Crits: Running a successful content optimisation workshop
Crits are a valuable element of the content design process. Crit is short for ‘critique’ — it’s an evaluation of the draft content — it doesn’t mean ‘criticise’ or ‘critical’.
The focus of a crit is the product, not the person. It’s a group exercise which allows us to test and improve content before it’s published.
The main rules of a crit are that comments and feedback from the group must be constructive and the writer doesn’t need to be defensive or precious about their copy. Crits are collaborative and the end product should be better for it.
Who’s involved
Ideally you need at least 4 people from the content team — including, of course, the person who’s produced the content. You can also invite people from other teams — for example, a user researcher.
The crit isn’t the place for a full legal check as you’re usually reviewing skeletons or early drafts, rather than a finished product. But it can help to have a subject matter expert’s eyes on content at an early stage as it makes legal sign-off easier further down the line.
Neither can a crit really replace a thorough editorial sub. You’ll still need an eagle-eyed proofreader to go through the work to check for typos and consistency before publishing.
Where
We often do crits in a meeting room, so we can look at the content on a big screen and amend as we go if there is enough consensus on words or structure.
Sometimes we fancy a change of scenery so we print out enough copies of the documents and take them with us to scribble on in a coffee shop.
Crits work best face-to-face — they’re not impossible on Skype but they’re likely to be more relaxed and open if you’re all in the same room. So it’s worth taking the time to schedule them with enough notice for team members who’d need to travel to be there.
How long
The recommended timebox for one piece of content is no more than 30 minutes.
However, our crits sometimes involve looking at offerings from more than one of us. It takes the pressure off just one writer and means we all get a turn in the hot seat.
So, if you’re critting more than one piece of content, you can take longer than 30 minutes, but don’t go beyond 2 hours — it’s too long, even in a coffee shop.
When and what to crit
We use crits to assess and iterate various content formats — guides, articles, video and audio scripts, tools and infographics.
Articles can be critted at the skeleton stage. In a skeleton crit you can focus on your title and subheadings to make them tighter and more user focused.
If there’s a more developed draft to review, you can focus on the clarity of the language and sentence structure.
What happens during the crit
Everyone reads and digests the content on screen or on paper. It’s often still just a Word doc at this stage, but could be more developed if it’s already under construction in the CMS.
The group then offer comments, usually starting with the title before moving on to the standfirst, subheadings, paragraphs. Depending on what stage you’re at, it could also be a good opportunity to think about where calls to action should go.
It’s good practice to have the original job story and acceptance criteria to hand. That way you can weed out words that may be lovingly crafted but nevertheless unrelated or only loosely linked to the user need.
If you’re offering feedback in a crit, you don’t always have to provide a solution to the issue — it’s OK to say things like “I’m struggling with that sentence — it’s quite long” or “Will users understand that term?” But if you think you have a solution, help your colleagues out and suggest it. For example: “Do you think we could break that down into bullet points?” or “Can we say apply for a court order instead of start proceedings?”
Conversely, if you’ve deliberately chosen to include a legal or technical term because you’ve done enough research to show that users understand or at least search for that term, then be prepared to explain why you’ve chosen it.
Some teams in the wider digital world provide comments on post-it notes and the writer then takes these away to decide which feedback to put into action.
Because we’re a small team who often work quite closely together on sprints, we tend to give feedback verbally during the crit and can usually arrive at a consensus on amendments in the room. If you invite people from other teams, it might be better to defer any decisions on future iterations until after the crit.
