Episode 151 of The Informed Life podcast features a conversation with Karen McGrane. Karen is an experienced UX practitioner with a background in information architecture and content strategy. She’s the author of two classic books: Content Strategy for Mobile and Going Responsive. In this conversation, we discussed the impact of generative AI on content management.
Content is central to many organizations – even though they might not consider it so. Karen used plumbing as an analogy:
you don’t necessarily think that the plumbing is the core of your business strategy. But when it breaks, it sure turns out to have a big effect on it.
Technology impacts how we produce, manage, and experience content. The web was one major tech change and so was the move to mobile. One lesson from these transitions: we must understand content separately from its containers. As Karen put it,
I do really believe that thinking of the content that you produce as being distinct from the container in which it will live is a fundamental principle that I wish we could, as people who produce content, all collectively wrap our heads around and truly embrace.
And it’s very difficult. I think the legacy of print, the idea that you create something and it’s gonna live on this one sheet of paper and you know the dimensions of the sheet of the paper and you know the size of the typography, and you’re aiming what you produce for that box—that desire is so strong.
I think that the web and mobile and just multi-device publishing gave us a metaphor for understanding that. And I think that generative AI and LLMs and the idea that what we produce is now going to be remixed in different ways is maybe another additional layer on top of that.
As with other technologies (e.g., electricity,) gen AI can be used for good or bad. Using it well requires understanding what it can and can’t do well. Organizations looking to use AI for content management shouldn’t think of it as a magic solution. Instead, they must approach it thoughtfully, with an eye towards human-led governance and observability.
Structuring content properly is a starting point. As Karen put it,
it has always been true that the reader will experience that text in the way the reader wants to, which means they will skip ahead, they will scan the text, they will not read in order, they’ll read something, and then they’ll jump back.
And we, as authors, I think always had a responsibility to say, “I’m not in charge of how someone is going to perceive this text. The best I can do is present this text in a way that will increase the chances that someone will take the meaning away that I intended.” And as we have grown into a hypertextual world and a world of multi-devices, and now a world of LLMs and other AI, the need to do that is ever stronger.
Karen and I are aligned: gen AI is more a tool for augmenting humans than replacing them. There are opportunities to use these new technologies to help produce and manage content more effectively. But it requires that people who understand how to structure content get involved.
The Informed Life episide 151: Karen McGrane on Content Management