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Content strategy and design

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Courtney Claessens edited this page Sep 14, 2018 · 4 revisions

Content strategy refers to the planning, creation, publication, and maintenance of all types of digital content—text, links, tags, images, video, etc. Ensuring content is useful and usable, is well structured, and easily found is vital to improving the user experience of accessing benefits. Our content strategy focuses on creating clear and useful content that guides users in every step of the process.

Content in Alpha includes:

  • Benefits Data: names, eligibility criteria, links
  • Benefits categorized by needs
  • Benefit one-line descriptions
  • Filters by profile information
  • User interface (UI) text

High-level Objectives

  • Use clear language to reduce confusion
  • Show only the relevant information at the moment to reduce information overload
  • Create UI content to fuel design and development
  • Start a Content Design Guide that documents our learnings and content guidelines

Principles

  • Information needs to be straightforward and easy to understand
  • Start with existing content
  • Work in collaboration with VAC Communications
  • French content created in parallel to English content (Important to test French content also!)
  • Test everything with a diverse audience
  • Revise quickly and test again
  • Target readability score below grade seven. We've accepted up to grade ten if there are terms we need to use
  • Maintain consistency
  • Validate accuracy with VAC experts

Strategy

We focus on the core content necessary for the user to accomplish their tasks. If it's essential to the user at the point in their journey, it's there. If it's not necessary, it's not there.

Our process is simple:

  • Strip the content down to the core
  • Simplify it in plain language
  • Test with a wide range of users
  • Revise following user feedback

Main issues:

  • Veterans report there is both too much and not enough information at the same time.
  • Benefit descriptions are often too word specific and communicate uncertainty. (You may be eligible…).
  • There are inconsistencies in benefit names and descriptions across information sources.
  • Existing resources are difficult to navigate and benefits are hard to find.
  • Words are being used that are unfamiliar or offensive to Veterans.

Tone and vocabulary

We built upon the principles from Pension for Life’s Strategic Framework.

  • Make full sentences, use the active voice, start sentences with determiners, and aim for simplicity.
  • Keep away from words that require explanation or were misunderstood by Veterans during comprehension tests: "caregiver, survivor, transition..."
  • Let the people use the benefits as they see fit (ex: avoid "money for the immediate needs…" instead describe what kind of benefit it is: "grant, reimbursement” etc.)
  • Don’t be too word specific. Consistency is good, but don’t push it to the point where you need to provide a dictionary to your users. Our user research indicates that using words that are unfamiliar and very specific creates a sentiment of mistrust within Veterans.

Readability

Keep sentences short to make content easy to understand for a wide audience. Our readability score target was grade seven. We accepted descriptions under grade ten if it was not possible to reduce further. We used the Automated Readability Index as an index. Hemingway for English and Scolarius for French was used to get the grade level.

To improve readability, we used the term "military" if the benefit applied only to members of the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF).

Give French the same attention as English

In French, the terms "ancien combattant" and "avantage" were problematic for some of our testers. We used "vétéran" instead of "ancien combattant". Instead of "avantage" we used words more specific to what the benefit actually provides, i.e.: "indemnité, versements mensuels, services" etc.

Structure for benefit one-line descriptions

  • Determiner: monthly, one time...
  • What it is: grant, payment, access to something, service, reimbursement, etc.
  • Who it's for: Veterans, military, family
  • How does it help them: link to their needs

Content Workshops

We ran two workshops with VAC front-line staff to leverage their expertise: Case-manager, veteran service agents, and National Call Centre Network (NCCN) staff.

Charlottetown workshop details | Montreal workshop details (FR)

In addition to the two content workshops in Charlottetown and Montreal, we ran two additional dry-run sessions in Ottawa. The purpose of the sessions was to allow the Communications and Outreach Renewal Initiative (CORI) and VAC Online Services teams to familiarize themselves with the format of the workshop and train two of them as facilitators.

Workshop goals

Create one-line descriptions for benefits that capture the essential message of each VAC benefit and are easy to understand by Veterans and family members. Provide common and specific examples of needs that the benefit fulfills to quickly guide Veterans to benefits that match their goals. Gather feedback from front-line staff on their usage of the application and identify aspects of improvement.

Audience

Participants: Case manager, Veteran Service Agents, NCCN Analysts

Facilitators: Service Excellence, Stiff/CORI, Online Services/Thinking Big

Methods

  • Co-creation exercises on content: Professionals from the area offices, call centre, VAC online services team all working together to create content
  • Cognitive walkthrough: Participants talk through the ways they explain benefits to Veterans

Outcomes

  • Identify accuracy issues with benefits data and content (possible misleading etc.)
  • Generated ideas for plain language content
  • Generated ideas for possible improvements to usability and usefulness of product
  • Capacity building (training new facilitators)
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