6 memories that came to mind while reading Content Transformation

Hinrich von Haaren’s practical guide takes you through all the steps in a content transformation process.

7 min readAug 13, 2023

Why I read this book

When I first heard this book was coming out, I was eager to read it as the synopsis said it was a ‘practical guide’ to the content transformation process.

So much of my content knowledge has come from learning from coworkers or learning while doing. I was interested in reading something that would be a handy how-to guide for content work I could refer to when needed.

Although called Content Transformation, as Hinrich says in the intro, these techniques can be applied to smaller content projects as well.

It was as practical as advertised. I can see myself coming back to this regularly for workshop ideas and project guidance.

Why this post

There were a few parts of the book that made me remember some of my own relevant work experiences. This post lists those parts of the book, what I remembered, and my reflections on them.

1. The alpha to-do list gone wrong

In chapter 3 (page 53), Hinrich shares the steps for running a workshop on making an alpha to-do list — in other words, all the things you need to consider to start transforming an area of content.

The workshop made me think of what went wrong early on in my team’s project to build our new undergraduate degree finder. At our project kick-off, we listed out the tasks we needed to do in ‘sprint 0’ — the initial things that had to get done before we could start working in sprints.

But there were no deadlines attached to those tasks and there was a lack of project management, which made sprint 0 drag on forever.

Hinrich’s workshop steps and associated plan outline could come in handy as we begin to make the alpha for our postgraduate degree finder.

Read my team’s blog posts on the degree finder project

2. When one user story definitely didn’t mean one piece of content

In chapter 7 (page 107), Hinrich writes:

One user need rarely equals one piece of content.
Most content pieces are made up of 3 to 10 user needs, depending on how big the needs are.

I really could have used this quote a couple of years ago during my team’s first project on tuition fees.

We were a newly formed team, the majority of people entirely new to content design. We were very much cobbling together a process as we went.

When it came time to start developing content, the content manager at the time suggested using Are Halland’s core model to do so.

I remember trying to use the model to write the content for one of our user stories on fee status, which is the different rates UK and international students pay in tuition fees.

As we started this, one of the content designers pointed out it didn’t make sense to write the content for one user story without addressing the others.

What fee status is, how to work out what yours is, when it gets confirmed — these all form part of the same piece of content. They’re not self-contained needs you can write about in isolation.

It seems obvious now, but this was one of those learning by doing moments where you try something out and realize how totally wrong your approach is.

3. When duplicating content with small variations for different audiences tested better

In chapter 7 (page 129), Hinrich writes:

Duplicating content with small variations for different audiences is never a good idea.

This is definitely what I was taught, and I’d normally agree with this, but I had an instance in a project last year where non-duplicated content didn’t test well.

This was in my team’s project with the Student Immigration Service. We were developing the content on how to get a Confirmation of Acceptance for Studies number (CAS), which is something you need to apply for a visa.

We started off with a single page for new students on how to get a CAS. On that page, we put in subheadings where the directions and timeline slightly differed between undergraduate and postgraduate students.

When we first tested it, we saw a lot of task failures as participants struggled to recite back the process of how to get a CAS. The differences we added for undergraduate versus postgraduate meant more content on the page, which I think in the end put more cognitive load on users and confused them.

After those first tests, we separated the content into undergraduate and postgraduate pages and completely stripped it back so it listed the process in short, numbered bullets with more detailed explanations of some of the steps underneath.

We found this tested much better with users who were better able to understand the process not having to work out which content was relevant to them and which wasn’t.

As Hinrich writes, one of the downsides of this is double the content management, which I agree is a valid concern. To help mitigate this, we used reusable content assets for where content was the same so there’s only one golden copy to update.

I’m not saying duplication is always the answer. I definitely don’t think that. But I think this example was an important lesson in understanding how small those ‘small variations’ can be before it might be worth testing audience-based content and seeing how it compares to the alternative.

Read my team’s post on creating the CAS content

4. Keeping up in content transformation is the same as one of my management lessons learned

In chapter 11 (page 142), Hinrich writes:

Doing content transformation is exhausting. You have to constantly be on top of things, think ahead and keep things going.

This quote made me think of one of my points in my most recent conference talk: ‘I don’t know what I’m doing and that’s okay: lessons learned as a manager’.

In it, I have a slide that says, ‘As a manager, I have to exist in both the present and in the future’.

I talk about how I need to be there for my line managees with the work they are doing now. At the same time, I need to balance this with thinking a few steps ahead to work out what my team will be doing in the future.

I can confirm: it’s exhausting to exist in two time dimensions at once.

5. The sprint 0 chaos

On the very next page in chapter 11 (page 143), Hinrich writes:

Have a plan and follow it…There is a difference between that and working in chaos which is always exhausting.

In point 1, I talked about the sprint 0 to-do list gone wrong in our undergraduate degree finder project.

I thought of sprint 0 again when I read this quote. Having no deadlines for our work felt like we were working aimlessly.

Working in chaos was a very apt term for that sprint.

6. The long-form content for a cost of study calculator

In chapter 18, Hinrich shares how content “can offer quick and cheap solutions” (page 231). Don’t feel the pressure to build the more involved solutions right away. Leave that for your backlog.

Hinrich specifically mentions an example of long-form content to explain how to calculate your mortgage.

That example made me think about that same tuition fees project I mentioned in point 2.

We were working to address the user stories around how you work out the total cost of study at the University of Edinburgh. It’s the type of thing where we knew having a calculator was the optimal solution, but one we knew we didn’t have the resource to build.

(It’s also something we’d probably never get the clearance from senior stakeholders to build, but that’s a story for another day).

So instead of a fancy calculator, we built a series of step-by-step pages of how to calculate your total cost of study, from explaining how much fees usually increase by each year, to telling students the different costs they’ll need to add up.

The pages never got built in the end (see above point about stakeholders), but it proves Hinrich’s point that you don’t have to deliver the optimal content solution right away.

Interested in points 1 and 5? Come see my ContentEd talk (with 20% discount)

If you’re interested in hearing more about what went wrong in the undergraduate degree finder project I mention in points 1 and 5, I’ve turned those experiences into a talk!

Come see me debut ‘The discomfort and messiness in big projects (and how to get past it)’ at ContentEd in Manchester, 16 to 17 October.

Use code LAUREN20 to get 20% off when booking.

My talk details: ‘The discomfort and messiness in big projects (and how to get past it)’

Book your ContentEd conference pass

10 books in 2023

This is my eighth book recap as part of my 2023 goal to read 10 books this year.

Read my post on why I set this reading goal

Next book

My first fiction book of the year: I’ll be reading The Lost Storyteller by Amanda Block.