": \"^0.6.0\"\n}\n\u2026\nWe can now run Eleventy from the command line using NPM\u2019s npx command. For example, to covert the README.md file to HTML, we can run the following:\nnpx eleventy --input=README.md --formats=md\nThis command will generate a rendered HTML file at _site/README/index.html. Like Jekyll, Eleventy shares the same default name for its output directory (_site), a pattern we will see repeatedly during the transition.\nConfiguration\nWhereas Jekyll uses the declarative YAML syntax for its configuration file, Eleventy uses JavaScript. This allows its options to be scripted, enabling some powerful possibilities as we\u2019ll see later on.\nWe\u2019ll start by creating our configuration file (.eleventy.js), copying the relevant settings in _config.yml over to their equivalent options:\nmodule.exports = function(eleventyConfig) {\n  return {\n    dir: {\n      input: \"./\",      // Equivalent to Jekyll's source property\n      output: \"./_site\" // Equivalent to Jekyll's destination property\n    }\n  };\n};\nA few other things to bear in mind:\n\n\nWhereas Jekyll allows you to list folders and files to ignore under its exclude property, Eleventy looks for these values inside a file called .eleventyignore (in addition to .gitignore).\n\nBy default, Eleventy uses markdown-it to parse Markdown. If your content uses advanced syntax features (such as abbreviations, definition lists and footnotes), you\u2019ll need to pass Eleventy an instance of this (or another) Markdown library configured with the relevant options and plugins.\n\nLayouts\nOne area Eleventy currently lacks flexibility is the location of layouts, which must reside within the _includes directory (see this issue on GitHub).\nWanting to keep our layouts together, we\u2019ll move them from _layouts to _includes/layouts, and then update references to incorporate the layouts sub-folder. We could update the layout: frontmatter property in each of our content files, but another option is to create aliases in Eleventy\u2019s config:\nmodule.exports = function(eleventyConfig) {\n  // Aliases are in relation to the _includes folder\n  eleventyConfig.addLayoutAlias('about', 'layouts/about.html');\n  eleventyConfig.addLayoutAlias('book', 'layouts/book.html');\n  eleventyConfig.addLayoutAlias('default', 'layouts/default.html');\n\n  return {\n    dir: {\n      input: \"./\",\n      output: \"./_site\"\n    }\n  };\n}\nDetermining which template language to use\nEleventy will transform Markdown (.md) files using Liquid by default, but we\u2019ll need to tell Eleventy how to process other files that are using Liquid templates. There are a few ways to achieve this, but the easiest is to use file extensions. In our case, we have some files in our api folder that we want to process with Liquid and output as JSON. By appending the .liquid file extension (i.e. basic-syntax.json becomes basic-syntax.json.liquid), Eleventy will know what to do.\nVariables\nOn the surface, Jekyll and Eleventy appear broadly similar, but as each models its content and data a little differently, some template variables will need updating.\nSite variables\nAlongside build settings, Jekyll let\u2019s you store common values in its configuration file which can be accessed in our templates via the site.* namespace. For example, in our Markdown Guide, we have the following values:\ntitle: \"Markdown Guide\"\nurl: https://www.markdownguide.org\nbaseurl: \"\"\nrepo: http://github.com/mattcone/markdown-guide\ncomments: false\nauthor:\n  name: \"Matt Cone\"\nog_locale: \"en_US\"\nEleventy\u2019s configuration uses JavaScript which is not suited to storing values like this. However, like Jekyll, we can use data files to store common values. If we add our site-wide values to a JSON file inside a folder called _data and name this file site.json, we can keep the site.* namespace and leave our variables unchanged.\n{\n  \"title\": \"Markdown Guide\",\n  \"url\": \"https://www.markdownguide.org\",\n  \"baseurl\": \"\",\n  \"repo\": \"http://github.com/mattcone/markdown-guide\",\n  \"comments\": false,\n  \"author\": {\n    \"name\": \"Matt Cone\"\n  },\n  \"og_locale\": \"en_US\"\n}\nPage variables\nThe table below shows a mapping of common page variables. As a rule, frontmatter properties are accessed directly, whereas derived metadata values (things like URLs, dates etc.) get prefixed with the page.* namespace:\n\n\n\nJekyll\nEleventy\n\n\n\n\npage.url\npage.url\n\n\npage.date\npage.date\n\n\npage.path\npage.inputPath\n\n\npage.id\npage.outputPath\n\n\npage.name\npage.fileSlug\n\n\npage.content\ncontent\n\n\npage.title\ntitle\n\n\npage.foobar\nfoobar\n\n\n\nWhen iterating through pages, frontmatter values are available via the data object while content is available via templateContent:\n\n\n\nJekyll\nEleventy\n\n\n\n\nitem.url\nitem.url\n\n\nitem.date\nitem.date\n\n\nitem.path\nitem.inputPath\n\n\nitem.name\nitem.fileSlug\n\n\nitem.id\nitem.outputPath\n\n\nitem.content\nitem.templateContent\n\n\nitem.title\nitem.data.title\n\n\nitem.foobar\nitem.data.foobar\n\n\n\nIdeally the discrepancy between page and item variables will change in a future version (see this GitHub issue), making it easier to understand the way Eleventy structures its data.\nPagination variables\nWhereas Jekyll\u2019s pagination feature is limited to paginating posts on one page, Eleventy allows you to paginate any collection of documents or data. Given this disparity, the changes to pagination are more significant, but this table shows a mapping of equivalent variables:\n\n\n\nJekyll\nEleventy\n\n\n\n\npaginator.page\npagination.pageNumber\n\n\npaginator.per_page\npagination.size\n\n\npaginator.posts\npagination.items\n\n\npaginator.previous_page_path\npagination.previousPageHref\n\n\npaginator.next_page_path\npagination.nextPageHref\n\n\n\nFilters\nAlthough Jekyll uses Liquid, it provides a set of filters that are not part of the core Liquid library. There are quite a few \u2014 more than can be covered by this article \u2014 but you can replicate them by using Eleventy\u2019s addFilter configuration option. Let\u2019s convert two used by our Markdown Guide: jsonify and where.