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Questionnaire for Spotlight #Issue 22 with Jeff Eaton

"Spotlight" is our latest series featuring in-depth, straightforward, no-fluff, zero-BS Q&A sessions. Here, we engage with seasoned professionals and fresh voices in content design and user experience (UX) to streamline knowledge and explore uncharted territories, talking about struggles, daily challenges, tool sets, and their impact on products and business success.

We are eager to get your input on content design and UX.

Thank you, Jeff! 🖤

At Autogram, you work with Ethan Marcotte and Karen McGrane to optimize digital content strategies. Could you walk us through your approach? How do you identify bottlenecks and risks, and what specific recommendations do you make in areas like content modeling, structured information architecture, and global content mapping? What tools and processes drive your work? Also, which roles from your clients' teams do you typically collaborate with most closely?

How does a content audit contribute to product understanding and improvement? Could you outline your content audit process and the key team members involved? Additionally, at what stage in product development is a content audit most effective? Any examples for our audience will be fantastic.

How do you view the evolution from traditional CMS platforms to modern no-code tools, which are reminiscent of the WYSIWYG web builders from the early 2000s? Given your extensive experience in the field, how would you assess the current landscape and its rapid changes? P.S: Drupal questions are coming next :)

Drupal time 1/2: Can you walk us through your journey with Drupal, from your early days of developing popular modules to co-authoring 'Using Drupal'? What aspects of the platform - be it its robustness, flexibility, or open-source nature - have made you such a strong advocate over the years?

Drupal time 2/3:As both a contributor to Drupal's core APIs and a strategic consultant, how do you balance the needs of developers, content creators, and enterprise clients? How has this informed your approach to structured content and design systems in your current work at Autogram?

Drupal time 3/3: Given your extensive experience with Drupal and content management systems, how do you see Drupal fitting into today's rapidly evolving landscape of CMSs and no-code tools? What lessons from your Drupal work do you find most applicable to modern content challenges?

How can teams build a flexible system for organizing their content in a way that gives the editors the power to create and iterate as needed without bringing in the IT department?

During your long experience, what are the most common challenges you have seen between content modeling and design systems that happen because of the lack of communication and collaboration?

The crisis of observability is a big hurdle you and your partners at Autogram usually face when dealing with your clients’ content. What tools and techniques do you use to help them make their existing content more surfaceable in a way that allows you to reuse and repurpose it before thinking of hiring a new writer to create something new? How do you measure if your clients’ content is healthy?

In cases of disagreement over the content modeling approach to take, what do you advise your clients to do? In one of your writings, you discussed three common approaches, “platonic, organic, and design first.” Can you elaborate more on this with a simple example?

How do misunderstandings from leadership about the importance of structured content potentially undermine the success of a product or service?

At Punkt, we've developed a centralized system that combines writing style guides, taxonomies, design, and prototyping. Our platform automatically checks for consistent use of terms and CTA copy across web pages, reducing the burden on writers to track these elements manually. How might this integrated approach enhance team collaboration through a shared vocabulary and improve overall content structure consistency? What impact do you think this could have on content creation and management processes?

How do you test accessibility for people with disabilities? Do you design a unique user experience for them, or have it baked in and enabled in the settings? Is that enough, and does it not require any physical changes to the hardware (ATM Machines, for example)?

Finally, Jeff, for teams embarking on large-scale, complex redesign projects, particularly those involving extensive content restructuring, what key strategies would you recommend for effective content modeling and auditing? We're especially interested in your insights on how to approach the initial assessment of existing content, develop a robust content model that meets both current and future needs, and implement an efficient auditing process that guarantees content quality and consistency throughout the transition. Drawing from your experience with enterprise clients and complex content systems, please share some best practices, common pitfalls to avoid, and any resources or step-by-step approaches that teams could follow to navigate these challenges successfully.

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