One recent highlight in my content work was the privilege of joining in a 2 day Content Design course for government in Sydney in November.

A well-designed website or app needs well-designed, well-crafted content. And for government websites, the stakes are high if they are difficult to use or understand. Content design aims to set that right.

Government content gurus

The course was led by Content Design London's Sarah Richards and Lizzie Bruce. To be a participant in one of their first international courses was huge.

Sarah Richards is arguably the doyenne of content design. She led the content work for the UK's Government Digital Service (GDS) GOV.UK project. This involved controversially closing down hundreds of websites, including award-winning ones, and replacing them with a single UK government portal. The website is global best practice for making government information and services online simple, clear and fast.

I came away from the course with tips, tricks and thinking about how to craft content that better meets the needs of people who interact with government. And, lets face it, that's all of us.

Crafty content

5 things I learnt about getting crafty with content were:

1. Making information readable and simple isn't 'dumbing down'. I used to hear the 'dumbing down' term a lot in science comms and I found it offensive. Who are we to say people are 'dumb' if they don't 'get' our content? Jargon is only justifiable if we can demonstrate our users know it. Generally it's worth aiming for simplicity.  Even experts prefer simple language.

2. Content production comes at the end of the content design process. It comes after research into user needs, channels, motivations, journeys and more. That ensures it is based on data about our users and what they need from us.

3. There are some snappy ways to whip a draft webpage into shape quickly. We tried a pair review that can improve a page draft in just over 30 mins. It involves showing the draft to 3 different people in turn, one looking at headings and structure, one at words and one at user actions. Allow no more than 10 mins per person with a short break in between to action changes. The result isn't final, but it's on the way.

4. Content critiques make improving content a team sport. We use principles for these in my government agency derived from those in GOV.UK. But one thing that struck me was about the words we use when talking about the process. It is more about what we can do to improve the page rather than what you can do. That subtle word change puts the onus on all of us to work together.

5. There are some good tools for content design out there. Google Trends is cool, and free and a good way to check your terminology matches users'. Choose 'Australia' for region and 'past 90 days' and compare searches for up to 5 search terms at once. It's one data point to help decisions on word choices. Answer the Public is also cool and free, but a bit creepy. Try it to see why. It maps out popular questions people ask about a topic. 

This was such a worthwhile course. Thanks to the Digital Transformation Agency for hosting it.