\nThe jsonify filter outputs an object or string as valid JSON. As JavaScript provides a native JSON method, we can use this in our replacement filter. addFilter takes two arguments; the first is the name of the filter and the second is the function to which we will pass the content we want to transform:\n// {{ variable | jsonify }}\neleventyConfig.addFilter('jsonify', function (variable) {\n  return JSON.stringify(variable);\n});\nJekyll\u2019s where filter is a little more complicated in that it takes two additional arguments: the key to look for, and the value it should match:\n{{ site.members | where: \"graduation_year\",\"2014\" }}\nTo account for this, instead of passing one value to the second argument of addFilter, we can instead pass three: the array we want to examine, the key we want to look for and the value it should match:\n// {{ array | where: key,value }}\neleventyConfig.addFilter('where', function (array, key, value) {\n  return array.filter(item => {\n    const keys = key.split('.');\n    const reducedKey = keys.reduce((object, key) => {\n      return object[key];\n    }, item);\n\n    return (reducedKey === value ? item : false);\n  });\n});\nThere\u2019s quite a bit going on within this filter, but I\u2019ll try to explain. Essentially we\u2019re examining each item in our array, reducing key (passed as a string using dot notation) so that it can be parsed correctly (as an object reference) before comparing its value to value. If it matches, item remains in the returned array, else it\u2019s removed. Phew!\nIncludes\nAs with filters, Jekyll provides a set of tags that aren\u2019t strictly part of Liquid either. This includes one of the most useful, the include tag. LiquidJS, the library Eleventy uses, does provide an  include tag, but one using the slightly different syntax defined by Shopify. If you\u2019re not passing variables to your includes, everything should work without modification. Otherwise, note that whereas with Jekyll you would do this:\n<!-- page.html -->\n{% include include.html value=\"key\" %}\n\n<!-- include.html -->\n{{ include.value }}\nin Eleventy, you would do this:\n<!-- page.html -->\n{% include \"include.html\", value: \"key\" %}\n\n<!-- include.html -->\n{{ value }}\nA downside of Shopify\u2019s syntax is that variable assignments are no longer scoped to the include and can therefore leak; keep this in mind when converting your templates as you may need to make further adjustments.\nTweaking Liquid\nYou may have noticed in the above example that LiquidJS expects the names of included files to be quoted (else it treats them as variables). We could update our templates to add quotes around file names (the recommended approach), but we could also disable this behaviour by setting LiquidJS\u2019s dynamicPartials option to false. Additionally, Eleventy doesn\u2019t support the include_relative tag, meaning you can\u2019t include files relative to the current document. However, LiquidJS does let us define multiple paths to look for included files via its root option. \nThankfully, Eleventy allows us to pass options to LiquidJS:\neleventyConfig.setLiquidOptions({\n  dynamicPartials: false,\n  root: [\n    '_includes',\n    '.'\n  ]\n});\nCollections\nJekyll\u2019s collections feature lets authors create arbitrary collections of documents beyond pages and posts. Eleventy provides a similar feature, but in a far more powerful way.\nCollections in Jekyll\nIn Jekyll, creating collections requires you to add the name of your collections to _config.yml and create corresponding folders in your project. Our Markdown Guide has two collections:\ncollections:\n  - basic-syntax\n  - extended-syntax\nThese correspond to the folders _basic-syntax and _extended-syntax whose content we can iterate over like so:\n{% for syntax in site.extended-syntax %}\n  {{ syntax.title }}\n{% endfor %}\nCollections in Eleventy\nThere are two ways you can set up collections in 11ty. The first, and most straightforward, is to use the tag property in content files:\n---\ntitle: Strikethrough\nsyntax-id: strikethrough\nsyntax-summary: \"~~The world is flat.~~\"\ntag: extended-syntax\n---\nWe can then iterate over tagged content like this:\n{% for syntax in collections.extended-syntax %}\n  {{ syntax.data.title }}\n{% endfor %}\nEleventy also allows us to configure collections programmatically. For example, instead of using tags, we can search for files using a glob pattern (a way of specifying a set of filenames to search for using wildcard characters):\neleventyConfig.addCollection('basic-syntax', collection => {\n  return collection.getFilteredByGlob('_basic-syntax/*.md');\n});\n\neleventyConfig.addCollection('extended-syntax', collection => {\n  return collection.getFilteredByGlob('_extended-syntax/*.md');\n});\nWe can extend this further. For example, say we wanted to sort a collection by the display_order property in our document\u2019s frontmatter. We could take the results of collection.getFilteredByGlob and then use JavaScript\u2019s sort method to sort the result:\neleventyConfig.addCollection('example', collection => {\n  return collection.getFilteredByGlob('_examples/*.md').sort((a, b) => {\n    return a.data.display_order - b.data.display_order;\n  });\n});\nHopefully, this gives you just a hint of what\u2019s possible using this approach.\nUsing directory data to manage defaults\nBy default, Eleventy will maintain the structure of your content files when generating your site. In our case, that means /_basic-syntax/lists.md is generated as /_basic-syntax/lists/index.html. Like Jekyll, we can change where files are saved using the permalink property. For example, if we want the URL for this page to be /basic-syntax/lists.html we can add the following:\n---\ntitle: Lists\nsyntax-id: lists\napi: \"no\"\npermalink: /basic-syntax/lists.html\n---\nAgain, this is probably not something we want to manage on a file-by-file basis but again, Eleventy has features that can help: directory data and permalink variables.