Power to the authors! Toward achieving fast, flexible visual content authoring

so how is the author's Hey

so I'm Rick I'm a strategist count the

CEO of blue spark my background is in

these are experience design interaction

design so I do a lot of stuff well the

course of my career I've done a lot of

the upfront conversations with clients

and had some of these things about what

they want to do and how they want to do

it and the different types of pages they

want to create and of course also have

the unfortunate conversations about the

limitations with what so I've been doing

this since 1999 which means I'm old I've

been around for a while front-end

development but all sorts of stuff I

work at blue spark these days I've been

here for quite a few years we were a

full service digital agency from Digital

Strategy user experience design creative

development content data analytics what

are we talking about today

so it's dive right in I'm gonna cry if I

want to get through the slides pretty

quickly because I really want this to be

a conversation with us in the group here

just about what we're doing what this

imagined future could look like where we

actually can and how are the authors the

content creators Age builders to do

something really creative interesting

without breaking things

great so but yeah I mean that's

ultimately what we're here to talk about

empowering the author to tell their

stories tell their stories and engage

their audience in really meaningful ways

and ways that are important to them but

don't break stuff so or you kind of

talked about the conversation but let's

take a step back and let's think about

the stories that we're telling the

stories that our authors are content

creators what are they wanting to do

what I think about a story you know

sitting up around campfire you know

telling ghost stories and everybody's

engaged and really kind of

to the speaker right but we think about

the web right that's what are the

different stories that were telling like

there's a story around mid camp that's

been told lots of little stories from

the organizers there's a story for those

guys the story for the speakers they

engaged me in a different way and I

engaged them in a different way so I

wanted to present here a story for the

for the attendees you know making sure

the dates and understanding the

schedules and all this stuff these are

all stories that are connected that you

want to put out there and make sure

you're connecting with the right

audience and this range is probably you

know bit for the events from the

schedule to blog post to mailing list

like it's spam it's almost sorts of

stuff late today we're really going to

kind of focus on the website printed

pages still ready and I'm going to start

there kind of looking at how we're

telling these stories how do we go

through this stuff but I'm actually

going to use an example of a project

that we're working on today with UCLA

but of course it all starts with an idea

right somebody gets the idea either

either it's the content creator the

digital marketer and their boss their

boss's boss has the great idea right

then for UCLA

they're coming up when they're their

centennial and the entire penis has a

job to do everybody every department has

different jobs that they have to do and

for a UCLA library they have this art

university artists photo archive

thousands tens of thousands of photos

over the last 100 years telling all

these different stories about their

campus just these incredible beautiful

photos and so we were working with them

to design this site it's a beautiful

site that really puts a lot of emphasis

and focus on the photos themselves

and the way we're gonna build this site

you might recognize a process like this

you know we get the idea we design and

we test it we prototype and we test it

some more then we build it and we launch

you ready

but then they're going to get more

feedback from their users they're gonna

get more feedback from their

stakeholders and of course their KPIs

and other things other metrics that the

monitoring and aren't they hitting those

so what happens then so they okay we get

what you need to make these changes so

we iterate right like that's that's the

web the web's never done we constants a

literation evolution and in the

iteration process kind of looks like

this right they engage designers

developers will go through the whole

process again but there are limitations

with that process right so does that

mean that if I want to you know that

would move this photo from this place to

this place or that call to action from

the right side to the left side or

change the text on that call to action

that's in that graphic button that the

content author doesn't really know or

can't have access to through the CMS for

whatever reason it's a it can be a slow

frustrating process for authors

and so that's what we want to talk about

like how do we change that how do we

reimagine this process so that we can

empower the authors so that we can they

can make these changes they can look at

other ways okay this is a working this

pieces of working how do we change this

how can we evolve that without involving

the designers and the developers again

not just because the time cost the

budget costs increase don't blame all

those reasons but also just so that they

feel empowered they're not frustrated

with the system very able to do what

they want to do so what if of course you

have this process because we've got a

design decide we gotta make it look good

but instead of just designing the site

and launching it we also created a

pattern language then in addition to

creating the design in that pattern

language we created reusable components

and then built those into a content

builder or page builder that they can

then manipulate pages with through

drag-and-drop interface and we have

several of these drupal 8.5 just

released early this week and they're

doing some exciting stuff that that

looks like it has promised in this

direction but there's other other pieces

on the market aren't even related to

Drupal and so we are actually talking to

one of our clients about some of the

stuff when we're looking at the

possibilities of different using

different open-source tools that

potentially integrate those with Drupal

want to show you one today like it makes

it out of here so this is an open source

tool and it's got this direct

well you aren't seeing what I've seen

[Music]

