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The Who Cares Test: Content User Personas

Posted on Friday, August 21st, 2015 at 9:29 AM.

When it comes to Content, Your Frame of Mind is your Frame of Reference.

Today we are more and more comfortable with the idea that content is multi-purpose.

It’s a blessing, and a curse.

This is partly due to the increased level of interest that moonlighting content can generate (an intentional effect), but also because it is so easy to encounter regardless of the origin of our search (an unintentional effect).

Furthermore, due to the seamlessness of digital formatting, items of content on the web readily contain each other or take on multiple formats.

All of this diversity can mean that the role motivating a content user’s interest has more chances to be satisfied; but experience shows that lack of consistency and/or tracking is greatly increased and actually raises the inefficiency of reeling in the right particular item on demand.

Making The Difference

With eXie, the emphasis on content retention and provision is on the probable future need of the content user.

We can rely on the likelihood that for a given role, there is a frame of mind that most often accounts for the decision to create and save content for later reference. For example, training and procedures that are characteristic of a given role will certainly be strong criteria for the content collecting done by a person in that role

Nonetheless, most of the difficulty people have with using content collections stems from the content being virtually “at large” and separated from the context that matters to the user.

The aspect of being at-large is a side effect of the discovery power that comes with many search engines. Context-sensitive search is not always implemented in a way that is regularly used by an ordinary person in a role, and powerful search tools are often designed specifically to be able to cross the boundaries that would define and separate groupings of content for different purposes or groups.

Acting it Out

In working with eXie, users have proposed a set of characteristic Roles and Role-related criteria that use the most likely purposefulness of content as a primary type of context-sensitivity. Regardless of who created or stored the content, the main criteria is a “Persona” – a distinctive role expected to be the future audience or user.

The mindset of the Persona is represented by identifying a high-level focus (such as a goal, concept or responsibility) of the given role that usually distinguishes that role from others, along with the major type of issue that the role sees affecting the focus of concern.

As seen below, the role, focus and issue is named in eXie as a Persona, Theme and Topic, respectively. Any item of content will hold an idea that can correspond to one or more of the Roles based on the Theme and Topic. We use eXie to record that link between the content item and the Theme/Topic that is the most useful context for the item.

Whenever an additional type of persona is determined, it can be added to the system along with its characteristic theme/topic paring.

Experts in a role will always have the opportunity to create other additional Theme/Topic pairs that are widely recognized by people in the role. For example, in the above, there are several different pairings that Trainers immediately recognize.

When the pairings are set up for a role in eXie, each theme/topic paring results in a single set of cross-referenced content ideas that are a frame of reference. types of themes become labeled columns of a table, and types of topics become labeled rows that intersect the columns. Each intersection is a context for available content.

As seen from the list above, a given Persona may use one or more frames depending on the way they want to describe or examine a subject by using the content. Because the frame of reference is based on types of ideas instead of on specific ideas, the same framework can be used to organize and navigate any collection of any specific content that is relevant. When a content user brings up a frame, it is immediately apparent how the included content will be meaningful and to whom.

The Value of Context

In this system, a teacher persona can apply the same framework to any specified subject matter (e.g. history or science) – and any subject matter can be organized by more than one important frame of reference. The same flexibility exists for any different specified projects, products, or subject matter focus of the other Personas.

As a result, content producers and providers can create frames that everyone readily sees are are good representation of what the content user cares about. As the guide to organizing the collection of content, the frame quickly gives the user confidence in how the available content has value, and ease in navigating to the right choice. The approach provides very high consistency (which breeds familiarity), yet equally provides the flexibility desired to support any particular audience.

From Conference To Reference: The Knowledgebase

Posted on Tuesday, August 18th, 2015 at 9:52 AM.

Written by Malcolm Ryder

If you have the budget, schedule, and travel all set, you can take advantage of live interactions in an immersive learning environment, which can intensify the transfer of knowledge to you from a provider.

But if you don’t, well, there’s your backup plan: hit the web to find similar stuff.

However… the difference between the conference experience and your access to the explosion of similar interesting content online is largely one of perspective. The conference has one. Without selectivity exercised and maintained from a clear point of view, the probability is that “surfing” and collecting online relevant content will have results that are far less predictable to find, reliable to trust, and punctually effective to use.

The answer: do what the conference organizers do: curate. Here is how one typical conference becomes a 24×7 online knowledge base — with a technique that applies equally well to any knowledge collection. Using the right tool, this becomes practical for anyone to do, on a personal level on up through a community of any size.

See how in this writeup, about the TSIA Conference in eXie …

Six Ways To Make Your Content Collection Better

Posted on Monday, August 3rd, 2015 at 7:51 AM.

Written by Malcolm Ryder

WHY GET BETTER?

We collect content because it contains the ideas that are most interesting to us. Because we have the collection, we can revisit those ideas at our convenience, with less risk of having to go re-discover them, or wait for them to reappear, or have them re-created.