\nFor example, to achieve the above for all content stored in the _basic-syntax folder, we can create a JSON file that shares the name of that folder and sits inside it, i.e. _basic-syntax/_basic-syntax.json and set our default values. For permalinks, we can use Liquid templating to construct our desired path:\n{\n  \"layout\": \"syntax\",\n  \"tag\": \"basic-syntax\",\n  \"permalink\": \"basic-syntax/{{ title | slug }}.html\"\n}\nHowever, Markdown Guide doesn\u2019t publish syntax examples at individual permanent URLs, it merely uses content files to store data. So let\u2019s change things around a little. No longer tied to Jekyll\u2019s rules about where collection folders should be saved and how they should be labelled, we\u2019ll move them into a folder called _content:\nmarkdown-guide\n\u2514\u2500\u2500 _content\n    \u251c\u2500\u2500 basic-syntax\n    \u251c\u2500\u2500 extended-syntax\n    \u251c\u2500\u2500 getting-started\n    \u2514\u2500\u2500 _content.json\nWe will also add a directory data file (_content.json) inside this folder. As directory data is applied recursively, setting permalink to false will mean all content in this folder and its children will no longer be published:\n{\n  \"permalink\": false\n}\nStatic files\nEleventy only transforms files whose template language it\u2019s familiar with. But often we may have static assets that don\u2019t need converting, but do need copying to the destination directory. For this, we can use pass-through file copy. In our configuration file, we tell Eleventy what folders/files to copy with the addPassthroughCopy option. Then in the return statement, we enable this feature by setting passthroughFileCopy to true:\nmodule.exports = function(eleventyConfig) {\n  \u2026\n\n  // Copy the `assets` directory to the compiled site folder\n  eleventyConfig.addPassthroughCopy('assets');\n\n  return {\n    dir: {\n      input: \"./\",\n      output: \"./_site\"\n    },\n    passthroughFileCopy: true\n  };\n}\nFinal considerations\nAssets\nUnlike Jekyll, Eleventy provides no support for asset compilation or bundling scripts \u2014 we have plenty of choices in that department already. If you\u2019ve been using Jekyll to compile Sass files into CSS, or CoffeeScript into Javascript, you will need to research alternative options, options which are beyond the scope of this article, sadly.\nPublishing to GitHub Pages\nOne of the benefits of Jekyll is its deep integration with GitHub Pages. To publish an Eleventy generated site \u2014 or any site not built with Jekyll \u2014 to GitHub Pages can be quite involved, but typically involves copying the generated site to the gh-pages branch or including that branch as a submodule. Alternatively, you could use a continuous integration service like Travis or CircleCI and push the generated site to your web server. It\u2019s enough to make your head spin! Perhaps for this reason, a number of specialised static site hosts have emerged such as Netlify and Google Firebase. But remember; you can publish a static site almost anywhere!\n\nGoing one louder\nIf you\u2019ve been considering making the switch, I hope this brief overview has been helpful. But it also serves as a reminder why it can be prudent to avoid jumping aboard bandwagons. \nWhile it\u2019s fun to try new software and emerging technologies, doing so can require a lot of work and compromise. For all of Eleventy\u2019s appeal, it\u2019s only a year old so has little in the way of an ecosystem of plugins or themes. It also only has one maintainer. Jekyll on the other hand is a mature project with a large community of maintainers and contributors supporting it.\nI moved my site to Eleventy because the slowness and inflexibility of Jekyll was preventing me from doing the things I wanted to do. But I also had time to invest in the transition. After reading this guide, and considering the specific requirements of your project, you may decide to stick with Jekyll, especially if the output will essentially stay the same. And that\u2019s perfectly fine! \nBut these go to 11.\n\n\n\n\nInformation provided is correct as of Eleventy v0.6.0 and Jekyll v3.8.5\u00a0\u21a9", "year": "2018", "author": "Paul Lloyd", "author_slug": "paulrobertlloyd", "published": "2018-12-11T00:00:00+00:00", "url": "https://24ways.org/2018/turn-jekyll-up-to-eleventy/", "topic": "content"}
{"rowid": 275, "title": "Context First: Web Strategy in Four Handy Ws", "contents": "Many, many years ago, before web design became my proper job, I trained and worked as a journalist. I studied publishing in London and spent three fun years learning how to take a few little nuggets of information and turn them into a story. I learned a bunch of stuff that has all been a huge help to my design career. Flatplanning, layout, typographic theory. All of these disciplines have since translated really well to web design, but without doubt the most useful thing I learned was how to ask difficult questions.\n\nPretty much from day one of journalism school they hammer into you the importance of the Five Ws. Five disarmingly simple lines of enquiry that eloquently manage to provide the meat of any decent story. And with alliteration thrown in too. For a young journo, it\u2019s almost too good to be true.\n\nWho? What? Where? When? Why? It seems so obvious to almost be trite but, fundamentally, any story that manages to answer those questions for the reader is doing a pretty good job. You\u2019ll probably have noticed feeling underwhelmed by certain news pieces in the past \u2013 disappointed, like something was missing. Some irritating oversight that really lets the story down. No doubt it was one of the Ws \u2013 those innocuous little suckers are generally only noticeable by their absence, but they sure get missed when they\u2019re not there. \n\nQuestion everything\n\nI\u2019ve always been curious. An inveterate tinkerer with things and asker of dopey questions, often to the point of abject annoyance for anyone unfortunate enough to have ended up in my line of fire. So, naturally, the Five Ws started drifting into other areas of my life. I\u2019d scrutinize everything, trying to justify or explain my rationale using these Ws, but I\u2019d also find myself ripping apart the stuff that clearly couldn\u2019t justify itself against the same criteria.