How much effort should I put into the (content) design of an Alpha prototype?
This week I’ve been preparing a new service for launch. It’s called Digital Journeys and it is ‘content as a service’ for charities needing digital support in Scotland. It’s an SCVO service.
As I’ve been making final edits and tweaks to its content I’ve found myself asking how much effort I should be putting into the fine detail of all the words we are using. Which part of the service should I put the most effort in to?
3 design elements to the service
The service is made up of:
- forms — for users to sign up, give feedback and get help
- emails — onboarding users and sending them weekly content for 4–6 weeks
- ‘How to’ content — guiding users through steps to complete digital tasks. We’re using Notion to host this content
How I’m thinking about what our users need
As I’m writing or creating content I’m thinking about what the user might need and experience. I’m drawing on three types of knowledge to imagine this:
- Insights from our Discovery process — including interviews we did with people in Scottish charities and other people’s similar research (excellent work by Neontribe and Kat Quatermass for NCVO)
- Good content design practice — from front loading sentences to using numerals for numbers
- My own experience with similar users on other projects (this brings a risk of bias but overall its good to have it in the mix)
Where I prioritise effort
I’ve been putting the most effort into the onboarding content because how users experience the start of a service influences their experience later on. We need them to feel supported and that signing up is an easy process. Their buy in now should lead to more feedback from them later on.
Designing the feedback process has also required some effort. I find wording forms fun and also challenging. If you ask something in the wrong way then you won’t get good answers.
I should say that overall I have spent more time on the service’s ‘How to’ content than anything else. That’s because it includes guidance on how to do 15 tasks across 3 ‘journeys’.
However, this content doesn’t have to be designed so much as the experience people have around getting to that content. Much of it is based on content that is already out there. I’ve just put it into a step-by-step format.
Who wants what from the Alpha?
This also influences my decisions. We have 3 stakeholders: Funder, SCVO (my client) and users (people in small Scottish charities).
- Funder — would like this to deliver value to the small group of people who will be testing it
- SCVO — would like this to deliver some value and generate good quality test results to inform what they do next with the service (make a Beta, I hope).
- Users — they want help to get digital things done — from cyber security, to improving their website, to improving their digital services (the 3 journey topics)
What do I want?
I think this is a relevant question to ask. My client (SCVO) asked me to help design a prototype. So that’s what I’ve done. I’m less interested (though still interested!) than anyone else in the Alpha delivering value to users right away, and more interested in generating good insights, learning and other quality testing data.
This is because the learning we get can help us design something better later on. Something that can deliver much more value to users further down the line. That long-term value is what I want to see most of all.
