Developing a content design process with subject matter experts

How do you collaborate with subject matter experts to co-produce online advice?

At Parent Talk, an online support service for parents and carers in the UK, all our advice content is written and signed off by our parenting coaches. They have years of experience working with children and families, in person and via our 1:1 live chat service. They also come from a mix of backgrounds. They’ve been teachers, support workers, play practitioners, childminders, parents and carers.

As the content designer, I’m responsible for overseeing the creation process for our advice articles. I help ensure that our advice is easy to read, easy for people to find, and that data informs our decisions. I work with the parenting coaches — our subject matter experts — to make this happen.

Here are some of the ways we’ve built a content design process that makes the most of their expertise.

Identifying parenting coach content leads

We have two parenting coaches who lead on content from their side of the team. They:

• Gather ideas from their team about topics to prioritise, based on what they’re seeing on the 1:1 chat service (this could be related to mental health, behaviour, development or something else).
• Represent the wider parenting coach team at content meetings.
• Distribute responsibility for articles to their team, depending on who is best placed to write the advice.
• Feed into content processes, including content governance.
• Review content from the team before it comes to us for editing.
• Sign off all advice content.

Building a risk chart

We worked with these two parenting coaches and the Parent Talk service manager to build a risk chart for different types of advice articles. This took two short sessions and resulted in an Excel sheet that everyone can access.

The spreadsheet lists:

• The different advice themes we cover on the service.
• Any risks associated with getting the content wrong.
• Which themes need an extra sensitivity check before publication.

For example, an article that talks about child safety would need to go through the safeguarding team.

Ensuring the coaches’ knowledge leads decision-making

At our monthly content meetings, we look at what the data tells us about parent and carer support needs. This includes insights from our 1:1 chat service.

Our parenting coaches share the support needs they’re seeing on the chat. They’re able to bring insights into what certain challenges mean for parents and carers. This is a rich source of knowledge. Search data — what people are searching for online — can help us understand something about what parents and carers need. But the coaches offer a more in-depth view of the complexities of a problem.

For example, where a parent is having challenges getting a child to go to school, we know there may be other support needs attached to this. This could be supporting a child with anxious feelings or information on home schooling.

Sometimes these discussions help us identify information that people may not be searching for online but they need to help solve their problem.

Creating a collaborative workflow process

An open, collaborative workflow process allows us to work closely with our subject matter experts to manage content. We use Trello to help everyone see which articles are:

• In progress.
• Being edited.
• Ready for review or sign off.
• To be written next.
• Recently published.
• Due for review.

Our content workflow Trello board allows us to keep track of articles and collaborate on content development.

Each article has its own Trello card. This is where we update each other on progress, ask questions and raise issues. It helps us keep track of our priorities and ensures everything is in one place.

We also have an ideas column. Any member of the board can add to this if they’ve seen a trend that needs addressing, and we’ll then discuss these in our monthly content meetings.

Running pair writing sessions

Depending on the article, we’ll sometimes run an online session with a coach to edit content together. This is most useful when we have feedback from users on an existing article.

We’ll work through the feedback and the parenting coach will suggest what we should add or remove. This then allows me to go away and make additions to the article, before submitted for a new round of sign off.

Checking in often to reprioritise

We agree on our priorities each month at our content meetings. But sometimes we have to adjust our focus, based on external events or changes on the service. One example of this is adusting plans so we could help parents and carers answer children’s questions about the war in Ukraine.

We also look at workload. The parenting coaches spend a lot of their time on the 1:1 chat service and have to manage this alongside the online advice. Sometimes we need to move timelines to help protect the wellbeing of the team.

Retros looking at what’s working (and what’s not)

We run retrospectives every quarter. This is time for us to think about how we’re working together on content. We reflect on what’s working well, what we could improve, and any actions from this.

One of the things that has recently come out of our conversations is how to share more insights with the wider parenting coach team about content development on the service over time. We’re asking for input on this and working on some solutions.

We use Mural to help facilitate discussions about how things have gone that quarter, and what we need to differently in the upcoming quarter.

Reviewing our processes in this way means we’re always looking at how we can improve our practice, and making sure it works for everyone.

Ruth Stokes is a Senior Content Designer at Parent Talk. You can find her on LinkedIn.

The Parent Talk service supported just under 470,000 parents and carers in 2020/21, but we urgently need funding to keep going. If you could help us fund more advice content, please email parenttalk@actionforchildren.org.uk.