\n\nSo when I started working as a designer I applied the same logic and, sure enough, the Ws pretty much mapped to the exact same needs we had for gathering requirements at the start of a project. It seemed so obvious, such a simple way to establish the purpose of a product. What was it for? Why we were making it? And, of course, who were we making it for? It forced clients to stop and think, when really what they wanted was to get going and see something shiny. Sometimes that was a tricky conversation to have, but it\u2019s no coincidence that those who got it also understood the value of strategy and went on to have good solid products, while those that didn\u2019t often ended up with arrogantly insular and very shiny but ultimately unsatisfying and expendable products. Empty vessels make the most noise and all that\u2026\n\nContent first\n\nI was both surprised and pleased when the whole content first idea started to rear its head a couple of years back. Pleased, because without doubt it\u2019s absolutely the right way to work. And surprised, because personally it\u2019s always been the way I\u2019ve done it \u2013 I wasn\u2019t aware there was even an alternative way. Content in some form or another is the whole reason we were making the things we were making. I can\u2019t even imagine how you\u2019d start figuring out what a site needs to do, how it should be structured, or how it should look without a really good idea of what that content might be. It baffles me still that this was somehow news to a lot of people. What on earth were they doing? Design without purpose is just folly, surely?\n\nIt\u2019s great to see the idea gaining momentum but, having watched it unfold, it occurred to me recently that although it\u2019s fantastic to see a tangible shift in thinking \u2013 away from those bleak times, where making things up was somehow deemed an appropriate way to do things \u2013 there\u2019s now a new bad guy in town.\n\nWith any buzzword solution of the moment, there\u2019s always a catch, and it seems like some have taken the content first approach a little too literally. By which I mean, it\u2019s literally the first thing they do. The project starts, there\u2019s a very cursory nod towards gathering requirements, and off they go, cranking content. Writing copy, making video, commissioning illustrations.\n\nAll that\u2019s happened is that the \u2018making stuff up\u2019 part has shifted along the line, away from layout and UI, back to the content. \n\nStarting is too easy\n\nI can\u2019t remember where I first heard that phrase, but it\u2019s a great sentiment which applies to so much of what we do on the web. The medium is so accessible and to an extent disposable; throwing things together quickly carries far less burden than in any other industry. We\u2019re used to tweaking as we go, changing bits, iterating things into shape. The ubiquitous beta tag has become the ultimate caveat, and has made the unfinished and unpolished acceptable. Of course, that can work brilliantly in some circumstances. Occasionally, a product offers such a paradigm shift it\u2019s beyond the level of deep planning and prelaunch finessing we\u2019d ideally like. But, in the main, for most client sites we work on, there really is no excuse not to do things properly. To ask the tricky questions, to challenge preconceptions and really understand the Ws behind the products we\u2019re making before we even start. \n\nThe four Ws\n\nFor product definition, only four of the five Ws really apply, although there\u2019s a lot of discussion around the idea of when being an influencing factor. For example, the context of a user\u2019s engagement with your product is something you can make a call on depending on the specifics of the project.\n\nSo, here\u2019s my take on the four essential Ws. I\u2019ll point out here that, of course, these are not intended to be autocratic dictums. Your needs may differ, your clients\u2019 needs may differ, but these four starting points will get you pretty close to where you need to be.\n\nWho \n\nIt\u2019s surprising just how many projects start without a real understanding of the intended audience. Many clients think they have an idea, but without really knowing \u2013 it\u2019s presumptive at best, and we all know what presumption is the mother of, right? Of course, we can\u2019t know our audiences in the same way a small shop owner might know their customers. But we can at least strive to find out what type of people are likely to be using the product. I\u2019m not talking about deep user research. That should come later.\n\nThese are the absolute basics. What\u2019s the context for their visit? How informed are they? What\u2019s their level of comprehension? Are they able to self-identify and relate to categories you have created? I could go on, and it changes on a per-project basis. You\u2019ll only find this out by speaking to them, if not in person, then indirectly through surveys, questionnaires or polls. The mechanism is less important than actually reaching out and engaging with them, because without that understanding it\u2019s impossible to start to design with any empathy.\n\nWhat\n\nOnce you become deeply involved directly with a product or service, it\u2019s notoriously difficult to see things as an outsider would. You learn the thing inside and out, you develop shortcuts and internal phraseology. Colloquialisms creep in. You become too close. So it\u2019s no surprise when clients sometimes struggle to explain what it is their product actually does in a way that others can understand.\n\nOften products are complex but, really, the core reasons behind someone wanting to use that product are very simple. There\u2019s a value proposition for the customer and, if they choose to engage with it, there\u2019s a value exchange. If that proposition or exchange isn\u2019t transparent, then people become confused and will likely go elsewhere. Make sure both your client and you really understand what that proposition is and, in turn, what the expected exchange should be. In a nutshell: what is the intended outcome of that engagement? Often the best way to do this is strip everything back to nothing. Verbosity is rife on the web. Just because it\u2019s easy to create content, that shouldn\u2019t be a reason to do so. Figure out what the value proposition is and then reintroduce content elements that genuinely help explain or present that to a level that is appropriate for the audience. \n\nWhy \n\nIn advertising, they talk about the truths behind a product or service. Truths can be both tangible or abstract, but the most important part is the resonance those truths hit with a customer. In a digital product or service those truths are often exposed as benefits. Why is this what I need? Why will it work for me? Why should I trust you? The why is one of the more fluffy Ws, yet it\u2019s such an important one to nail. Clients can get prickly when you ask them to justify the why behind their product, but it\u2019s a fantastic way to make sure the value proposition is clear, realistic and meets with the expectations of both client and customer.