This week I’ve been:
Designing an IA
I’ve spent the bulk of this week working on a creating a task list and an IA for a client. It’s a huge, complex site: I started with a list of over 900 tasks, which I’ve been able to whittle down to around 400.
I also put a lot of work into an IA. I use Mural in these early stages to start working out the primary categories, as well as the taxonomy that will underpin it.
I presented an in-progress draft to the client this afternoon, and got some positive feedback. Which was a relief, as we’re making a big change from the current department-based structure to a topic-based one. Still lots more to do on this one.
Setting up content audits
I’ve got two content audit projects starting imminently, so this week I’ve been running crawls, prepping inventories, and thinking about criteria.
Applying for a grant
I do a lot of audits, so I have a fully documented process and set of templates. This makes it so much easier to get things up and running, and I also sell it in the form of my content audit toolkit.
I have a few more services that I want to productise like this, and this week I applied for a grant to help. The toolkits take a lot of work to create and market (‘passive income’ is the biggest lie in the world) but I want to see if I can make this an extra revenue stream, and use it to do more good by making my services more accessible and affordable.
Celebrating a launch for Compassion in Dying
The highlight of the week was getting a message from my client Zach Moss at Compassion in Dying to tell me that their new brand and website was live. And everything looks SO GOOD!
I worked with Zach and the team on the IA and content model last year. Rather than heading off to do the work alone, as I often do on this sort of project, I acted as a facilitator/extra brain to give the team some support and guidance. I’m really keen to do more projects this way. I think it works for clients, because it’s more affordable than paying me to do all the work, and it keeps knowledge and experience in-house. And it works for me, because it’s a bit less intense than some of my other projects can be, and I like the collaborative aspect.
