TALE: Template as Knowledge

Oliver Ding

Published in

TALE500

7 min readFeb 19, 2023

The End of Applied Knowledge Engagement

The above picture represents a Possible Theme called “Template as Knowledge”.

Name: Template as Knowledge
Clue: The End of Knowledge Engagement
Type: knowledge theme
Contributor: Jessica Lam Hill Young
Reference: Guiding Questions, Continuous Curation, Product Langue
Related Themes: The Project — Portfolio Gap

The theme of “Template as Knowledge” was inspired by a post about SaaS landing pages on Linkedin.

Jessica Lam Hill Yong is an expert in tech marketing and SaaS growth. On Feb 17, 2023, she shared a template for making targeted landing pages on Linkedin.

We wrote 32 SaaS landing pages for 4 clients this quarter 😮‍💨 Here’s exactly how we write these at scale 👇
Targeted landing pages is crucial for sales, SEO and — most importantly — conversions.
There’s a lot that goes into our process to batch-create targeted landing pages, from extracting customer voices to running keyword reports …
… but let’s just talk about the basic template we build on in this post.

You can find more details in her original post.

This is a fantastic example of “Template as Knowledge”!

Wireframe v.s. Template

For readers unfamiliar with digital product development and marketing, you can find a helpful diagram of the typical workflow below.

Source: Kate Zagorovskaya (UI/UX Design Process Stages and Deliverables Checklist)

According to Kate Zagorovskaya, there are four types of objects in the UI(User Interface) design main stage:

Sketching — Ideation Deliverable
Wireframing — UX+UI Design Deliverable
Visualization (Mockups) — UI Design Deliverable
Slicing — Pre-development Stage

We will use examples from Kate Zagorovskaya’s original post for our discussion.

Sketching — Ideation Deliverable

I think the author should use another picture as an example. The above picture should be considered as a wireframe. See the example below.

Wireframing — UX+UI Design Deliverable

Visualization (Mockups) — UI Design Deliverable

Slicing — Pre-development Stage

A targeted landing page is a mini website that only has one webpage for one simple purpose: converting visitors into customers.

In order to make a successful targeted landing page, you have to 1) apply marketing knowledge to your product, 2) develop a marketing campaign including one or more targeted landing pages, 3) apply persuasive technology to design your messages which is the content of the targeted landing page, 4) design the UI of the targeted landing page.

Now we can see the difference between Jessica Lam Hill Yong’s Template and the above UI objects.

Jessica Lam Hill Yong’s Template = Structure of Marketing Content + Wireframe

This is ready-to-use knowledge for a busy SaaS team. If you trust the template, the only thing you have to do is apply your knowledge about your product to the template.

We should notice that there are different types of Templates. Not all templates are the same. For example, wireframe templates only consider the layout of visual blocks without considering the Structure of Marketing Content.

The above wireframe template is found on Uizard’s website. If you are not a designer, you can find the following types of templates on their website.

Mobile app design templates
Website design templates
Web app design templates
Tablet design templates
UI components library

The Rise of Platform Templatization

In the past several years, there is a trend of objectivation of knowledge: Platform Templatization.

More and more SaaS platforms start to offer templates to their consumers. Some digital platforms even allow users to create their own templates and share these templates with others.

Miro: Templates Library + Miroverse

Figma: Community and Templates

Notion: Template Gallery

Milanote: Templates

The rise of Platform Templatization changes the landscape of applied knowledge engagement.

Theme to Template

On Nov 28, 2022, I shared the typology of knowledge diagrams (v2). Though it was developed for discussing diagrams, we can use it for the present discussion.

If we put “Theme” and “Template” on the diagram, we can find a path of Applied Knowledge Engagement.

Theme: Not-useful Knowledge
Template: Ready-to-use Knowledge

In How to Set Annual Themes for 2023? I compared Annual Themes with Annual Golas. We can apply the same logic here.

While Themes are about exploration, Templates are more about performance. Themes and Templates can work together because the former is a “soft” cognitive tool while the latter is a “hard” cognitive tool.

How do we work with a “soft” cognitive tool such as Annual Themes?

For knowledge engagement, learning, and development in general, we can use “Annual Themes” for framing the direction, the boundary, and the meaning of the journey.

Direction: Annual Themes don’t point to a particular place, but set a rough direction.
Boundary: Annual Themes don’t claim a particular content, but set a boundary for your journey.
Meaning: Annual Themes connect Past, Present, and Future together by linking with other themes.

Yesterday I mentioned several types of “Knowledge Containers” in TALE: The 100-Day Challenge. See the diagram below.

If you start working around a theme, your mind will pay attention to much information about it. You will do something about the theme. I use “Thematic Space” to refer to a cognitive—social space around a particular theme.

If the theme is a knowledge theme, you will create various types of things about it. Eventually, you will create some templates for others.