Since February 2024, we’ve trained more than 90 publishers in content design and have experimented with the ways we upskill University staff in content design techniques, to support them to produce good-quality, compliant online content that meets web visitors’ needs.

One of the core functions of the UX Service is to provide training and coaching in UX and content design. The move to EdWeb2 and the migration project presented an opportunity to review the content design training we offer, to try to improve the ways we educate, empower and encourage University staff to adopt content design practices when preparing web content.

I blogged earlier in the year to describe and promote aspects of our new content design training programme. Read my previous blog posts:

Applying effective digital content principles in practice – our new training approaches

Helping colleagues learn and apply content design in practice at the University

In this blog post I share some of our process and our thinking behind the development of the sessions, reflecting on the behavioural science theory we adopted, what we learned along the way and thinking ahead to what’s next.

EdWeb2 presented the opportunity to revisit our content design training approaches

Several factors prompted us to review our content design training provision to coincide with the project to migrate to EdWeb2. Firstly, the development of training sessions to teach publishers how to use the new EdWeb2 platform meant there was increased interest in how to prepare content for the web. Secondly, the migration prompted discussions with website owners and lead publishers about the most effective ways to present web content, and it made sense to address some of the queries raised through content design training.

We could work on content design training with additional staff joining the UX team

The migration project also facilitated the recruitment of five Web Content Design Assistants to the UX team for a fixed period of time, which provided very welcome increased resource in the UX Service to devote to content design training. This enabled us to not only be able to run more in-person and online training sessions, but also to collectively reflect on the success of the sessions we ran, so that we could keep iterating and improving them.

We wanted to take a new approach with behavioural science thinking

Analysing the feedback from publishers who had taken online Effective Digital Content course, and considering the findings from our previous research with publishers, myself and others in the UX team identified that while publishers found the course content useful, since they did not publish content all the time, they struggled to recall what they had learned to be able to confidently apply it in practice on their own websites by themselves.

Learners that take compliance courses do not see any immediacy in the experience, so tend to just get through it, as a chore. They are not committed when they feel it is unlikely that they will use their newly acquired knowledge and skills for some time, if at all – Donald Clark, Learning Experience Design – How to Create Effective Learning that Works, 2022

A chance meeting with consultant Caroline Jarrett (from Effortmark Consulting, experienced content design trainer and author of ‘Surveys that Work’ amongst other publications) helped an idea to form. Considering peoples’ experiences of learning content design, Caroline and I reflected that content design techniques tended to stick when people had the opportunity to apply them in practice, repeatedly over time, to see the incremental benefits, and to feel a sense of achievement from working in this way. We recognised that this type of learning experience was akin to habit-forming, whereby undertaking an action (or behaving in a certain way) is underpinned by the ability to perform the action, as well as the prompt and the motivation to do the action (using the B=MAP model taken from  the book ‘Tiny Habits’ by B J Fogg, 2020).

View the B=MAP model on behaviormodel.org

We came up with a plan to try to apply the behavioural science behind habit-forming to our content design training, in a bid to help improve the way we help University staff learn, adopt and apply content design techniques.

We established an agile approach to help us learn quickly

In November 2023, we were fortunate to secure the services of Effortmark Consulting and to be able to start working with Caroline Jarrett and Jane Matthews, both with years of experience in content design training. With Jane and Caroline, we formed a core team of Nick Daniels, Senior Content Designer, and myself, with Web Content Design Assistants joining us at intervals. With the migration project in full-flow it was important to make content design training available to publishers as soon as possible, so we decided to work in an agile way where we would produce small amounts of work, test our outputs, prioritise learning and be prepared to pivot in response to feedback.

We prioritised content issues to fix

Before we could design any training, it was important to identify the techniques we wanted to help publishers adopt. To do this required us to think about the ways content could be improved on the University websites. We used various sources to form a prioritised list of areas for content improvement. Sources we used included: data gathered from publisher surveys, publishers’ requests and queries relating to content, and data from content auditing tools such as Silktide. From these sources, some of the identified areas to fix  included:

• Out-of-date content
• Unstructured text content
• Content not written for audiences
• Poor link formatting
• Unexplained jargon.

We tested ideas for tiny content design habits on ourselves before implementing them

Adopting a framework from BJ Fogg’s ‘Tiny Habits’ book, we thought of some creative ways we could address content issues with small, repeated actions. Before unleashing our ideas directly onto publishers, however, we tried them out ourselves to see which ones were effective at helping us form habits – to enable us identify which ones were worth pursuing. Through this process we shelved an idea of a content design ‘bingo card’ (containing a collection of small tasks to choose from to complete in a weekly ten-minute window), and carried forward ideas to spend time focusing on specific areas of content editing, such as creating effective headings and link text.

