Advanced Technical Writing 2005 Session #8

For P2, you will… 1. Analyze the content strategy of a real organization - the MSU library 2. Investigate the needs of content users and authors 3. Study the content resources & processes currently in place 4. Design a new information model for the organization 5. Present findings in the form of a report highlighting the current and recommended future content strategy

A broader view of content… If content is all of the things we say it is…interactive, granular, etc. Then you can’t adequately assess a site’s content strategy based solely on what shows up in your browser… For this project, we’ll pursue three modes of analysis to get at all the various aspects of content…

Three views of content… Genre and features A Focus onSees the site as Emphasizes the point of view of Structure & Delivery Production Models & Workflows a text; or a collection of texts the reader/user objects & actions; social space a workplace the designers & developers the admins and “authors”

Three views of content, 2 Genre and features A Focus on Structure & Delivery Production Models & Workflows Content Units & Information types What info do users need? In what forms? Objects, views, and relationships Content Authoring & Maintenance What does the org. need in its info model? How is content created & moved? You’ll analyze/designYou’ll ask…

Three views of content… Genre and features To improve… Structure & Delivery Production Models & Workflows How the information, itself, can be made more effective for users You’ll consider something like… How the org. can standardize, reuse, and display content more effectively How the org. can streamline production and management without sacrificing user-centered goals

Rockley is your guide… Genre and features When you focus on… Structure & Delivery Production Models & Workflows Ch. 6 Performing a Content Audit Ch. 10 Designing dynamic content Consult Rockley, et. al. Ch. 8 Information Modeling Ch. 9 Designing Metadata Ch. 5 Analyzing the Content Lifecycle Ch. 7 Envisioning Your Unified Content Lifecycle Ch. 11 Designing Workflow

…more… 1. We’ll have three teams, each adopting one of our three investigative foci 2. We’ll follow the Rockley text closely, supplementing with conceptual information and data gathering processes where necessary 3. The final deliverable is a report. Half focusing on the content strategy currently in place, half on a recommendation for how it should change. 4. This project can fit well with P3, which will ask you to share knowledge about the concepts we are working with here

Project 2 Basic Info, cont. 1.A proposal, sent by to the library, laying out your team’s research plan 2.An oral report, where you will describe the methods you are employing to analyze the site, and offer preliminary findings to library staff. (date session 16) 3.A recommendation report, addressed to the library staff. There will be three components:

Project 2 Basic Info, cont. Choose your team based on your interests. Look ahead to project 3 and try to develop ideas during your work on project 2 A few tips…

Working with the library The library will give us some issues to being, you (we) will propose the project scope and focus Half of this project is to document an existing information model…the other half is to make recommendations for improving it I will act as an intermediary to get the project teams organized; you’ll let me know what you want to work on, and I will pass the info along to the library;

You’ll focus on one of these… Genre and features To improve… Structure & Delivery Production Models & Workflows How the information, itself, can be made more effective for users You’ll consider something like… How the org. can standardize, reuse, and display content more effectively How the org. can streamline production and management without sacrificing user-centered goals

Project Ideas Genres & Features - how can the “second-level” pages in the library’s current information architecture be improved to look less like the library and more like user-centered resources? Structure & Delivery - library users come to the library to “do research”…how can each page view help each user to “do research?” Production models & workflows - how can more of the user-support that goes on in the library in ad-hoc ways be captured and leveraged on the web site?

Your Project Ideas? The library has some ideas, but they are really interested in your thoughts about what would make good projects. They have been very impressed, in the past, by our students’ ability to identify things that need to be investigated. Think about your experiences as a library user. Have a look at the library website…any ideas come to mind?

Create an information model (you can use some variant of DTD syntax) for “Family Film Reviews” that would allow you to transform an XML-formatted review like the one you have into two distinct “views:”: One for parents One for kids Then…sketch the views, labeling the objects that would make them up. Post them for session 7 (not next time). You can consider this a dry-run for your next major project. You can go whole hog if you want…and do DTD>XML>XSLT>XHTML…or go lo-tech. The last XML-ercise…

What is an information model, according to Rockely? How would Prior & Bazerman characterized the work involved in making an ad-hoc or improvised information model explicit? Rockley, Prior & Bazerman

Next Time… ► Analyzing Genres & Tasks (the user perspective) ► Read Rockley Ch. 6; Bazerman Ch. 4 in B & R; Derose et. al. (pdf)