\n\nIt\u2019s our job as designers to question things: we\u2019re not just a pair of hands for clients. Just recently I spoke to a potential client about a site for his business. I asked him why people would use his product and also why his product seemed so fractured in its direction. He couldnt answer that question so, instead of ploughing on regardless, he went back to his directors and is now re-evaluating that business. It was awkward but he thanked me and hopefully he\u2019ll have a better product as a result.\n\nWhere\n\nIn this instance, where is not so much a geographical thing, although in some cases that level of context may indeed become a influencing factor\u2026 The where we\u2019re talking about here is the position of the product in relation to others around it. By looking at competitors or similar services around the one you are designing, you can start to get a sense for many of the things that are otherwise hard to pin down or have yet to be defined. For example, in a collection of sites all selling cars, where does yours fit most closely? Where are the overlaps? How are they communicating to their customers? How is the product range presented or categorized?\n\nIt\u2019s good to look around and see how others are doing it. Not in a quest for homogeneity but more to reference or to avoid certain patterns that may or may not make sense for your own particular product. Clients often strive to be different for the sake of it. They feel they need to provide distinction by going against the flow a bit. We know different. We know users love convention. They embrace familiar mental models. They\u2019re comfortable with things that they\u2019ve experienced elsewhere. By showing your client that position is a vital part of their strategy, you can help shape their product into something great. \n\nTo conclude\n\nSo there we have it \u2013 the four Ws. Each part tells a different and vital part of the story you need to be able to make a really good product. It might sound like a lot of work, particularly when the client is breathing down your neck expecting to see things, but without those pieces in place, the story you\u2019re building your product on, and the content that you\u2019re creating to form that product can only ever fit into one genre. Fiction.", "year": "2011", "author": "Alex Morris", "author_slug": "alexmorris", "published": "2011-12-10T00:00:00+00:00", "url": "https://24ways.org/2011/context-first/", "topic": "content"}
{"rowid": 287, "title": "Extracting the Content", "contents": "As we throw away our canvas in approaches and yearn for a content-out process, there remains a pain point: the Content. It is spoken of in the hushed tones usually reserved for Lord Voldemort. The-thing-that-someone-else-is-responsible-for-that-must-not-be-named.\n\nDesigners and developers have been burned before by not knowing what the Content is, how long it is, what style it is and when the hell it\u2019s actually going to be delivered, in internet eons past. Warily, they ask clients for it. But clients don\u2019t know what to make, or what is good, because no one taught them this in business school. Designers struggle to describe what they need and when, so the conversation gets put off until it\u2019s almost too late, and then everyone is relieved that they can take the cop-out of putting up a blog and maybe some product descriptions from the brochure.\n\nThe Content in content out.\n\nI\u2019m guessing, as a smart, sophisticated, and, may I say, nicely-scented reader of the honourable and venerable tradition of 24 ways, that you sense something better is out there. Bunches of boxes to fill in just don\u2019t cut it any more in a responsive web design world. The first question is, how are you going to design something to ensure users have the easiest access to the best Content, if you haven\u2019t defined at the beginning what that Content is? Of course, it\u2019s more than possible that your clients have done lots of user research before approaching you to start this project, and have a plethora of finely tuned Content for you to design with.\n\nHave you finished laughing yet? Alright then. Let\u2019s just assume that, for whatever reason of gross oversight, this hasn\u2019t happened. What next?\n\nBringing up Content for the first time with a client is like discussing contraception when you\u2019re in a new relationship. It might be awkward and either party would probably rather be doing something else, but it needs to be broached before any action happens (that, and it\u2019s disastrous to assume the other party has the matter in hand). If we can\u2019t talk about it, how can we expect people to be doing it right and not making stupid mistakes? That being the case, how do we talk about Content? Let\u2019s start by finding a way to talk about it without blushing and scuffing our shoes. And there\u2019s a reason I\u2019ve been treating Content as a Proper Noun. \n\nThe first step, and I mean really-first-step-way-back-at-the-beginning-of-the-project-while-you-are-still-scoping-out-what-the-hell-you-might-do-for-each-other-and-it\u2019s-still-all-a-bit-awkward-like-a-first-date, is for you to explain to the client how important it is that you, together, work out what is important to your users as part of the user experience design, so that your users get the best user experience. The trouble is that, in most cases, this would lead to blank stares, possibly followed by a light cough and a query about using Comic Sans because it seems friendly.