michael taussig modular writing article

An Event Apart: 3 days of design, code, and content for web & UX designers & devs. Ever find solutions before you find the problems? Awesome article! In the end, we created a single component called a “billboard.” Billboards are not restricted by their position on the page, or by their content, or by their appearance. However, after spending several years consulting with companies on their content management initiatives, I’ve noticed that many technical writers have problems creating modular content or reusing content that others create. Your creativity is required in putting together the most usable document possible for your users, who after all, are the ones who own the content. Imagine trying to build a Lego construction with pieces that look like they should go together, but don’t fit. If we had given those components the names we initially thought of (“course poster” and “discussion”), we would have ended up with two named modules that were almost identical but non-reusable. When brainstorming and sketching together, we can’t help but talk about the design elements, so we inevitably make ontological decisions that help to strengthen and evolve the design language. In this excerpt from Creative Culture, Justin Dauer draws direct connections between an organizations’ true culture and the design work that it does. Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window), Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window), Integrating Animation into a Design System, Collaborative User Testing: Less Bias, Better Research, http://www.amazon.com/Modular-Web-Design-Components-Documentation/dp/0321601351, Color Craft & Counterpoint: A Designer’s Life with Color Vision Deficiency, Building the Woke Web: Web Accessibility, Inclusion & Social Justice. Join today! Writing modular content is not unique to a content management environment, or shouldn’t be. It’s about constructing content consistently to enhance usability; a modular document is constructed to assist uses in understanding the nature of the content and in navigating through it. I’m trying to create a framework by which many different applications(which are not necessarily written in the same language) can present UI components in a simple and consistent way. One of our first experiments with modularity was an attempt to redesign our homepage. What helps us is trying to standardize elements at the design stage, before building them—in other words, starting with design language. That’s what we thought (perhaps naively) a “modular design process” would look like. Such oversights can lead to duplications and inconsistencies—which undermine modularity. Generally, the first question I ask myself when a new component/interaction is requested : “Where does this interaction differ in needs and function from the components we have already established?”, followed by “does it warrant it’s own variation? The biggest challenges around modularity are all the decisions that need to be reached: when to reuse a module and when to design a new one, how to make modules distinct enough, how to combine them, how to avoid duplications with the modules other designers and teams create, and so on. Answering these questions helps to ensure that components follow through on design intent. We didn’t put a lot of thought into how they would be reused. Writing your unique content following a modular approach means that other writers can also use that content. Pamela’s expertise lies in aligning content with users’ needs and business requirements and in structuring content consistently. When thinking of names, it helps to have a common point of reference; our team often borrows terms from other industries, such as publishing or architecture, to give us ideas. Every time you use the name you agreed on, you strengthen the element you call on and evolve your design language. Units can be isolated and changed or updated quickly and easily. They appear to be wall pieces, but the wall pieces don’t match. We ended up with three designs that eventually became fully functioning prototypes. For example, you may start with the same product description that is developed for use in a brochure, but in the user guide, you would add a procedure to it. The Organize chapter of Modular Web Design (2009) discusses techniques for naming and creating taxonomies of compponents and their variations, and the Discover chapter also addresses a useful workshop to decompose and prioritize a system’s parts. Pamela also served on the Advisory Board for the University of Toronto’s Advanced Certificate in Information Design. I’d like to share a few ways we have tried to hone a shared language to help our team transition into modular design. Parallax focuses on content, specializing in corporate and marketing communications, technical communication, content development for multiple media, information architecture, and content management strategies. And, even if they do include the result portion of the step, they may include different information within it. Modular design makes it easier for users to navigate through content; modular content is written in “chunks” with clearly defined labels identifying the content’s purpose. Once you name something you constrain its value. Many problems can arise when content is not structured to support its various uses and users. Although this may appear a simple idea, experience shows that the effectiveness of the technique depends critically on the manner in which systems are divided into components and the mechanisms used to plug components together. The Devil and Commodity Fetishism in South America is both a polemic about anthropology and an analysis of a set of seemingly magical beliefs held by rural and urban workers in Colombia and Bolivia. I’m not sure that I agree with everythin, but great article ! Pamela has helped several clients move content to online, develop content management strategies, and determine how to write content for use in multiple media. But it’s better to have a bad module, than no module (although there might be situations where you are better of starting from the beginning). Needless to say, reaching consensus can be difficult. A procedure must conform to a procedure standard, ensuring not only the integrity of the procedure, but also of the other content modules surrounding the procedure. A Book Apart: Brief books for people who make websites. Noah Glushien shares the ins and outs of creating a successful career in web, despite being color blind. Some people, for example, might call it “image header” or “course promo.”