A multi-national corporation (Universal Reach, Inc.) has selected a new Health Maintenance Organization (HMO) for its American employees. Employees need to understand the new plan and its options so that they can choose the correct plan for their needs. The last time the organization made major changes to their benefits, they had to create large volumes of print materials, resulting in endless calls to the Human Resources (HR) department asking for help in explaining the options. HR spent weeks verifying employee options and helping employees correct incorrectly completed forms. This time the organization has decided to provide customized content to their employees through the intranet and supply customized forms to ensure that employees complete the correct form. Their goal is to increase employee understanding of the new program, reduce errors, and reduce the amount of time HR spends providing support. There is only one area of differentiation for employees in addition to their personal information. There are three levels of coverage available (80%, 90%, 100%). Most staff get 80% coverage, management gets 90% coverage, and senior management gets full coverage. However, anyone can choose to purchase increased coverage if desired.

An investment services corporation (Investors Guide, Inc.) sells a series of mutual funds. The funds are designed for a variety of investors who want to select investments based on their level of risk, level of environmental and social consciousness, and which industry sectors to invest in, but investors don’t want to pick all the individual stocks themselves. Investors have been slow to re-invest in the stock market after the effects of the “dot com” meltdown and subsequent recession. The corporation has decided to run a campaign to encourage their investors to once again invest in the stock market. They have 27,000 investors, who can choose any combination of 25 different funds. They plan to start with a customized direct mailing, then point investors to the web site for more information. They also plan to send a series of emails.

A software vendor (IPlan, Inc.) sells large ERP (enterprise resource planning) systems. The software integrates all aspects of a business, including planning, manufacturing, sales, and marketing. The software is modular so that customers can purchase the modules that are appropriate for their organization.

However, customers can go further in their software customization. Fields can be changed to reflect individual corporate terminology, deleted if they are inappropriate, and added if necessary. Screens can be deleted if they are inappropriate or added if necessary.

This level of customization has pleased customers because they can now make the software uniquely their own, but it has also been frustrating because they still get the same generic documentation. This has meant that customers have had to either create all new documentation or create supplementary documentation that is confusing to users (they don’t know when to look at the generic information and when to look at the company-specific information).

The software vendor has decided to take on the challenge of enabling their customers to easily customize their documentation. The software vendor already delivers the software application to link with a database, so they plan to deliver the content in the database as well. They plan to provide forms so customers can change, add, or delete content that is then saved into the database along with the vendor-generated content.

The focus of dynamic content is to deliver the right content to the right user at the right time and in the right format. To do this you need to clearly understand what your users’ needs, when they need it, and in what form they need it.

In Chapter 5, “Analyzing the content life cycle,” you interviewed users to get an understanding of how they use your content and what issues they may have in using it. However, to determine user requirements for dynamic content, you will have to understand their needs in more depth. You need answers to the following questions:

Personas

Consider creating a persona for each of your user types. A persona is a profile of a typical user. It is created based on a series of interviews with actual users. The persona is not impersonal like a standard user description or a stereotype; you write a persona as though you are describing a real person. The persona has a name, a history, and a set of goals. Personas help designers and others within your organization understand for whom they are designing the dynamic content. When designers satisfy the persona’s goals, they also meet the needs of users with similar goals. It is easier to design when you have real people with real goals in mind. The persona makes the design exercise real and applicable rather than abstract.

For example:

Jane Smith is 35 years old, married, with two children. She is a cautious investor, thoroughly investigating the companies in which she invests.

The concept of using a persona to help software developers more effectively design to meet user needs was popularized by Alan Cooper in his book The Inmates are Running the Asylum: Why High Tech Products drive Us Crazy and How to Restore the Sanity (Sams, 1999). Since then, personas have been used to create marketing campaigns, software, and web sites. It makes a lot of sense to use personas to create effective content, as well.

To create a persona, follow these steps:

1. Determine how many personas you require to effectively address your user base.

2. Give each persona a name and a picture. ^[2]

3. Describe the persona. Include as much detail as possible (likes, dislikes, needs, desires, personality type).

4. Define each persona’s goals. Design decisions are based on goals, so take great care in preparing the goals.

For example, the investment services corporation has identified 13 different investor personas. Using these personas, the company has planned the following outputs:

• Direct mailer

• Colorful envelope with a photograph on the back and a phrase that the investor can immediately relate to

• Three to four single-fold inserts that have a photograph on the front and open to a short educational piece and a list of representative funds

• Prominent display of the number to call and the web site address

• Web site

• Personalized welcome screen

• Personalized home page (direct links to fund descriptions and status)

• Annual report customized to the investor’s funds

• Matching content to direct mailer

• Links to more related information

• Customer support

• Overview of the campaign

• Sample direct mails

• Persona description

• Dynamic link to the investor’s customized web site and mailer material

• Details of all the product offerings

Figure 10.1 illustrates a persona for a family investor who invests in the investment services corporation funds.

Figure 10.1. Family investor persona.

