Rob Hanna and Lance Cummings: Information Typing in DITA

Good communication has always been about understanding your audience — shaping your message to match how they think, what they need, and what they'll do with it.  Information typing, the "IT" in the technical documentation standard DITA, codifies that practice into a design discipline that organizes content around its function rather than its form. Rob Hanna and Lance Cummings explore how information typing clarifies writing for human readers and have discovered in the process that those same structural principles help AI deliver better results. https://ellessmedia.com/csi/info-typing/

Few people have advanced the craft and management of content design as much as Melanie Seibert. She's been designing content experiences and managing design teams for more than 25 years. She recently captured some of her best insights in a new book, "Managing Content Design Teams." https://ellessmedia.com/csi/melanie-seibert-2/

Brad Bolliger entered the knowledge graph space via enterprise software system design and data analytics. That background informs their pragmatic and strategic approach to the use of semantic technology in systems that facilitate information exchange across government agencies. https://knowledgegraphinsights.com/brad-bolliger/

Technical documentation of software products is critical work that needs to accurately inform end users, regardless of how quickly and substantially the software might be changing. Manny Silva has created Docs as Tests, a system that integrates a set of well-developed practices and a collection of engineering tooling, to help technical communicators streamline and constantly improve their software documentation work. https://ellessmedia.com/csi/manny-silva/

Modern content systems are complex and abstract, presenting problems for managers who want to understand how their content is performing. At Autogram, Jeff Eaton and Karen McGrane have developed a content observability framework to address this complexity.  Their framework evaluates the composition, quality, health, and effectiveness of content programs to help enterprises measure the return on their content investment. https://ellessmedia.com/csi/jeff-eaton-2/

Aligning and orchestrating product content for complex business use cases is much easier when you have a framework to structure and guide your efforts. Jeffrey A. "jam" McGuire and his business partner developed the "value map" framework to structure and organize product marketing information. This helps them to align internal stakeholders on strategy and messaging and to efficiently deliver the right content to both business and technical users of the product. https://ellessmedia.com/csi/jam/

Experience design for readers of online content gets a lot of attention. The authors who create the content and get it ready for publication aren't as well served. In his new book, Designing Content Authoring Experiences, Greg Dunlap addresses this situation, showing content-system creators how to design better interfaces, streamline workflows, and otherwise improve the lives of content authors and managers. https://ellessmedia.com/csi/greg-dunlap-2/

Sarah Johnson asks, "If a digital experience is a conversation with a user, how can you have that conversation if you don't know what the words are?" Sarah addresses the crucial role of content in her new book, "Content-first Design," tackling both the pragmatic aspects of a content-first approach to design as well as how to advocate for content practice. https://ellessmedia.com/csi/sarah-johnson/

Both UX and content professionals routinely find themselves on teams where they are the sole practitioner of their craft. Leah Buley and Joe Natoli recently revised "The UX Team of One" to share their pragmatic take on solo UX practice, deftly balancing the application of human-centered research insights with the need to show the business value of UX work. https://ellessmedia.com/csi/ux-team-of-one/

A truly customer-focused content strategy is the cornerstone of good customer experiences.  Over the past 25 years, Rob Punselie has developed and honed content discovery research methods based on time-tested usability knowledge and the Jobs to Be Done product-development framework.  This approach has helped him consistently deliver to his clients effective and durable content and customer experience strategies. https://ellessmedia.com/csi/rob-punselie/