. We often hear about the benefits of a modular approach; modules are scalable, replaceable, reusable, easy to test, quick to put together—“They’re just like LEGO!”. For example, it can help to post new elements you’ve just introduced, or existing ones that you suspect are inconsistent or potential duplicates, and then try to work out their function and find a suitable name. Something that is modular is constructed with standardized units (think Ikea bookshelves), allowing for flexibility and variety in use. Your creativity is required in understanding where/how to use modules, in defining standards for them, and in writing to those standards when creating unique content. But even though it was a useful exercise, the result we came up with wasn’t truly modular: Modules weren’t clearly defined. Because they are based on standards, they “fit” the other document in which they are being reused. In short, we should start with language, not interfaces. I enjoyed reading your blog. While modular writing is often discussed in relation to content management, modular writing is not new. Modules are written according to standards based on who the users are and the type of content, enhancing their usability. Having spent 99% of my development and design time in enterprise scale organizations – I suppose I sort of took this approach for granted. What is modular content and what’s the big deal? As many of us move away from designing pages toward designing systems, one concept keeps cropping up: modularity. If the pieces do not conform to the purpose for which they are intended, your document may fall apart, the same way your Lego construction could fall apart if you use roof pieces to construct the walls. You say “Until then—even after all of our experiments—we were still thinking in pages” To me this implies that a consideration for pages isn’t required, whereas I would argue that it is balancing this modular approach with an overall concept of how the modules knit together. Michael Taussig is an anthropologist known for his interesting ethnographic studies and commitment to writing. Slack or other chat clients are also a viable way to have these discussions. Keeping design language alive by making it part of our day-to-day conversations, whether in-person or remote, plays a key role in maintaining modularity within our team. Thus, this little sketch I call “Excelente zona social.” It is also cost-effective because modular content can be reused easily. But the bottom line is that regardless of how you feel about writing modular content, well, it’s not your content anyway. Modular instruction is an alternative instructional design that uses developed instructional materials which are based on the needs of the students. They might start by asking lots of questions: “Will this module always be full width? So, what exactly is modular content? He further argues that people living in the periphery of the world capitalist economy have a critical vantage point on capitalism, and articulate their critiques of capitalism in terms of their own cultur Just like Lego pieces, which are designed to support reuse in building Lego constructions, modular content must be designed to support reuse—and usability—in document “constructions.” Modular writing enables you to construct with content, and when you’re constructing with content, you need to think about how each of the modules is designed (both the structure and the content within the structure), ensuring the integrity of your construction and its usefulness to its intended users. Each Lego block is a standard unit, so the wall pieces fit together nicely because they are all standard wall pieces. But even though it was a useful exercise, the result we came up with wasn’t truly modular: Ultimately, we decided not to use the resulting designs. Another critical aspect in establishing a shared understanding is involving people from different disciplines, as well as users, in the design process from the outset. It requires additional effort and commitment from the whole team to make the process more familiar. Once you lay the foundation, it’s important to build on it by evolving the language as a team. Pamela Kostur is a Partner in Parallax Communications. We have turned off comments, but you can see what folks had to say before we did so. Collateral? Not only is unstructured writing difficult for users to follow, it’s also difficult for authors to create. This means that developers need to understand why things are designed in a certain way, and designers need to know how the modules are built so that they can make tweaks without having to create a different version of the module. If steps are to be reusable within and across documents, they must be structured and written the same way, ensuring their transparency to other authors and to users. Choose from tracks in content strategy, data science and analytics, and learning design. High-level functions are easier to define if you have the whole UI printed out and intelligible at a glance. Once you name an object, you shape its future. It’s efficient to use content that already exists, but within any document, there will be unique content. Modules are then given labels that allow users to scan through documents to easily find the information pertaining to them. His polemic is that the principal concern of anthropology should be to critique Western culture. The Information Mapping approach presents information in modular units based on the purpose or function for the reader. For about a year now, our team at FutureLearn, an open education platform, has been experimenting with a modular approach. A well-established language foundation is a powerful tool that allows teams to synthesize their efforts around implementing modular design. The value should come from its function, and given a name only if it has value. But functional names require more thought and are harder to arrive at, because function can be relative. I suppose the suggestion could be used for smaller shops : approach site components more like wordpress shortcodes, than a dreamweaver template. Visual design is about balance, and hierarchy, which can only be considered when these modules come together, for example on a page. Alla Kholmatova shares a way to approach interface animations in a systematic way. He writes regularly for business and content industry publications, is frequently selected as a featured presenter at content industry events, and served on the faculty of the University of California, Berkeley, School of Information. Writing modular content simply makes sense. To help establish that shared language, she suggests that we discuss, vet, and document our ontological decisions in the form of “controlled vocabularies.”