\n\nLet\u2019s start by ensuring your clients understand the task ahead. You see, all the time we talk about the Content we do our clients a big disservice. Content is poorly defined. It looms over a project completion point like an unscalable (in the sense of a dozen stacked Kilimanjaros), seething, massive, singular entity. The Content.\n\nDefining the problem. \n\nWe should really be thinking of the Content as \u2018contents\u2019; as many parts that come together to form a mighty experience, like hit 90s kids\u2019 TV show Mighty Morphin Power Rangers*.\n\n*For those of you who might have missed the Power Rangers, they were five teenagers with attitude, each given crazy mad individual skillz and a coloured lycra suit from an alien overlord. In return, they had to fight a new monster of the week using their abilities and weaponry in sync (even if the audio was not) and then, finally, in thrilling combination as a Humongous Mechanoid Machine of Awesome. They literally joined their individual selves, accessories and vehicles into a big robot. It was a toy manufacturer\u2019s wet dream.\n\nSo, why do I say Content is like the Power Rangers? Because Content is not just a humongous mecha. It is a combination of well-crafted pieces of contents that come together to form a well-crafted humongous mecha. Of Content.\n\nThe Red Power Ranger was always the leader. You can imagine your text contents, found on about pages, product descriptions, blog articles, and so on, as being your Red Power Ranger.\n\nMaybe your pictures are your Yellow Power Ranger; video is Blue (not used as much as the others, but really impressive when given a good storyline); maybe Pink is your infographics (it\u2019s wrong to find it sexier than the other equally important Rangers, but you kind of do anyway). And so on. \n\nThese bits of content \u2013 Red Text Ranger, Yellow Picture Ranger and others \u2013 often join together on a page, like they are teaming up to fight the bad guy in an action scene, and when they all come together (your standard workaday huge mecha) in a launched site, that\u2019s when Content becomes an entity.\n\nWhile you might have a vision for the whole site, Content rarely works that way. Of course, you keep your eye on the bigger prize, the completion of your mega robot, but to get there you need to assemble your working parts, the cogs and springs of contents that will mesh together to finally create your Humongous Mecha of Content. You create parts and join them to form a whole. (It\u2019s rarely seamless; often we need to adjust as we go, but we can create our Mecha\u2019s blueprint by making sure we have all the requisite parts.)\n\nThe point here is the order these parts were created. No alien overlord plans a Humongous Mechanoid and then thinks, \u201cGee, how can I split this into smaller fighting units powered by teenagers in snazzy shiny suits?\u201d No toy manufacturer goes into production of a mega robot, made up of model mecha vehicles with detachable arsenal, without thinking how they will easily fit back together to form the \u2018Buy all five now to create the mega robot\u2019 set. No good contents are created as a singular entity and chunked up to be slotted in to place any which way, into the body of a site.\n\nThink contents, not the Content. Think of contents as smaller units, or as a plural. The Content is what you have at the end. The contents are what you are creating and they are easy to break down. You are no longer scaling the unscalable. You can draw the map and plot the path, page by page, section by section.\n\nThe page table is your friend\n\nTo do this, I use a page table. A page table is a simple table template you can create in the word processor of your choice, that you use to tell you everything about the contents of a page \u2013 everything except the contents itself. \n\nHere\u2019s a page table I created for an employee\u2019s guide to redundancy in the alpha.gov.uk website:\n\n \n\nGuide to redundancy for employees\n\n\n\tPage objective: Provide specific information for employees who are facing redundancy about the process, their options and next steps.\n\tSource content: directgov page on Redundancy.\n\tScope: In scope\n\n\n\n\t\t\n\t\t\tPage title \n\t\t\t An employee\u2019s guide to redundancy \n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\tPriority content \n\t\t\t Message: You have rights as an employee facing redundancy\nMethod: A guide written in plain English, with links to appropriate additional content.\nA video guide (out of scope).\nCovers the stages of redundancy and rights for those in trade unions and not in trade unions. Glossary of unfamiliar terms.\nCall to action: Read full guide, act to explore redundancy actions, benefits or new employment.\nAssets: link to redundancy calculator. \n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\tSecondary \n\t\t\t Related items, or popular additional links. \nAdditional tools, such as search and suggestions.\n\n\n\n\tlocation set v not set states\n\tmicrocopy encouraging location set where location may make a difference to the content \u2013 ie, Scotland/Northern Ireland.\n\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\tTertiary \n\t\t\t Footer and standard links. \n\t\t\n\n\n\n\tContent creation: Content exists but was created within the constraints of the previous CMS. Review, correct and edit where necessary.\n\tMaintenance: should be flagged for review upon advice from Department of Work and Pensions, and annually.\n\tTechnology/Publishing/Policy implications: Should be reviewed once the glossary styles have been decided. No video guide in scope at this time, so languages should be simple and screen reader friendly.\n\tReliance on third parties: None, all content and source exists in house.\n\tOutstanding questions: None.\n\n\n \n\nDownload a copy of this page table\n\nThis particular page table template owes a lot to Brain Traffic\u2019s version found in Kristina Halvorson\u2019s book Content Strategy for the Web. With smaller clients than, say, the government, I might use something a bit more casual. With clients who like timescales and deadlines, I might turn it into a covering sheet, with signatures and agreements from two departments who have to work together to get the piece done on time.