Content Design

I am Geoff and I am a Content Designer working in the Digital team at Imperial. As well as helping teams around College with their web content, one of the primary jobs of a Content Designer like myself is to promote good content design, but first I will explain what this means.

What is content design?

Content design is thinking about the people that come to a website, or any online service, discovering what they want to do or need to know, and then looking at ways to make this as easy as possible for them. 

This means making sure that the users’ needs are not forgotten because we are too focussed on what messages we want to push out, and what we think they want. Sounds simple right? Well, it should be, but you will be amazed how many websites, web pages or other online services are created without really understanding who the users are and what they want to do or need to know. This can often result in a very confusing, disjointed and frustrating experience. That’s where good content design is so valuable.

What is ‘good’ content design?

Although much of the content we see on the internet is words, good content design is thinking about more than just words; it is about deciding on the best content to meet the user’s needs and expectations. This can include images, videos, slideshows, infographics, documents etc. Good content design also involves organising the content so people can find things when they need it.

So what is this blog all about?

The main focus of my blog will be to introduce some techniques and approaches to help you improve your content and to promote good practice, so we can all work together to improve the online experience of our audiences at Imperial. Along the way, I will also be posting some top tips,  recommendations for tools or other resources, and posting about any projects I have been working on at Imperial and events I have attended.

There is so much information out there about content design, user experience (UX), web design, interaction design and  many other digital disciplines, and this can be overwhelming. What I hope to do here is to present this in an accessible and digestible way so that if you are responsible for a department website or even just a single page, you will find something here to help you.