Foundations of content design
Clear web content done well helps serve your end users. But consider how you can take that content to the next level by applying the principles of best practice content design.
This course gives you the foundational skills needed to transform everyday content into a far more powerful web page that helps your end users complete a task. Learn how to develop content models and create effective, reusable templates for a more consistent user experience. And that achieve a greater uptake in compliance. You’ll also learn how to ‘show’ rather than ‘tell’ with your content to boost engagement.
In this course, you’ll tap into True North Content’s decades of experience delivering content projects for government, peak bodies and the private sector. We’ll tailor this course for your organisation with practical exercises created specifically for the work you do.
You’ll come away not just knowing the best practice – you’ll see how to apply it in your work.
- Up to 10 participants
- 2 x 2 hours
- In person or live online
- We are on the Australian Government Plain English Training Panel
What you'll learn
- Identifying content types
- Understanding componentry and when to use it for different page elements
- How to build a content model
- Prioritising content based on user needs
- Questions to ask to uncover structural issues and information gaps
- Structuring templates to create a consistent user experience
- Migrating content to new templates
- Setting business rules to manage web content
This course is for:
- Anyone who creates or reviews web content as part of their job
- Designers and developers who want to build their understanding of web content
Ask us about this course
Course outline
Why content design matters
- Improve the user experience
- Build trust and credibility
- Boost engagement
- Help achieve business goals
How people process information online
- Understanding your audience
- Scanning and osmosis
- Viewing on mobile devices
- What makes content user-friendly
Designing content with purposeful intention
- Knowing your business purpose
- Knowing your audience
- Planning the user journey and thinking beyond information silos
- Identifying content types
- Building a content model
- Choosing the right componentry to tell a story
- Creating reusable templates
- Setting business rules to govern and protect content
Duration
This course typically takes 2 x 2 hours as a live online training session.
Participant numbers
We can deliver this course for groups of up to 10 people at a time. If you’d like to train more people than this, talk to us. We can either run another session, or bring in a co-facilitator to ensure everyone gets personalised feedback.
How we engage participants
This course uses a combination of:
- small group discussions (breakouts)
- collaboration tools (such as whiteboards and polls)
- workbooks.
To engage participants, we:
- challenge negative preconceptions about their abilities as content designers
- share stories to illustrate application of key concepts
- model good practice
- encourage participants to provide their own stories and examples.
We also conduct thoughtful and considered de-briefs to allow learners to reflect on the activity and their application of the new learning and establish linkages to existing skills and knowledge.
Course materials
We can arrange printing materials, or provide the files for you to print in-house.
We prefer using printed workbooks as this allows participants to focus on the content with fewer distractions.
How we tailor this course
Discovery
To tailor this course, we'll meet with you to understand your work environment and the content ecosystem you work in. We’re interested in your broader goals and how lifting content design capability supports these goals.
We'll seek to understand what:
- you want to achieve through this training
- types of communications you write audiences you write for
- specific issues we can overcome.
We’ll uncover context, including:
- participants’ existing knowledge and confidence in writing and content design
- participants’ roles and functions
- templates and writing style guides you must follow
- examples and case studies we can use in the training.
We’ll do this through:
- an initial orientation conversation
- desk research, including reviewing source content.
Course content design
We take your needs and tailor this course using our extensive experience delivering writing training. We have training modules we’ve tested, but we customise the material for each client. We’re very comfortable including examples and exercises tailored to your work.
We’ll do this through:
- presenting an initial outline for feedback
- developing full course materials for feedback, including presentation deck and workbooks.
- iterating on the above to meet your requirements, based on your feedback, and feedback from participants at the end of each session.
Validation
We share the materials and outline with you to make sure it’s aligned to what you need.
Trainer
The training is delivered by one of our senior team members — many of us have more than 20 years’ experience in writing, editing and digital content.
Evaluation
We check back in to assess what worked, and share what we heard from your team members.
Prerequisites
How this course aligns with government standards
This course was designed with the needs of the APS (Australian Public Service) in mind.
It’s informed by:
- the DTA Digital Service Standard
- the APS learning design standards for digital
- the SFIA digital skills and competency framework.
We also refer to the Australian Government Style Manual.
Combine training with our other offerings:
Training + coaching
we train you then check in with you during 1:1 or small group coaching sessions.Training + pilot writing
We teach you then run through applying what you learned to selected content.
Your trainers
Sandra Muller
With more than 25 years’ experience in online engagement, Sandra specialises in delivering user-centred content strategies and content production projects for organisations operating in complex environments. Her expertise spans information architecture design, content design, content governance and enterprise content management. She has worked within government and as a consultant to government.
As a plain English specialist, she creates accessible content for diverse audiences and enjoys training others to make communications easier to understand.
What our clients say
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Tailor this course
We can tailor this course based on your needs, with examples relevant to your organisation. Let us know what you need from this training.
Let us know what you need from your training. We’ll tailor a session or a full program based on your needs, with examples relevant to you.