Interview with Mike Atherton, UX Content Strategist

We interviewed Mike to find out how to structure complex information, the shifting role of UX designers and product management, books he recommends, and all the other ways to improve Content Design Strategy. Enjoy! 🤩

Mike Atherton

1. Your presentation ‘The Endless Sea’ and particularly this slide was very interesting to me. How should we structure such massive amounts of information instead?

The most effective way to structure information is to separate structure and presentation. Rather than thinking of information architecture as a function of front-end design, think of it as a part of back-end design.

Screenshot from Mike’s presentation ‘The Endless Sea’ (p. 22)

That slide is not mine, but it shows one of the biggest barriers to getting structured content down — organizational politics. Organizing information effectively assumes that the whole of the library is considered. In practice that’s not the case — there are organizational silos, politics and competing priorities getting in the way of a consistent structure or presentation.

The most effective way to get it done is to separate structure and presentation. Rather than thinking of information architecture as a function of front-end design, think of it as a part of back-end design. Rather than starting with wire-frames and interface site maps, start with how the information breaks into the key concepts and how they relate to each other in the real world. It’s a user-centred approach, which is far more fundamental to the user experience than interfaces because you’re figuring out how your audience thinks to reflect those mental models in your CMS models.

The advantage is that when the model is connected to the CMS or database, you’re free to try out different kinds of presentations because they all draw from the same content structure. This is good for duelling stakeholders: it means investments and bets are smaller, and you’re free to experiment at the interface level where things are cheap.

It also makes better use of stakeholder involvement. Reviewing wireframes or mockups is not their area of expertise, it’s far better to use their subject matter expertise to help you understand how the concepts in your subject domain fit together. If you don’t have stakeholders as part of the problem solving, you can’t expect them to be part of the solution. You need them to buy into it by having constructive conversations.

2. Five years ago, you ‘predict[ed] that Product Management and UX design will merge into a common strategic function informed by brand values and company mission, and with iteration focused more on making the right thing, and therefore less on making the thing right.’ Would you say the same thing today too?

It happened in a slightly different way. Any comment about process change should be caveated with the fact that every method from the past, present and future is still going on. Things change but change is not evenly distributed.

For product management in UX, I’ve seen a shift to the cross-functional team. At Facebook, features and products are created by small squads comprising product managers, designers, engineers, researchers, content strategists, product marketers. They have a strategic function and they do it through a cycle of delivery, measurement and interaction.

Roles and responsibilities are shifting as world changes

This has changed the responsibility of the designer. There used to be an idea of the UX designer who is research-informed but not really a researcher, or a wire-frame maker who isn’t a designer, or someone who translates research findings into early mock-ups that get changed by designers and changed again by engineers. That role is fading away for a couple of reasons: most layouts and interaction patterns are well-enough understood that they can be replicated and commodified.

Also, the nature of what we want from products has changed. Back in the 1990s, web design was an offshoot of publishing. But in a product world, people are coming for the relevance — to see their friends’ updates, or listen to a customized playlist from Spotify. The experience is about getting the right value out of the product and has little to do with the interface.

Looking at these things together, and combining that with the need for relevant information, it’s not so much usability testing as value testing. In that sense, UX has to start thinking as a product manager does.

*The question’s quote is from his article — a must read for anyone who is in UX.

3. What methods do you use to conduct value-testing?

It’s putting things into the market on a small scale. Facebook is a difficult example to replicate but the methods can be replicated. If you have a hypothesis based on discovery research, you build a simple version to test if people want the thing you think they want. You release it to a small cohort of people and compare it against those who don’t have this new thing and see if you’re getting the result you want. Based on granular observations you can refine that idea, throw it away, or so on. It’s a different mind-set from the notion of design primarily being about layout, typography and interaction, to designing a proposition or business.

4. How do you know the content is right?

You don’t know, so you measure and you iterate.

Discovery research helps you understand what’s important and find out what people are interested in. That gives you a good grounding for where your focus should be. That’s blended with your organisation’s brand voice and tone and then you put it out, whether it’s the tiniest bit of microcopy or a long-form article. That’s measured like any other form of design and that feedback loop informs what you do next.

5. Do you feel the format of websites limits the content?

It can do if you’re doing the traditional wire-frame with the bar at the top and on the side. That’s like giving me an empty book and saying “Here’s my novel, we just need the content”. If one thing is constrained, it constrains everything else. However, there are good things about the conventions of web design and app design. It would be a bit strange if every novel you read had to be opened differently or the words were upside down. So, I think the question of whether websites need weird and wonderful navigation is hard to answer.

6. What is your favourite Content Design you have recently found?

I love what Slack does. They’ve managed to keep the same tone of their content design across the brand from product experience to social media, to developer documentation. It all speaks with one voice. That’s incredibly hard and they’ve done a terrific job there.

7. What book(s) would you recommend me to read (an MA student who is switching her career from Design Researcher to a UX Researcher/ Designer) before I start working?

My friend, Steve Portigal has written a couple of good books — Doorbells, Danger and Dead Batteries and Interviewing Users. They give a sideways look into the trials and tribulations of life as a UX researcher.

Erika Hall’s Just Enough Research about the challenges of getting research done in the real world.

A difficult read is called About Face, a big bible by Alan Cooper. It’s good on the deep fundamentals of interaction design.

*He also co-authored a book ‘Designing Connected Content: Plan and Model Digital Products for Today and Tomorrow’ with Carrie Hane.

8. Any tips to someone getting into UX?

The work is not the work. Selling the work is the work. Don’t assume the people who hire you understand what you do. You need to find ways to change that and one of the best ways is by quantifying your effort. You need to be integral to the success of your project and held to the same standard as every engineer or product manager. Your work should not be seen as “creative” or as something needed only to be doing the right thing. You need to be seen as a benefit to the team and measured as such.

Doing the work is not the work - selling the work is the work.

9. You have a lot of experience working in companies but you are now a speaker at conferences. Why the change?

I do both things, but it’s not a career change — it has to be that way. If I was only speaking, I would quickly get out of touch with what’s going on. In the last few years, I’ve focused on content design rather than other forms of design. That speaks to how I think — about content, terminology, concepts and abstract language, and how that fits in as a fundamental part of design rather than buttons and boxes.

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Interviewed by Misato Ehara

Edited by Misato Ehara and Mike Atherton

Illustrations by Maria Nikla

Edited with Google docs

Published on 5 Oct 2020

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Interviewee:For over 20 years, Mike Atherton has been connecting people to content. A specialist in structuring information, he has chunked, pushed, presented and linked compelling content for the BBC, Facebook, and, in a different age, Playboy TV. He helps other product specialists to build experiences from the terminology up. He is also co-author of the book Designing Connected Content.

Interviewer:Misato Ehara is founder of The UX Review, former design Strategist at Gensler. Currently completing a Masters in Curating Contemporary Design. Open to UX research roles starting in October 2020. Her recent project ‘The Design Film Festiva’ is launched and can be viewed here (thedesignfilmfestival.com/home)