Kristin and Alan—Dual-income family, 2 kids, a house and a cottage. Kristin and Alan have been married for 20 years. They have one child heading to college next year and one child in middle school. They both have good jobs and have been promoted in the last year. Although their income is increasing, they are also experiencing rising costs with two mortgages and upcoming college fees. They have two credit cards in common and Kristin has an additional department store card.

Both are comfortable using the Internet to research products prior to making purchases and do this regularly from home. Kristin and Alan discuss all their investment decisions together before making a final decision. Goals:

• Pay down debt faster

• Increase cash flow

• Save sufficient funds for their child’s college of choice

• Pay off the mortgages before retirement

This persona lets the designers design an appropriate campaign to meet their needs. A categorization scheme is set up that enables the designer to match the profile to the appropriate content. In the case of Kristin and Alan, the designers provide the following:

• Mailer

• Colorful envelope with a photograph on the back of a couple sitting at a computer on a desk that has a number of items on it like the stock page, books about investment, and so on, and the phrase “Investing for the future, but not at the expense of today.”

• Inserts

  • Overview of investor services.

  • Educational piece on balancing risk for long term investment with reasonable payments.

  • Two balanced risk funds that have slightly more risk than those currently held by the investor, but with some prospect of rapid growth.

• Prominent display of the number to call and the web site address

• Web site

  • Personalized welcome screen.

  • Personalized home page (direct links to their fund descriptions and status).

  • Annual report customized to their funds.

  • Matching content to mailer.

  • Links to more related information.

Personas can assist you in designing effective dynamic content.

The content management system uses metadata to identify content that is appropriate for a particular user. The users’ needs are defined in their user profiles, which are developed based on the metadata. To define your metadata you need to define which information differentiates users so you can match the appropriate content to their needs.

User profiles are tied to a user login. When users log in, their login identifies them to the system, which then activates their profile. The user profile can be used to configure content, so that when users log in to the site they see only the information that is relevant to them, or to provide them with appropriate options for viewing content.

Table 10.1 shows some of the metadata for Universal Reach. (Note that the metadata values are samples only; the lists are incomplete.)

Similarly, Table 10.2 shows some of the metadata for Investors Guide, Inc.

Metadata isn’t necessary for the software vendor because the content to be displayed is not dependent upon metadata. Instead, it is dependent upon the values that have been assigned to the customer configuration. After these values have been set, the content does not change.

Chapter 8, “Information modeling,” described how to design your content models and in particular how to identify the elements of reusable content. When content is being dynamically assembled it relies on detailed information models to ensure that the correct content is assembled in the correct order and in the correct context.

Figure 10.2 illustrates the components of the HMO content to be displayed based on role. In this case, the dynamic content is based on sections, rather than elements within a section. This means that the information product model identifies which content should be displayed based on role.

Figure 10.2. Universal Reach information product model.

Much of the content for investors is also dynamic at the section level. For example, all content related to a fund is displayed if an investor has purchased that fund. Other content, such as proposed funds and educational materials, is based on user interest and investor profile.

The content for IPlan’s customers is dynamic at a much more granular level— content can change at the field level, which can be a word or phrase within a sentence. Figure 10.3 illustrates a standard employee information screen. A Canadian company, Acadian, Inc., has purchased the software and needs to change Social Security Number to Social Insurance Number, State to Province, and Zip Code to Postal Code. These changes in turn impact the associated content (everywhere these fields were referred to is changed in the dynamic content).

Figure 10.3. Employee information screen.

Typically, when you create an information model, your elements are block elements (elements that exist on their own as a paragraph); however, the model for the software vendor’s dynamic content also needs inline elements (elements that exist within a line such as a sentence). The inline elements let you use a variable or attribute to dynamically change their values in the content. In this case, the two inline elements are Field Name and Window Name. Figure 10.4 illustrates the information model (10.4) and the inline elements (10.4). The inline elements are common elements in that can be used in any other model.

Figure 10.4. Identifying granular dynamic elements.

In addition to user profiles and information models, a dynamic content system requires retrieval rules. These rules are often referred to as business rules and your content management system needs them to control when content is displayed, what content is displayed, and under what circumstances. You need to base your business rules on many aspects of the content user, such as the following:

Rules typically operate by an “if-then” process. If something is true, then specific content is displayed. Figure 10.5 illustrates the business rules for an employee of Universal Reach.

Figure 10.5. Business rules for employee.

The business rules for the investor are similar to those of the employee. Content is displayed based on the values of user profiles and through user selections. However, Investors Guide has selected to use personalization. This means that an additional component of the content management system tracks what the investor looks at, compares this activity to other similar investors, and determines what suggestions to make or additional information to display. For example, two funds have been suggested to the investor. One component of one of the new funds is biotechnology stocks. If the investor looks at a number of additional components on biotechnology, the system displays another fund that has a greater percentage of biotechnology stocks. The business rule might look like this:

Business rules are not required for the software vendor’s content. Dynamic content happens when customers make changes to their systems; the changes are reflected in a table that maps the new information to the appropriate content. After this customization occurs, the content becomes static until additional system changes are made.