While researching ways to utilize content for my client’s database, I gained new insight in reusability of content, improving findability, and myself.
Reusability of Content
A company that I worked with during my graduate studies requested my team and me to assess user experience of their online database. Thus, my team and I audited aspects such as accessibility, reusability, and findability, to name a few. Accessibility on the web enumerates ways to make web content accessible through recommended features and formatting. For example:
- Content must be in 12 point font.
- Content must be as straightforward as possible.
Reusability is very different. Its potential varies depending on similarity of content, not similarity of formatting guidelines. Content for the same product or service sometimes repeats information. Documents of the same content types (e.g., quick start guides, troubleshooting, etc.) will contain similar sections. To avoid creating content from scratch, use templates that indicate repeated content or sections. Some paragraphs or sections might qualify for reuse based on the company’s needs. Others might not.
For my client’s database, I recommended adding small paragraphs to each resource, saying, “This resource is part of the Finances category which covers topics x, y, and z.”
Describing Ease of Findability
Sometimes findability can be described on a numeric scale. However, my client’s website contained features that made it impossible to express findability with numbers alone.
The database’s search function only stored words from video titles, but not from anywhere else. Therefore,
- If users knew the name of the resource they wanted, findability was flawless.
- If users typed topic or category names into the search, findability was almost impossible.
The professor proposed implementing keywords, metadata, and a table of contents. Topic-based searches run more smoothly with keywords and metadata because these features are designed to capture what titles do not. Tables of contents organize information in a way that indices cannot.
A Literary Turn
Sometimes talking around a subject is easier than talking about it. Not everything equals the sum of its parts. For example, according to Robert Petrie on The Dick Van Dyke Show, Romeo and Juliet is about “a couple of mixed-up teenagers [who] run away from home and end up dead.” (Reiner, Tarloff & Rich, 1962) This summary tells the events of the play but not the theme: that infatuation is not strong enough to overcome centuries-old societal prejudices. If we use this analogy, keywords, metadata, and indices talk around an issue, while titles and tables of contents, which are summative in nature, talk about an issue.
I naturally gravitate toward talking about things, using big-picture thinking. When I told this to my professor, she suggested that I have a naturally strategic bent. This quality is particularly advantageous for a technical communicator. Instead of documenting the process we use to arrive at conclusions (narrative style), technical communicators write the conclusions first and the methods later. Technical communication, specifically content strategy and information architecture, reminds me of systems engineering but with words instead of numbers. I had suspected an engineering side to my personality, and this view of technical communication supports that theory.
1 1 Reiner, C. (Writer), Tarloff, F. (Writer), & Rich, J. (Director). (1962, January 10) The Curious Thing About Women (Season 1 Episode 16) [TV series episode]. In S. Leonard, D. Thomas (Executive Producers), The Dick Van Dyke Show. Calvada Productions.
Jennifer Goon 