Greg Dunlap
Experience design for readers of online content gets a lot of attention. The authors who create the content and get it ready for publication aren't as well served.
In his new book, Designing Content Authoring Experiences, Greg Dunlap addresses this situation, showing content-system creators how to design better interfaces, streamline workflows, and otherwise improve the lives of content authors and managers.
We talked about:
his 20-year history as a CMS expert and the launch of his new book, "Designing Content Authoring Experiences"
the huge gap between the needs of CMS authors and the attention paid to them in CMSs and their implementation
how he includes content author needs in his content strategy and CMS implementation processes and workflows
the organizational dynamics that typically lead to the lack of consideration for author needs
how a good authoring experience supports any number of business goals: better SEO, more efficient operations, better content, better content discoverability, etc.
how to balance conflicting needs for structure and flexibility in content operations
the importance of understanding and accounting for the differences between content creation and content publication
possible issues that can arise from using collaborative authoring functions in CMS workflows
the ever-evolving of authoring tools and practices in decoupled architectures
the hazards of using page builders in content authoring
how he tries to keep structured content top of mind in organizations
some of the criteria he uses when evaluating content authoring projects: the org's content maturity, its size, the technical skills of the system users, etc.
Greg's bio
Greg Dunlap got started in content management in the early 2000s, building custom systems for small clients. In 2006 at the Seattle Times Company, Greg got involved in the Drupal community, eventually leading one of the eight core initiatives for Drupal 8. Since then he has focused on building large-scale publishing systems for clients around the world. Greg makes his home in rural Washington with his wife Nicole and a small menagerie of animal friends. In his spare time, Greg is an internationally ranked pinball player and loud-music concert goer.
Connect with Greg online
LinkedIn
Bluesky
Resources mentioned in this episode
AuthoringExperience.com
Authors are also users - a new book on designing content authoring experiences (review)
Video
Here’s the video version of our conversation:
https://youtu.be/aX2S8KT0Mv8
Podcast intro transcript
This is the Content Strategy Insights podcast, episode number 210. Five years ago at the Confab content strategy conference a speaker asked the audience of seven hundred to raise their hand if they loved their content management system. One hand went up. Greg Dunlap was the only person in the room with close ties to the CMS world. The other six hundred and ninety-nine were professionals routinely forced to use content systems that had failed to consider their needs. Greg's new book, Designing Content Authoring Experiences, aims to fix that oversight.
Interview transcript
Larry:
Hi everyone. Welcome to episode number 210 of the Content Strategy Insights podcast. I'm really delighted today to welcome back to the show, Greg Dunlap. He was on, I can't even remember how many episodes ago talking about this same subject, but we're going to get deeper into it today. Greg is currently the director of content strategy at Bixal, a consultancy/agency, and he's also the author and the reason he's here today of the new book, Designing Content Authoring Experiences. So welcome Greg. Tell the folks a little bit more about what you're up to these days.
Greg:
Thanks, Larry. As you said, I'm a Director of Content Strategy at Bixal. We are a consulting company that focuses on work in the federal government space. I've been bouncing around in the CMS world for ...