I’ve never lived more than a 30-minute drive from a large, salty body of water. I’m not really sure what life would be like without that access. I know there’s a cliché about coastal bias, but this is different. And I will fully admit that I am biased for the coasts. Whether it was during my early years in Florida, or my current ones in San Francisco, I can’t imagine what it’s like to be land-locked. And this is where we make a dramatic change in direction, and head straight into content strategy!
See, I think one of the most important attributes for a good content strategist is to be able to put yourself in someone else’s shoes. Whether you do that through user interviews or customer data or even persona explorations, we need to be able to build for people outside of our own lived experience. Like baking accessibility fundamentals into product launches, rather than trying to tack them on afterwards. We need to build for everyone, not just for ourselves.
Sometimes, all that takes is some imagination. Other times, it’s really questioning the assumptions we have about how people will use what we’ve built. And, occasionally, it’s stepping in to say that what we’re building is not ready for public consumption because it could put people in harm’s way. There’s a lot of that kind of discussion happening now around AI tools and large language models, and I highly recommend you digging into those ideas on your own (try following Timnit Gebru and Mia Shah-Dand as a start). But we should be that skeptical about everything we build, making sure we’re not making design decisions based on narrow perspectives and unquestioned assumptions. It’s why I believe our design teams need to be more diverse. It’s also why I think we need to move away from attention-based metrics, and more toward ones focused on task completion. And, most importantly, it’s why I hope that if you read anything in these posts which misses the mark, you call me out on it; I can’t see my own blind spots until someone points them out to me. And I want you to!
This push for expanded perspective, though, isn’t limited to just building new things. It can come into play when looking at our own habits, too. I have a story which rattles around in my head that I don’t really know the source of. It feels like family lore, and for someone, maybe it really is. But on a recent call to my parents, they verified that they’d heard the tale, too, but it wasn’t from our family. The version of the story I know (embellished a great deal because I’m typing this on a plane and it’s what I’m doing to entertain myself for a bit) is this:
A college-aged daughter brings her new boyfriend to his first family gathering around Easter. There are many generations huddled in the kitchen, getting to know the new beau, and sharing those embarrassing childhood anecdotes which always seem to pop up as soon as someone you’re trying to impress comes around. As these get tossed about, meal prep is in full swing. And it has all the hallmarks of a classic Easter feast, with deviled eggs, fresh peas and asparagus, buttered new potatoes, green bean casserole, fresh-baked rolls, and a large honey-glazed ham. By the time everything is ready, the new boyfriend is ecstatic. He can’t wait to taste it all, especially the ham. It’s his favorite part of the feast, particularly the crispy, sweet end.
When they all finally gather at the table, serving plates piled high with a steaming assortment of menu items, the boyfriend notices something which stops him cold: The end of the ham has been completely shorn off! He spends the next few seconds in a whirlwind of coalescing emotions. He’s simultaneously disappointed, appalled, confused, concerned, stunned, and even a little angry. As diplomatically and furtively as he can, he leans over and quietly asks his girlfriend, “What happened to the end of the ham?”
Without catching his unspoken agreement of stealthy communications, his girlfriend casually replies, “Oh, that’s the way we’ve always made it. It’s our family recipe.” And without taking a moment’s breath, she turns to the other end of the table and loudly asks, “Hey Mom, how come we cut the end off the ham?”
The boyfriend sinks low into his seat.
“It’s the way we’ve always done it,” the Mom shares. “It’s our family recipe.”
“That’s right,” Nana weighs in. “We’ve been doing it this way for years. Isn’t that right, Ma?”
All eyes now turn to the matriarch of the family, seated at her traditional spot at the head of the table. “Yep,” she confidently confirms, “It’s how my mother used to do it. See, when I was growing up, we had a very tiny stove and only a small baking pan would fit in it. Every year, when we’d get an Easter ham, we’d have to cut a part of it off so that it would fit, and since we didn’t want to get rid of the end with the larger slices, we’d just cut off the end.”
Everyone else stopped their chewing. Some mouths even fell open a bit.
“You mean the only reason we’ve been cutting off the end is because, years ago, your stove was too small to fit an entire ham‽” Mom managed to ask.
“Uh huh,” the great-grandmother responded between the bites she never stopped taking. “It was the only way we could cook a ham.”
“Then why are we still making it like this if we have pans and stoves big enough for a full-size ham?” the daughter asked.
“It’s our family recipe.”
The point, obviously, is to question even your own ways of doing things. Just because something has worked one way in the past doesn’t mean we still have to do it the same way today. Repeating outdated methods isn’t going to lead to progress. And won’t let us learn anything new. By breaking out of the ways we’ve always done things, either for ourselves, or our users, we get to introduce new perspectives on familiar ideas. Like the moment your daughter first hears The Beatles. Or your initial taste of your now-favorite food. Or jumping into a familiar ocean from a brand new pier.
We all can use a reset sometimes, especially when we’re building for others. We have to constantly remind ourselves that we’re not our target audience. By imagining how and why other people are coming to us to solve their problems, we’ll build them better solutions. It just takes a little empathetic imagination.
See you tomorrow?
(Also, if you know where this ham in the pan story is actually from, I’d love to know how I came upon it.)
