Live From SXSW Interactive: Content Strategy and Beauty in Web Design

I’m eating a gas station pecan pie in the middle of a packed ballroom. I feel a bit conspicuous.

That aside, I’m in a session right now with Rachel Lovinger (@rlovinger) and Karen McGrane (@karenmcgrane) and the presentation is frightening and funny in the same way that it is frightening and funny when someone points out that your are about to turn onto a one-way street and you narrowly escape being hit by an 18-wheeler full of rubber chickens.

In concert with the session I just left that focused on a plea to re-introduce visceral beauty into the process of Web design, it seems that today’s theme is quality of content and visual design vying for attention in a usability-obsessed industry. This particular session’s message is that somewhere along the way, content was dethroned by behavioral considerations and thrown in the dungeon to rot.

At HCK2 we have copywriters and we have Web developers. If you are a current client, you’ve noticed we are obsessed with gathering all your content before we design your complete site. Yet I’d say that we and our clients are probably guilty of the content neglect that this panel has accused our industry of in that none of us are analyzing the quality of the content like we all should be. Content strategy is the term and Lovinger wrote the first article about it back in December 2007. Expect more of it from HCK2, is particular from this guy and this guy.

I’m headed to “Simple Steps to Great Web Design” with my old friend Erica. My colleage Mark Sims is in a cooking class for geeks and Rachel Rosenblum is in “Eight Ways to Deal With Bastards.” More to come. Gotta finish this pie.

P.S. Last year I made a wish that SXSW would give its sessions a rating of beginner, intermediate and advanced. Wish granted this year. Thanks, organizers!