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Content Analysis:The Hows & Whys to Understanding Your Content
Chiara Fox
EuroIA
26 September 2008
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Content
Context Users
IA
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What Is Content?
Words
Images
Video
Tools or applications
Features
Services
Physical items
Signage
Anything that can be structured or described.
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What Is “Content Analysis”?
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It’s About Patterns
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And Relationships
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Why Do a Content Analysis?
You have to know what you have before you start doing something with it.
To better serve your customers.
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What Are the Parts?
Content analysis involves a series of deliverables.
Content Inventory
Content Audit
Content Map
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The Content Inventory
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The Content Inventory
A content inventory is a detailed, meticulous accounting of all items on the site.
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Data to Capture in a Content Inventory
Content owner
Person responsible for migration/updating page
Freeze status
ROT status
Current location in site
New location in site
New file names/URL changes
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Example of a Content Inventory
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What About Huge Sites?
Rely on your databases
Use search engine spiders and other crawlers
Use a database, not spreadsheets
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Content Inventory Purpose
Used during a site migration.
To estimate time and bodies needed for migration.
To keep track if each and every little bit of content.
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The Content Audit
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How Big of a Sample To Take?
Determine amount of time for audit
Spend about 3 minutes per item
Plan on 2 passes over each item
Divide that by the number of items on the site
Gives you the number of items to look at.
It doesn’t take a lot of content to get a good feel for what is on the site.
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How to Record Sampled Items
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Example of a Content Audit
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Example of a Content Audit, II
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Page Title
Page Name
Function
Location in Process
Type
Required for Payday
Required for Tax Payment
Feature Audit Example
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Content Audit Purpose
Get a sampling or flavor of a site.
Figure out what you have so you can reorganize it.
Usually you don’t need to do a full inventory.
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The Content Map
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Map Your Content Audit
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So What Gets Mapped?
Start with the spreadsheet
Not formats (e.g., html, pdf, jpg)
Generalize the pages by identifying the content types, objects or genres that you have
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Press releases
Product overview
Contact info
Video tutorial
Case studies
Shopping cart
You Know What You’ll Get When You Click...
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Identifying a Content Genre
Does it use a specific template?
Are there lots of items like this, with just differences in subject matter?
Can it stand alone, without context?
Is there a specific purpose? Or use?
What expectations will people bring to it?
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Genre? Or Instantiation?
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Subject-Based Content Map
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Feature Map ExampleFeature Map Example
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Content Map Purpose
Listing of all content genres on the site.
For communicating with executives or other team members.
Gain insights from graphical representation of the content.
Needed to build mental model diagram.
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Who Should Do the Content Analysis?
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The Content Audit Personality
Close attention to detail
Deep understanding of & comfortable with the web
Understanding of the project & how the content audit will be used
Ability to think abstractly
A member of the core web team
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You Can Always Help Others
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Successful Mentoring
Location doesn’t matter; touch points do
Lots of examples
Keep work in context
Work together to “dial in” granularity
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Be Prepared If Things Don’t Go Well
Close enough is often good enough.
The map is often more important than the spreadsheet.
This is hard work – be understanding and supportive.
More than just clicking links.
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So Remember...
Content Inventory
When you are doing a migration and have to account for every item
Content Audit
When you need a sampling in order to inform designs
Content Map
A visualization of the content genres
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Thank You!
Chiara Fox
Join me & others from Adaptive Path at
UX Intensive Copenhagen
October 13-16
Register with code “FOCF” to save 15%!
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Photo Credits
By Akiyoshi Kitaoka http://www.ritsumei.ac.jp/~akitaoka/index-e.html
By Orangeacid http://www.flickr.com/photos/orangeacid/353267143/
By Edwards Hicks http://www.allposters.com/-sp/Noah-s-Ark-Posters_i128976_.htm
By Georges-Pierre Seurat, La Parade (1889)
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