\n\nI use page tables, and the process of working through them, to reassure clients that I understand the task they face and that I can help them break it down section by section, page stack to page, down to product descriptions and interaction copy. About 80% of my clients break into relieved smiles. Most clients want to work with you to produce something good, they just don\u2019t understand how, and they want you to show them the mountain path on the map. With page tables, clients can understand that with baby steps they can break down their content requirements and commission content they need in time for the designers to work with it (as opposed to around it).  If I was Santa, these clients would be on my nice list for sure.\n\nMy own special brand of Voldemort-content-evilness comes in how I wield my page tables for the other 20%. Page tables are not always thrilling, I\u2019ll admit. Sometimes they get ignored in favour of other things, yet they are crucial to the continual growth and maintenance of a truly content-led site. For these naughty list clients who, even when given the gift of the page table, continually say \u201cOoh, yes. Content. Right\u201d, I have a special gift. I have a stack of recycled paper under my desk and a cheap black and white laser printer. And I print a blank page table for every conceivable page I can find on the planned redesign. If I\u2019m feeling extra nice, I hole punch them and put them in a fat binder. \n\nThere is nothing like saying, \u201cThis is all the contents you need to have in hand for launch\u201d, and the satisfying thud the binder makes as it hits the table top, to galvanize even the naughtiest clients to start working with you to create the content you need to really create in a content-out way.", "year": "2011", "author": "Relly Annett-Baker", "author_slug": "rellyannettbaker", "published": "2011-12-15T00:00:00+00:00", "url": "https://24ways.org/2011/extracting-the-content/", "topic": "content"}
{"rowid": 291, "title": "Information Literacy Is a Design Problem", "contents": "Information literacy, wrote Dr. Carol Kulthau in her 1987 paper \u201cInformation Skills for an Information Society,\u201d is \u201cthe ability to read and to use information essential for everyday life\u201d\u2014that is, to effectively navigate a world built on \u201ccomplex masses of information generated by computers and mass media.\u201d\nNearly thirty years later, those \u201ccomplex masses of information\u201d have only grown wilder, thornier, and more constant. We call the internet a firehose, yet we\u2019re loathe to turn it off (or even down). The amount of information we consume daily is staggering\u2014and yet our ability to fully understand it all remains frustratingly insufficient. \nThis should hit a very particular chord for those of us working on the web. We may be developers, designers, or strategists\u2014we may not always be responsible for the words themselves\u2014but we all know that communication is much more than just words. From fonts to form fields, every design decision that we make changes the way information is perceived\u2014for better or for worse.\nWhat\u2019s more, the design decisions that we make feed into larger patterns. They don\u2019t just affect the perception of a single piece of information on a single site; they start to shape reader expectations of information anywhere. Users develop cumulative mental models of how websites should be: where to find a search bar, where to look at contact information, how to filter a product list. \nAnd yet: our models fail us. Fundamentally, we\u2019re not good at parsing information, and that\u2019s troubling. Our experience of an \u201cinformation society\u201d may have evolved, but the skills Dr. Kuhlthau spoke of are even more critical now: our lives depend on information literacy.\nPatterns from words\nLet\u2019s start at the beginning: with the words. Our choice of words can drastically alter a message, from its emotional resonance to its context to its literal meaning. Sometimes we can use word choice for good, to reinvigorate old, forgotten, or unfairly besmirched ideas.\nOne time at a wedding bbq we labeled the coleslaw BRASSICA MIXTA so people wouldn\u2019t skip it based on false hatred.\u2014 Eileen Webb (@webmeadow) November 27, 2016\n\nWe can also use clever word choice to build euphemisms, to name sensitive or intimate concepts without conjuring their full details. This trick gifts us with language like \u201cthe beast with two backs\u201d (thanks, Shakespeare!) and \u201csurfing the crimson wave\u201d (thanks, Cher Horowitz!).\nBut when we grapple with more serious concepts\u2014war, death, human rights\u2014this habit of declawing our language gets dangerous. Using more discrete wording serves to nullify the concepts themselves, euphemizing them out of sight and out of mind.\nThe result? Politicians never lie, they just \u201cmisspeak.\u201d Nobody\u2019s racist, but plenty of people are \u201ceconomically anxious.\u201d Nazis have rebranded as \u201calt-right.\u201d \nI\u2019m not an asshole, I\u2019m just alt-nice.\u2014 Andi Zeisler (@andizeisler) November 22, 2016\n\nThe problem with euphemisms like these is that they quickly infect everyday language. We use the words we hear around us. The more often we see \u201calt-right\u201d instead of \u201cNazi,\u201d the more likely we are to use that phrase ourselves\u2014normalizing the term as well as the terrible ideas behind it.\nPatterns from sentences\nThat process of normalization gets a boost from the media, our main vector of information about the world outside ourselves. Headlines control how we interpret the news that follows\u2014even if the story contradicts it in the end. We hear the framing more clearly than the content itself, coloring our interpretation of the news over time.\nEven worse, headlines are often written to encourage clicks, not to convey critical information. When headline-writing is driven by sensationalism, it\u2019s much, much easier to build a pattern of misinformation. Take this CBS News headline: \u201cDonald Trump: \u2018Millions\u2019 voted illegally for Hillary Clinton.