This weeks lecture was all about user personas and content strategy.
There has been so many times that I have been on a website and a full page ad pops up and if feels like as soon as I hit the ad exit button another one just appears to take its place, at that point I would personally rather close the website I was on and find a new one.
This is something that not just annoys me but a lot of other people too. I had never known what to call this before but now I realise that this is an example of bad content strategy
Content strategy focuses on planning, creation, delivery and governance of content
But what is Good Content?
- Good Content is clear – Easy to understand, will the kids that will use my elemental game be able to easily understand what they need to do.
- Good Content is consistent – is the content within my elemental project consistent, is it equal through out
- Good Content is concise – is my elemental project to the point, without redundancies
- Good Content is supported – is my elemental app able to be easily accessed by users through devices.
Content people work for the user, often we can end up designing for ourselves and creating content for ourselves instead of putting the users first and considering what they would need. For example for my element project I need to ensure that I am meeting the needs of the users, instead of my own
TELL A STORY WITH THE CONTENT!!!!
To build a better product I need to better understand my users and who they really are – this is where user personas can come into play.
What is a persona – Personas are fictional characters, which are created based upon research in order to represent the different user types that might use services, products, sites, or brands in a similar way.
User personas can be a way of putting the user front and centre during the design process
Creating user personas can be vital to the success of a project. Personas can be created in multiple ways like through interviews, questionnaires, data collection etc.
Applying the knowledge that I had gained in this lecture I began considering my content strategy and user personas. During the further creation of my elemental project I have to remember to continuously ask myself is my content “good content”, does it meet the four points and has it been created with the user in mind and does it meet their needs?