But for most people, keeping those interests conveniently at hand becomes work itself, and often enough it is too much work to do well on time.

As a result, a number of things happen that combine to make the collection more inconvenient than helpful. For example, over time our experiences may change our reasons for keeping things, our habits for keeping them, or our ability to keep track of them as they get retrieved, reused and returned.

Meanwhile, increasingly, anything carrying an interesting idea can be “digitized”. That immediately allows us to collect a hugely increased amount of content without being very selective, because there is little practical requirement to keep things out. Unfortunately, the after-effect is the haystack that later turns out to be hiding the needle you want.

Here are six ways and reasons to avoid and recover from those problems.

1. Be strategic

Group the content for an Audience. Having a collection of already-prepared content is better than not having one, as long as we can actually use it effectively “on demand”.

Understanding demand is easy: there is an audience for the ideas in the content, or for the style of the content’s presentation, or both. Offering content to an audience is like offering an event or a place to stay to a guest. You are the host, and your help your guest navigate the event or place. The guest is most comfortable when they know where they are and why they are there. Organize your content so that it is worthy of sending out invitations. And, if you are the content collector, your most important initial audience is yourself.

2. Emphasize Idea Type over Content Quality

When we go shopping, we usually look for certain kinds of things first, and when we find the correct type then we look for the best example of it. Usually we don’t do it the other way around. But sometimes we run across something that we weren’t looking for. We might decide to keep it, so the first question we have is “Can I have it?”

But the next natural question that we are likely to have is “Is there more stuff Like This?” If the answer to the first question is “Not now”, then we especially want the answer to the second question to be “Yes”. That makes the second question even more important than the first! In fact, getting that second Yes is what makes us comfortable that later on we can probably find something acceptable, or better.

As it turns out, this future probability is also the basic difference between “reference” material “and other material. Reference material is always appropriate for future use primarily by the type of idea it addresses. Quality is important, but many different contributors to the type can help supply the quality needed.

3. Arrange the content specifically for later, not for now

We always have a reason for why we decided to keep something and put it away. But the hard part, later, is dealing with why we want to take it back out. The clearer we are about why we will want to retrieve it, the more helpful it is for the collection to easily remind us of that, by showing us that it already knows why we will come get something.

Memory is powerful and, after all, it is the natural way that we “recall” things. But here’s the secret: it makes more sense to organize the memory than it does to try to remember the organization. For example, organizing memory is how we already make stories and music so easy to use and repeat. We can call that organization “composition” or “design”, but once we have it, it actually helps us to both recall and predict things that “should be there” — even if we had forgotten them or had not seen them before.

4. Match the content arrangement to the content’s audience

The more ways that an item of content can be effectively used, the more valuable that content is. Versatility has great worth, but only if we use it. Just like having a person with multiple talents, the same item of content can offer one thing in a certain situation, and offer something else in a different situation. Each audience represents a situation that we can call a context, and we can arrange groups of content so that the arrangement emphasizes the relevance of the content group to the context. For arranging content, nothing beats using a catalog.

It makes perfect sense that if we have different catalogs, audiences will pick the catalog that seems most relevant to themselves. The catalog makes it more obvious that the provider is already thinking about that context. Meanwhile, the relevance of the content group, made clear by the catalog, makes the item of content in the group more valuable. In effect, for the right audience, a provider’s catalog is a portfolio of the provider’s collection.

5. Grow a reputation as a Provider

People who find good content are most likely to come back to the same place again when they want more.Their experience builds trust in the provider and confidence in their own use of the content. They like to use the same stores, the same channels, and the same brokers or agents, to help make getting things fast and easy with low risk of a disappointment.
The best way to become the trusted source of good content is to be a good curator. That means, we take the steps to make a good catalog based on relevance to future use, and take the further steps to select the best examples of content for each type in the catalog.

Because content can be versatile, we can act as curators to produce multiple catalogs or portfolios from the same content collection, tailoring things to the particular audiences that we want to have or keep. But just like with broadcasting instead of with packaged goods, we don’t want to make and distribute a separate copy of everything for each user; that would give us all the burden of being a supplier. Instead, we want to give many users access to the same copy, wherever it is; that makes us the Provider; and if the location of the item changes, we just give all users access to the same new location.

Users trust the provider to keep them connected to the best content. This is, basically, what a publisher intends to do.

6. Make what you already have, better

It’s safe to say that, more and more, any content collection is both digitized and likely to be kept online. Those are two great practical improvements over the past, but they also have the effect of” letting all the cats loose in the yard.”

Things actually do get copied, modified and moved all the time. Those changes can mean that better content is more likely to become available somehow to whoever demands it; but they also mean that it is more important for providers to communicate where the provider’s preferred versions of content are going to be accessible.

Any time the provider’s preferences match the audience’s there is something worth protecting. So we want to not just save content, but we really want to manage it, just like we manage money instead of just spending it and putting it away. By focusing on the value of its future use, organizing the content collection becomes the best way to make it attractive to audiences on demand.