\u201d The headline makes no indication that this an objectively false statement; instead, this word choice subtly suggestions that millions did, in fact, illegally vote for Hillary Clinton.\nHeadlines like this are what make lying a worthwhile political strategy. https://t.co/DRjGeYVKmW\u2014 Binyamin Appelbaum (@BCAppelbaum) November 27, 2016\n\nThis is a deeply dangerous choice of words when headlines are the primary way that news is conveyed\u2014especially on social media, where it\u2019s much faster to share than to actually read the article. In fact, according to a study from the Media Insight Project, \u201croughly six in 10 people acknowledge that they have done nothing more than read news headlines in the past week.\u201d \nIf a powerful person asserts X there are 2 responsible ways to cover:1. \u201cX is true\u201d2. \u201cPerson incorrectly thinks X\u201dNever \u201cPerson says X\u201d\u2014 Helen Rosner (@hels) November 27, 2016\n\nEven if we do, in fact, read the whole article, there\u2019s no guarantee that we\u2019re thinking critically about it. A study conducted by Stanford found that \u201c82 percent of students could not distinguish between a sponsored post and an actual news article on the same website. Nearly 70 percent of middle schoolers thought they had no reason to distrust a sponsored finance article written by the CEO of a bank, and many students evaluate the trustworthiness of tweets based on their level of detail and the size of attached photos.\u201d \nFriends: our information literacy is not very good. Luckily, we\u2014workers of the web\u2014are in a position to improve it.\nSentences into design\nConsider the presentation of those all-important headlines in social media cards, as on Facebook. The display is a combination of both the card\u2019s design and the article\u2019s source code, and looks something like this:\n\nA large image, a large headline; perhaps a brief description; and, at the bottom, in pale gray, a source and an author\u2019s name. \nThose choices convey certain values: specifically, they suggest that the headline and the picture are the entire point. The source is so deemphasized that it\u2019s easy to see how fake news gains a foothold: daily exposure to this kind of hierarchy has taught us that sources aren\u2019t important. \nAnd that\u2019s the message from the best-case scenario. Not every article shows every piece of data. Take this headline from the BBC: \u201cWisconsin receives request for vote recount.\u201d \n\nWith no image, no description, and no author, there\u2019s little opportunity to signal trust or provide nuance. There\u2019s also no date\u2014ever\u2014which presents potentially misleading complications, especially in the context of \u201cbreaking news.\u201d \nAnd lest you think dates don\u2019t matter in the light-speed era of social media, take the headline, \u201cMaryland sidesteps electoral college.\u201d Shared into my feed two days after the US presidential election, that\u2019s some serious news with major historical implications. But since there\u2019s no date on this card, there\u2019s no way for readers to know that the \u201cTuesday\u201d it refers to was in 2007. Again, a design choice has made misinformation far too contagious.\n\nMore recently, I posted my personal reaction to the death of Fidel Castro via a series of twenty tweets. Wanting to share my thoughts with friends and family who don\u2019t use Twitter, I then posted the first tweet to Facebook. The card it generated was less than ideal:\n\nThe information hierarchy created by this approach prioritizes the name of the Twitter user (not even the handle), along with the avatar. Not only does that create an awkward \u201cheadline\u201d (at least when you include a full stop in your name), but it also minimizes the content of the tweet itself\u2014which was the whole point. \nThe arbitrary elevation of some pieces of content over others\u2014like huge headlines juxtaposed with minimized sources\u2014teaches readers that these values are inherent to the content itself: that the headline is the news, that the source is irrelevant. We train readers to stop looking for the information we don\u2019t put in front of them. \nThese aren\u2019t life-or-death scenarios; they are just cases where design decisions noticeably dictate the perception of information. Not every design decision makes so obvious an impact, but the impact is there. Every single action adds to the pattern.\nDesign with intention\nWe can\u2019t necessarily teach people to read critically or vet their sources or stop believing conspiracy theories (or start believing facts). Our reach is limited to our roles: we make websites and products for companies and colleges and startups.\nBut we have more reach there than we might realize. Every decision we make influences how information is presented in the world. Every presentation adds to the pattern. No matter how innocuous our organization, how lowly our title, how small our user base\u2014every single one of us contributes, a little bit, to the way information is perceived.\nAre we changing it for the better?\nWhile it\u2019s always been crucial to act ethically in the building of the web, our cultural climate now requires dedicated, individual conscientiousness. It\u2019s not enough to think ourselves neutral, to dismiss our work as meaningless or apolitical. Everything is political. Every action, and every inaction, has an impact.\nAs Chappell Ellison put it much more eloquently than I can:\nEvery single action and decision a designer commits is a political act. The question is, are you a conscious actor?\u2014 Chappell Ellison\ud83e\udd14 (@ChappellTracker) November 28, 2016\n\nAs shapers of information, we have a responsibility: to create clarity, to further understanding, to advance truth. Every single one of us must choose to treat information\u2014and the society it builds\u2014with integrity.", "year": "2016", "author": "Lisa Maria Martin", "author_slug": "lisamariamartin", "published": "2016-12-14T00:00:00+00:00", "url": "https://24ways.org/2016/information-literacy-is-a-design-problem/", "topic": "content"}