How do we organize this thing?

[jswelker]

To start, I organized into three categories: usability, accessibility, and administration/management. I'm not sure that these are the best categories or that the subcategories belong where they currently are. Suggestions?

[vsiler]

I think it's well organized. It seems there are some pieces that fit in more than one category...responsive design can also go under usability and usability testing can also fit under accessibility, but it works as is.

[michaelschofield]

Usability is just a facet of over all user experience. The NN/g point out that "usability is a quality attribute of the UI, covering whether the system is easy to learn, efficient to use, pleasant, and so forth." I think the honeycomb model breaks up UX into the following cats.

• Useful
• Usable
• Desirable
• Findable
• Accessible
• Credible

which all add to the measure of a valuable user experience.

I think maybe categories like accessibility, content strategy, design make clearer boundaries. Design can have a sub-category called patterns where common library patterns or content types like library hours or subject guides can be bundled, to keep them separated from other design concerns. Then mobile-first / adaptive / responsive web design would go there.

[csheldonhess]

+1 to accessibility, content strategy, and design

[jswelker]

I like that division. I assume administrative and management issues are meant to go into the content strategy category. However, the word content is a bit limiting in this respect. There are a lot of procedural matters that aren't really related to content--management team structures, decision-making procedures, usability testing procedures, etc.

I think we should either add a fourth category for administration or change content strategy to administrative strategy with content management as a sub-category.

[ahaines]

I would vote against the latter (change content strategy to administrative strategy with content management as a sub-category) - when I think of content management I think of something very different (specific workflows, CMS selection, etc.) and fairly separate from site design, where content strategy to me means something that is baked-in from the beginning stages of site design. Strategy first, then management. I could go with filing content strategy underneath administrative strategy, with content management as a sub-category of that.

[jswelker]

So how about this:

• Accessibility
• Administrative Strategy
  • Content Strategy
  • Content Management Workflow
  • ...
  • ...
• Design

[deirdrelyon]

There are two different definitions of content strategy:

• Strategy for managing, storing and serving up content
• Strategy for writing content in a way that's accessible to your audience

I believe the first probably belongs in administrative strategy, and the second in usability - it looks like the title "content management strategy" might work for the first?

[jswelker]

That's a good point, @deirdrelyon. Others have suggested eliminating the usability category, so in that case your second bullet point should be categorized with accessibility.

I'm going to hold off and wait for more comments to see if a consensus develops.

[michaelschofield]

I think we should keep content-related strategy and style within content strategy--I'm not sure there's a reason to split them up, if only add to confusion--and purely accessibility concerns within accessibility. IMHO, accessible content is really about writing style, whereas accessibility should be concerned with:

• meaningful markup
• code / interaction translating to screen readers
• ARIA roles, captioning services
• Skip Navigation, title attributes, alt attributes

I think confusing things like content strategy with administrative strategy is a mistake. While content strategy is often the purview of administration, there is nowhere else on the web that conflates the two.

If there is going to be a section that's specifically about imparting tools and tips to [library] administration, make that just a separate fourth category.

[ghost]

Content strategy should be it's own category. This can contain strategy, management, development of content, auditing, style guidelines, accessible content, plain language, retention schedules, maintenance schedules, cross channel consistency, social media, etc, etc.

Admin/management shouldn't be conflated with content management/strategy work. This could also include communications, advocacy, and promotion (if we want to go that far).

IMO, accessibility is woven throughout every category, so it might be best as a mandatory sub-category of each larger category.

Design - yes.

Another category for more technical aspects? Selecting a CSM? Testing? Links out to resources that talk about development?

[emilykingatcsn]

IMHO, I think separating out the guidelines in categories of content strategy, admin management, design, and accessibility might not be the best way to organize the guidelines since these categories are so interconnected.

How about separating the report in terms of the web content lifecycle? The steps would include:

• System Creation (Including CMS Selection and the step up of system imposed style rules and templates)
• Content Creation
• Content maintenance
• Content retirement

In each step will have a sub section about content guidelines, content strategy, accessibility, well formed code, documentation, etc. for each of the steps.

In my experience the creation process is really different from the maintenance process and I think that might be why maintaining content over time so hard, libraries only plan for step 1 and 2.