Design Process: 5) Content Roadmap and Definition

Knowing what the content is and where it’s coming from is usually not ready by this point in the project, and most non-designers don’t realize how important this step really is. It’s one of the most important things to know when tasked to come up with a new design and while planning the technology behind the content.

After all, what exactly are you designing and building for?

Most of the time, Creators will not have this information, or it will be their task to either come up with it or work with someone whose job it is to create this documentation. 

I can’t stress this enough: Have a content plan in place before designing anything.

If you are a company working with a Creator, how can you expect them to magically understand your business and what is important to you if you don’t tell them?

Create a Content Roadmap - A document that defines what the content is, where it’s coming from, what the data flow is, who is creating various pieces of content going forward, and what each piece of content does - before you start trying to design anything. It doesn’t have to be the final content at this point, but it should be things like: headline (approx. 60 characters); body (approx. 500 words); byline (who wrote it, their title, and the date - approx. 60 characters).

If you don’t, you are cutting your success rate in half and at least doubling your design time, because you will have to come back and retrofit the design to fit the content anyway. Knowing and understanding this only means that the project will be more successful down the road.

Now that you have all of the ingredients, you can then move on to creating the Wireframes and Sketches.

Possible Pitfalls

Asking a designer to create a website without content is like asking a cook to bake a cake without flour or eggs, or like writing a book report without first reading the book.  Sure, it’s possible, but it’s not a good idea. Designers are smart people, but they aren’t mind readers.  If you skip this step in the process, you are risking that your designer’s guess is correct, and if it isn’t, then it’ll either be expensive to change or you’ll be stuck with whatever it is that they come up with.