. How do you prevent this from happening? Amy Bucher shares insights into using personalization to create meaningful user experiences. This is when we started looking closely at the UI, taking the interface apart, conducting inventories, and defining the core elements and patterns that we used to build new pages. This modular design also enables writers to reuse units in other documents. Since then, it’s been a race towards the perfect modules, although we never have them. Modular content is just that—modular! Getting to the testing stage early is important, even if modules are presented as simple paper cards. When you’re constructing with content, the first task is to figure out where the content will be used. how could this be marginally changed to still meet business goas while improving reuse?”. Anyway, I really loved the part where you talk about the interaction between devs and designers since there is always a problem of efficiency! Naming things together is a useful habit for your team to develop, because in the process of trying to give something a name that makes sense, you work out its function and, most importantly, reach consensus. Grounding his analysis in Marxist theory, Taussig finds that the fetishization of evil, in the image of the devil, mediates the conflict between precapitalist and capitalist modes of objectifying the human condition. Modules are written according to standards based on who the users are and the type of content, enhancing their usability. Until then—even after all of our experiments—we were still thinking in pages. Known affectionately as "The Content Wrangler," Scott Abel is an internationally recognized global content strategist who specializes in helping organizations deliver the right content to the right audience, anywhere, anytime, and on any device. As a blogger, I love modular design. Your job is to make content consistent and usable for them. To achieve that, animation should be established holistically, almost as a system in its own right. In this way, the translator should be able to quickly grasp the context of the text they are to translate. For example, we almost called the component above “course poster” because it had an image of the course in the background and its function was to promote the course. Excited to try some of these approaches, my only reservation as a designer is balancing the use of modules with a concept of the pages as a whole. For example, if you give it a presentational name, its future will be limited, because it will be confined by its style. But the way a shared design language evolves is a piecemeal, gradual, and organic process. Likewise, content modules must conform to standards so the modules and the entire document hold together nicely. Robert E. Horn, Stanford professor and developer of the Information Mapping method also advocates a modular approach to creating documentation. The name depends on the component’s function and how and where it appears in the interface. The function of the new component was to invite people to take part in a discussion. Several articles have been written about styling UI components based on context. It’s also a lot easier to spot any duplications and inconsistencies that way. About the Author Photo by: Laura. Imagine you have a simple component whose function is to persuade people to take a specific online course. Receive exclusive access to members-only content, invitations to in-person and virtual events, and sneak peeks at new tools and emerging technologies. For example, without structured writing guidelines for procedures, some authors may include results within their steps, while others don’t. Each content module contains a single chunk of information (e.g., a description, an overview, a task) that is written to support a single user question or issue, such as how much does product X cost, how does product X compare with product Y, how do I install the battery in product X and how long is the battery life. In other words: their high-level function is to focus users’ attention on the most important action. Similarly, if an object in the interface doesn’t have a name—a name that makes sense to your team, and is known and used by people on your team—then it doesn’t exist as a concrete, actionable module to work with. Instead, one person can create it for all uses, based on a standard that accommodates all uses. Building a more inclusive internet goes far beyond making our code more accessible. Every person on the team plays a role in making it more coherent. Reused here with permission. The agreed-upon name determines how the element will be built and encourages consistent usage across the team. Here, participants can pick up, move around, discuss, and scribble on the cards, actively becoming part of the design process. Thanks for this informative post. One way to make conversations about language happen is to create a physical space for them in the office. , write, and we then held a workshop where we tried to the. Modular design process ” would look like to have these discussions throughout the,! Unique to a more inclusive internet goes far beyond making our code more.!: 3 days of design, write, and learning design his interesting ethnographic studies commitment... Pamela is a business asset worth Managing efficiently and effectively strange this might sound everyday. 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