This is the first in a new series of interviews, taking an in-depth look at how different charities are approaching content design. There couldn’t be a better person to kick this series off with than Pia Dawson, Head of Content at Parkinson’s UK. We talked about content design as a mindset, giving stakeholders a tapas menu of content, sneaky tactics, the connection to PIF Tick, and more.
How did you get started in content design?
It’s an interesting question because I’ve never had a content designer role – which is true of lots of people who are now content designers or lead content teams. I started out in digital comms roles in charities. My last job was digital manager, and before that, digital editor and digital comms officer. What I constantly experienced in those roles, and what led me towards content design, was the challenge of trying to shift mindsets towards a more user-first approach.
I joined Parkinson’s UK five years ago to lead a small, newly-formed content team. It’s my first official content role. But as I’ve built the content practice at Parkinson’s UK, I’ve learned a lot from other organisations that are further ahead, or have a more formal approach to content design. I’ve brought in some of their tools and approaches, adapting them for our context at Parkinson’s UK.
What does content design look like at Parkinson’s UK?
“While we’re not a content design team, we’re embedding content design into everything we do.”
Content at Parkinson’s UK is an integrated team of twelve people, made up of two sub-teams. The content strategy team manages our website content and provides content consultancy for the rest of the charity. The content strategists work across lots of different projects and content design is part of that, but it’s not their sole focus. Then there’s the health content team, who produce all of our accredited health information and our magazine. While we’re not a content design team, we’re embedding content design into everything we do. And we now have one dedicated content designer on the team, who focuses on improving our support content.
How do you define content design in the context of Parkinson’s UK?
It’s about putting users first when you’re developing content. Here it often means challenging and asking questions when projects are being initiated, bringing things back to basics and saying, ‘okay, so what is the user need?’ Content design provides the tools and techniques to push back in a constructive way, helping stakeholders to better understand the user and come up with the best approach.
What steps did you take to start implementing content design?
“Sometimes, we just sneak content design into a project.”
One big thing was building up more training, tools, and guidance. It’s been important within the team as a way of building confidence, building skills, and aligning on what we mean by content design or content strategy. It’s important for other teams too. We’ve got over 90 website users across the charity. It’s not their ambition to become content designers, but we want to encourage this content design mindset rather than the ‘publish and run’ approach. Through delivering training and regularly sharing guidance, templates, and tools we’ve been able to bed in some of those practices.
We’re also building our content design offer into our comms briefing process. 200 to 300 comms briefs come in every year, for projects of all sizes. Other teams know that they can come to us and ask us to write something, but they don’t know they can ask us to do some user testing, do a content audit, or run an empathy mapping and messaging workshop. So we’ve tried to make it easier for stakeholders to ask for content design support. Our content lead has built a content ‘tapas’ menu that breaks down what we offer.
Sometimes, we just sneak content design into a project. The brief could be to create a new web page, but we’ll say ‘Well, let me audit the existing content. Let me look at how users are flowing through it.’ And then we’d start by trying to improve what we already have or testing some new content with users. If we can show a measurable impact, then it’s a win-win, as we’ve also helped show the value of content design.
What are some examples of how content design has had a positive impact at Parkinson’s UK?
The cost of living crisis comes to mind. As with many information topics, there’s so much we want to tell our users. Often the default response is to publish more advice. Here we had new updates about benefits, grants and other support people could access. But instead of simply adding more content or publishing a news story (because we know that users aren’t coming to our news pages for advice content), we audited our existing pages and looked at how we could improve and surface the valuable content we already had. By analysing user journeys on these pages, we found ways to make the content easier to find and navigate through. We also got insights from our Helpline about some of the barriers to accessing support, for example the stigma around claiming benefits. Our senior content strategist used this in our empathy mapping and developed new messaging to help overcome that. Through this we increased organic traffic, reduced reliance on site search, and saw increased engagement with our more in depth support pages.
We also got our PIF Tick accreditation last year (Note from Lauren: PIF Tick is an independently-assessed quality mark for health information from the Patient Information Forum.) The PIF Tick standards align perfectly with good content design. As part of our accreditation we get assessed each year and have to show how we’re involving users, making content accessible and navigable, and meeting user needs. It’s probably a good way for organisations that create health content to get more buy-in for content design, because it’s so valuable to have that accreditation.
Many charity content teams find it hard to start with user research and user testing. What’s your experience been like?
This was actually a barrier for us when we were a smaller team. There are lots of blogs about how you can do it very simply and cheaply on a small scale, and that’s all true. But I still think it can be hard to get started if it’s new to you. Content designers and content strategists have such a wide range of skills that they need to feel confident in. In an ideal setup, you would have a user researcher who would lead all of that.
For us, it was a bit of a turning point being able to work with our experience strategy lead and lean on her expertise. Doing user research sessions together, and having a set of tools and templates to work from, gave the team the confidence to then go off and do it themselves.
What are some of the biggest challenges or misconceptions you’ve faced with introducing content design? And how have you addressed them?
“Having a great ‘What is content design’ slide deck isn’t enough. It’s more effective to do content design and involve the stakeholders that you’re trying to influence.”
Well we still get called the ‘web team’ or the ‘writers’. Other content teams will have that, I’m sure!
Another challenge is being pulled in different directions. Specifically, being pulled into stuff that feels low impact or not a good use of a content strategist’s or content designer’s time. And sometimes we’re brought into projects where the content requirements are driven by what we want to say rather than what users need. Without robust evidence and user research, we can end up just doing ‘content dusting’. What we’re being asked to do is just tinkering, you know – update the words, make it a little bit more accessible. It is improved, but it’s content dusting; it’s not really content design.
I’ve had to advocate for content design a lot. And what I’ve learned is that having a great ‘What is content design’ slide deck isn’t enough. It’s more effective to do content design and involve the stakeholders that you’re trying to influence. I remember when my team was asked to update a particular section of our website. A couple of the team led an excellent workshop, preparing a detailed Miro board full of user insights and showing issues with the user journeys in a really visual way. One of our directors was part of that workshop, and I think they were visibly surprised at the level of insight! It meant that we ended up with strong buy-in for the changes we were recommending, plus those insights proved to be valuable for the broader strategic plans for that programme. So it’s about showing, not telling. I could have done a slide deck, but I don’t think it would have had that impact.
How does content design fit with comms and marketing in your charity?
Here it sits within the comms and marketing department. We’re not a purist content design team. My role is also responsible for our brand tone of voice. I’m doing loads of work on our brand refresh at the moment. That’s also why I’m calling us an integrated content team.
I don’t think there is one right approach to where content design should sit. I think wherever you sit, as long as you are very actively building relationships with other teams you need to collaborate with, then I’m not sure it matters too much. Because we’re in comms and marketing, we’ve built strong relationships with product and user experience, data and insight, supporter engagement, and other teams that are all in different directorates.
What advice would you give to other charities that are considering adopting content design?
You don’t have to work it all out on your own! There are great resources and active, generous communities out there to turn to for advice and examples. I’d probably say to start small, test out some content design approaches, use these to demonstrate impact, and build from there.
Pia’s recommended resources
- Your newsletter!
- The Lead with Tempo community and events
- Content Club
- Working In Content – especially for people new to content design
- Sarah Winters’ book, Content Design
- Content Design London’s training
- Shelter’s Digital Framework
