Proof of Content
Posted by: Carl Smith on Friday February 8, 2008
While we’re all familiar with the phrase “Proof of Concept”, at nGen Works we recently began using the term “Proof of Content.”
A few months ago we incorporated Blue Flavor’s content document approach into our process because it made sense. If content is king, and it is, you should spend time up front determining which types of content will be used in a site as well as understanding what gets priority on each page.
Once you begin doing that you find out something interesting. Much of the content a client thinks they have doesn’t actually exist, or it’s extremely out-of-date. The result? Either you have to backfill a hole in your design for the missing content or everything slows to a grinding halt while the missing content gets created. By asking to see the content, or at least the content source, you can avoid this.
Proof of content can take many forms. It can be a brochure they are pulling information from, pictures from their photo library or a video from a presentation. But this only gets you to launch. More important is meeting the people who will be maintaining fresh content, such as a blog, or the community manager for a forum or members area. Often a client will say a name, but until you actually talk with the person you don’t really get a feel for how big of a priority this content will be in their everyday job.
The win/win aspect of taking this approach is you save the client thousands of dollars by not building unused functionality or designing for content that isn’t right for the experience they want to create. For the developer, you get to build an effective site for your client and avoid the frustrating starts and stops that many projects hit.
Filed under: Business, Design
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