Over time, we rolled out three different content design training approaches

Working together with the Web Content Design Assistants (as they supported the migration project) we came up with a list of techniques to train and coach publishers to use to address the identified content issues. Aligning with the schedule of the technical EdWeb2 training (teaching publishers how to use the platform), we decided on a complementary timetable for content design training. Working with Caroline and Jane, Nick Daniels designed the format of three different types of session, a two-hour ‘Content Design for Web Publishers’ training event with a classroom set-up, covering multiple content topics, a workshop-style ‘Content Improvement Monthly’ with a focus on one topic and an online session ‘Content Mini Wins’, also focusing on a single topic.

Aided by the Web Content Design Assistants, Nick ran the first ‘Content Design for Web Publishers’ session in February 2024, went on to launch the in-person ‘Content Improvement Monthly’ sessions in March, and started a trial of the online format, ‘Content Mini Wins’ in April.

Since February, more than 90 publishers have engaged in content design training

To date, Nick, helped by the Web Content Design Assistants, has led the organisation and running of more than 20 training events, attended by more than 90 staff with web publishing responsibilities from different Schools, institutes and professional services units across the University. Topics covered so far have included:

• How to structure text and write good headings
• Menu link labelling
• How to group webpages into categories using a card sort
• Using the Editorial Style Guide
• How to run a usability test
• Getting rid of old content
• Handling acronyms
• Digital sustainability
• How to deal with long pages
• How to use links and buttons
• Finding out about user needs
• Working on content with colleagues
• Making your content easy to find
• Images and digital sustainability
• How to prepare staff listings and contact details.

The training has been positively received by attendees, with some publishers attending multiple sessions. It has been encouraging to see a ripple effect whereby those attending the training have contacted the UX Service for support and coaching to help them make content improvements to their own sites.

Read about our work supporting the New Students website in a separate blog post:

DIY user research: Helping the New Students team to optimise their web content by Catherine Munn

Our reflections and learnings from the publishers we worked with

Asking attendees for feedback, running regular retrospectives within the UX team and working with Jane and Caroline have all helped us reflect on our process to tease out what we have learned, and to shape our actions going forwards.

Publishers liked learning content design in the context of their own sites

Teaching content design techniques in the abstract can be difficult, however, it was equally challenging trying to design a case-study website to use in teaching which would fit the myriad of different use-cases of web content in the University web estate. Following guidance from Caroline and Jane, we resolved to only use real University web content in our training, and we  therefore asked attendees to supply examples of their web pages they would like to work on in the different sessions. Although this approach made it harder to plan (as we needed to adapt training materials to reflect the content supplied by publishers), it had a dual benefit – it meant that we, as the training team were able to learn about the content that was most important to web publishers, and it also meant that publishers were able to receive direct help on their own content in the sessions.

Publishers appreciated learning from other publishers

Being present in the in-person sessions, it was encouraging to see publishers from across the University meeting each other and working together on the same content issues – sharing the same challenges, and learning from each others’ ideas and approaches. This positive response was repeatedly reflected in the attendees’ feedback.

Different training approaches had different benefits – one size did not fit all

We implemented the different types of session sequentially to enable us to compare how well they were received by publishers, however, the feedback revealed that each format had relative merits and drawbacks. The two-hour ‘Content Design for Web Publishers’ gave attendees the chance to learn several topics and afforded them time to practice techniques with other publishers, however, once they had attended it, there was no incentive to book onto a future session. On the other hand, ‘Content Improvement Monthly’ could be attended multiple times as each session focused on a different topic, and there was the opportunity for more discussion on shared content challenges. ‘Content Mini Wins’ was an attractive proposition for publishers who were time-pressured as the sessions were 20-30 minutes long, however, it was difficult to cover a topic fully and to allow attendees time to practice an associated technique, therefore the format was tweaked over successive sessions.

Habit-forming takes time and it’s difficult to encourage habits in other people

We set out to try to make content design a habit, recognising the benefits of continuously applying content design techniques to improve web content sustainably. Several stages of the process, including testing our tiny habit ideas on ourselves, made us appreciate that habit-forming, as any type of behavioural change, is not an exact science and can depend on many factors specific to individuals and their circumstances. For habits to take hold it is important for people to have the ability, motivation and prompt, and preparing the conditions for this to happen can take time. In the relatively short time we have been trying this new approach to training, however, we were heartened to see publishers trying out our different sessions and coming back for more, indicating the beginnings of good content design habits forming.

What’s next – our plans for continued content design training

Following nine months of training and engagement, we are planning to carry out an in-depth review of what we have achieved and learned so far to help us shape and schedule our next series of sessions. We are committed to continually improving our content design training offering, and have appreciated working with web publishers and their content to help us learn how we can help and support them further, to better align with their working models and practices. As well as looking at the training sessions we run, we’re also considering options for developing online modules in content design to be completed as part of continuing professional development.