Holy Water
23 March 2023
Water you looking at.
I’ve never lived more than a 30-minute drive from a large, salty body of water. I’m not really sure what life would be like without that access. I know there’s a cliché about coastal bias, but this is different. And I will fully admit that I am biased for the coasts. Whether it was during my early years in Florida, or my current ones in San Francisco, I can’t imagine what it’s like to be land-locked. And this is where we make a dramatic change in direction, and head straight into content strategy!
See, I think one of the most important attributes for a good content strategist is to be able to put yourself in someone else’s shoes. Whether you do that through user interviews or customer data or even persona explorations, we need to be able to build for people outside of our own lived experience. Like baking accessibility fundamentals into product launches, rather than trying to tack them on afterwards. We need to build for everyone, not just for ourselves.
Sometimes, all that takes is some imagination. Other times, it’s really questioning the assumptions we have about how people will use what we’ve built. And, occasionally, it’s stepping in to say that what we’re building is not ready for public consumption because it could put people in harm’s way. There’s a lot of that kind of discussion happening now around AI tools and large language models, and I highly recommend you digging into those ideas on your own (try following Timnit Gebru and Mia Shah-Dand as a start). But we should be that skeptical about everything we build, making sure we’re not making design decisions based on narrow perspectives and unquestioned assumptions. It’s why I believe our design teams need to be more diverse. It’s also why I think we need to move away from attention-based metrics, and more toward ones focused on task completion. And, most importantly, it’s why I hope that if you read anything in these posts which misses the mark, you call me out on it; I can’t see my own blind spots until someone points them out to me. And I want you to!
This push for expanded perspective, though, isn’t limited to just building new things. It can come into play when looking at our own habits, too. I have a story which rattles around in my head that I don’t really know the source of. It feels like family lore, and for someone, maybe it really is. But on a recent call to my parents, they verified that they’d heard the tale, too, but it wasn’t from our family. The version of the story I know (embellished a great deal because I’m typing this on a plane and it’s what I’m doing to entertain myself for a bit) is this:
A college-aged daughter brings her new boyfriend to his first family gathering around Easter. There are many generations huddled in the kitchen, getting to know the new beau, and sharing those embarrassing childhood anecdotes which always seem to pop up as soon as someone you’re trying to impress comes around. As these get tossed about, meal prep is in full swing. And it has all the hallmarks of a classic Easter feast, with deviled eggs, fresh peas and asparagus, buttered new potatoes, green bean casserole, fresh-baked rolls, and a large honey-glazed ham. By the time everything is ready, the new boyfriend is ecstatic. He can’t wait to taste it all, especially the ham. It’s his favorite part of the feast, particularly the crispy, sweet end.
When they all finally gather at the table, serving plates piled high with a steaming assortment of menu items, the boyfriend notices something which stops him cold: The end of the ham has been completely shorn off! He spends the next few seconds in a whirlwind of coalescing emotions. He’s simultaneously disappointed, appalled, confused, concerned, stunned, and even a little angry. As diplomatically and furtively as he can, he leans over and quietly asks his girlfriend, “What happened to the end of the ham?”
Without catching his unspoken agreement of stealthy communications, his girlfriend casually replies, “Oh, that’s the way we’ve always made it. It’s our family recipe.” And without taking a moment’s breath, she turns to the other end of the table and loudly asks, “Hey Mom, how come we cut the end off the ham?”
The boyfriend sinks low into his seat.
“It’s the way we’ve always done it,” the Mom shares. “It’s our family recipe.”
“That’s right,” Nana weighs in. “We’ve been doing it this way for years. Isn’t that right, Ma?”
All eyes now turn to the matriarch of the family, seated at her traditional spot at the head of the table. “Yep,” she confidently confirms, “It’s how my mother used to do it. See, when I was growing up, we had a very tiny stove and only a small baking pan would fit in it. Every year, when we’d get an Easter ham, we’d have to cut a part of it off so that it would fit, and since we didn’t want to get rid of the end with the larger slices, we’d just cut off the end.”
Everyone else stopped their chewing. Some mouths even fell open a bit.
“You mean the only reason we’ve been cutting off the end is because, years ago, your stove was too small to fit an entire ham‽” Mom managed to ask.
“Uh huh,” the great-grandmother responded between the bites she never stopped taking. “It was the only way we could cook a ham.”
“Then why are we still making it like this if we have pans and stoves big enough for a full-size ham?” the daughter asked.
“It’s our family recipe.”
The point, obviously, is to question even your own ways of doing things. Just because something has worked one way in the past doesn’t mean we still have to do it the same way today. Repeating outdated methods isn’t going to lead to progress. And won’t let us learn anything new. By breaking out of the ways we’ve always done things, either for ourselves, or our users, we get to introduce new perspectives on familiar ideas. Like the moment your daughter first hears The Beatles. Or your initial taste of your now-favorite food. Or jumping into a familiar ocean from a brand new pier.
We all can use a reset sometimes, especially when we’re building for others. We have to constantly remind ourselves that we’re not our target audience. By imagining how and why other people are coming to us to solve their problems, we’ll build them better solutions. It just takes a little empathetic imagination.
See you tomorrow?
(Also, if you know where this ham in the pan story is actually from, I’d love to know how I came upon it.)