If you are the content Collector, your first future audience should be “You”. And if you are a Provider, your catalogs become the portfolios that you share with your audience and that become their preference. Your audience can also give you better feedback on what is missing or should be better, and trust you to leave those improvements for them where they already know to look.

So — how to get that done? In a nutshell, eXie.

When you subscribe and sign into eXie, the templates that you see and borrow or make will help you quickly get going with the above approach. They identify the use of key words that label and describe the type of ideas audiences seek out and the ways that the audience is interested in those ideas.

Take advantage of eXie right away.

You can start using eXie productively in under 15 minutes. Whether just for personal use, for a group, for an audience, or for a whole company, eXie works the same way for the same reasons.

Using a simple framework that looks like a table, you link the locations of online content to the type of idea and type of interest that is most relevant to the intended audience. Copy the content links to the right places in the table to create a catalog of the content; name the catalog; then publish the catalog online. People who sign into an eXie user group or who receive an eXie notification will be able to access the catalog and can click any link in the catalog to access the chosen content on line.

There is nothing to install; the catalogs are available 24×7 on the web; and the provider does not have to worry about moving or duplicating the content since the catalog points to wherever it already exists online witihout changing it. Content collectors can quickly organize the content for maximum value in one or more catalogs; add, remove, show, hide, update and distribute the catalogs at any time with no special skills required.

Content Collectors: clean up those files; discover more value in your content; build a reputation; and share ideas and support, all in one place; easily, quickly, and inexpensively, with eXie.

Content Users: find curated content collections from providers offering courses, conferences, campaigns, original creations, comprehensive designs, group-works, projects, knowledge bases, and many other kinds of reference-grade publishing. Get highly effective access to your own content, to other collections by invitation, or as a member of the eXieCloud user community.

Getting the Right Results – How to find Content

Posted on Monday, July 27th, 2015 at 8:14 PM.

Written by Malcolm Ryder

Productive content is a major focus of eXie users.

Getting content and putting it away both get a lot of attention from users who need the content to support their ongoing work. Yet the full re-usability of the content is often frustrated by the inability to efficiently find it when needed. This probably reflects a need for the applied tools to be about the user first and about the content second.

Serving Up Content for Users

Posted on Tuesday, June 23rd, 2015 at 1:59 PM.

Written by Malcolm Ryder

Imagine going into a warehouse where anything could be interesting but nothing is organized.

The first thing you’d want to do is get somebody to bring you things specifically for the reason you wanted them. Whatever your reason is, it represents how you want to use the items, and your next consideration is whether they are in a form that makes them useful the way you desire. Will you have to modify, arrange, or assemble them further, before you can use them the way you want?

Similarly, you might go into a store where there is a large supply of food ingredients. But they may still be a long way off from being a meal, especially the meal that you want at the time. It’s clear that having someone choose, prepare and organize the ingredients as a served dish would make you a lot happier.

Content is all about ways to experience ideas.

Most of us collect content for reasons that make sense to us; but when it comes time for others or ourselves to use it again, there’s a big difference made by how much processing has taken place to have it meet our need.

We can see a wide variety of things that can be done to match the content in our collection to the preference of a content user.

In the illustration here, activities on the left name many of the most typical ways that people expect to use content. On the right, we see many of the most typical places that someone expects to find content that has been cared for and prepared for ongoing or recurring use.

As content collectors or contributors, we are usually vary familiar with what these activities are like and what these results are like, mostly through the form that they usually take. What makes it all better is knowing how to make the form work best.

Shaping the content for use is where eXie lets you be the source of its final value, picking up from the level where content is just good quality ingredients, and finishing with where it is a good quality experience.

The beginning of that is curating — going into the collection with an audience’s point of view in mind and using that point of view as the selection criteria for what content will get forwarded to the audience. This will result in a more specialized collection that is a subset of the original one.

The specialized collection then gets organized internally to make it apparent why the content within it can be useful in a given way.

The ultimate use of the content is also a part of the audience’s initial expectations that help define how the focused content collection should be arranged for and recognized by users. Sophisticated or “rich” content usually consists of multiple items brought together — composed or coordinated for presentation in the same place.

At that point, the experience offered by the content can make all the difference between your content being merely adequate and being preferred.

Using eXie, you can easily present your content collection — in a view that always immediately shows:

how the audience refers to ideas — each frame labels what kind of thing is under consideration and why
where to get the content that relates to those references — each frame cell holds links to any chosen content from any online location
what most interesting other ideas are associated with the ones initially in mind — the “big picture” of eXie’s content frames confirms that selected content is distinctive yet not isolated from broader interests and choices

And because of eXie’s layout, the same view is equally useful to both you as the content provider and your audience as the content user.

The discovery that will occur is how the eXie presentation serves easily as any one of the typical forms used to deliver curated collections of content.

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