nobody's

okay

maybe

good cop

so this is one such tool where over here

you have components that you can create

and customize right and then you in the

collector this is a sample video some

content and I can quickly drop the drive

you like categories of content if I need

a new title over here I can drive it end

I can edit it

different styles of quotes that I can

put in and if you look around this is

not a module this is from a company

called ANOVA studios as content

Villaverde s and this is something we're

looking at integrating with with Drupal

this is an open well it's not quite open

source it's you know it's not it's

fairly expensive tool to use but you see

how like with you know sort of imagine

go ahead is this go through all of this

in a worldwide basis and basically each

of these items are divs are surrounded

in a div with a special class name so

that the tool can actually detect what

you can actually drag and drop and move

around so so this piece right here you

see my cursor over there yeah it's just

surrounded and it's Rendon and a div

it's actually pretty Elliott pretty

simple solution so other questions now

your so so now you're getting into some

of the complex issues that we're running

into right because the way it works now

the way this is set up and almost like a

Persian one that we're looking at is

these are individual components that

aren't really connected to anything

inside Drupal right and that doesn't

quite work for some of our clients like

the UCLA library with with their

University Archives collection that's

stored in the centralized database and

we need to be able to tap into that with

an API but you can do that right we can

very easily you see how it like

extending this kind of piece we're okay

with this photo right here I could click

this photo instead of it just being a

link here it's like okay let me click a

link to access the database that I could

browse around to find the phone

- from there directly or let's say it

was at an event component a featured

events component that I wanted to drag

you and I connected that to a piece of

content over in Drupal right so it's so

that's that's really where I think the

big future the big opportunity here is

is to try to connect that to content

that exists inside Drupal so I'm

creating a visual presentation layer

here that I can modify change and then

connect that to the content that's

managed inside your scenes - other

questions

keep throwing them at me but there's

different I mean this is just one of the

tools right this is just one of them

there's another one this is called Greek

dock Jas it's another it's an

open-source tool that's a little bit

more complex and I'm to me it looks it

looks a little bit more like a like

Photoshop and so some content authors

might feel intimidated by that I think

but it does give them a little bit more

power and of course what we're seeing

coming out with Drupal 8.5 but that

bills they're still filtered it's early

stages of film or like a page builder

rather than kind of a content designer

which there's a place for both of those

you're gonna need those so now I mean

the goal is whenever you're getting more

user feedback more stakeholder input and

here are we getting our KPIs or not you

know I'm going back to this kind of

system and I'm abled like we have these

cretins pre-designed components that fit

the style the style guide that we are

supposed to be using and just dragging

that in or changing the content you know

maybe maybe my analysis has led me to

think that the read more text needs to

be you know view more or something you

know whatever it is I have that

capability to get in there and make that

cheese we have empowered the optical to

make those changes instead of having to

go back to the designer or developer for

every little change which I mean let's

be honest here for all the designers and

developers in the room like how open do

you want to go back to make little

tweaks and spin design changes every

time you're off the class you can get

other stuff you got to do that's more

exciting right

so again the point of the conversation

the point of the talk here today is to

kind of have a conversation about the

possibility of these tools and what

we're seeing and some of the challenges

and already heard some of the questions

around some of those challenges

absolutely can we as work building the

stuff that were exploring it we're

learning more and able to take more of

that into consideration so I was in a

talk yesterday where what the guy did

was if he didn't get questions he

started asking the audience questions it

was pretty awesome so be prepared that's

what I'm doing today so other questions

it's more of a statement or a thought is

it would be awesome if you were able to

build a Google connector for like that

service you show brennick

the problem is with Drupal being open

source you never getting an authoring

experience like Adobe rhythmic or that

be server because too many bugs Lincoln

kitchen right right right so yeah it

would be awesome if there was more UX

user focus

no I think you're touching on a very

important very challenging issue and one

that we kind of acknowledged ourselves

which is you know all the more modules

that you're putting in you need to be at

this extensible stuff and all your

developers that are out there coding new

modules that are necessarily the best

designers they're not thinking about

that experience under there but but it's

that ecosystem is and the community is

critical to the development of Drupal

but how do you accommodate that right

and competing against the proprietary

right right systems out there thankful

yeah no that's that's that's very true

and it's but it's becoming I think more

a challenge with you know one of our

clients they're the marketing team

they're digital marketing they're kind

of the impetus for this kind of stuff

with they look neat to be able to create

these campaigns where these pages are

gonna last like two or three months they

want if they want to put them up and

turn them down and they want to look

good and they they have all the

analytics running against it so they

know what's working and what's not so

they can't go back to the developer or

the front-end of the designer says hey

we need to make this change and you know

the campaigns over next week so we need

it today in the designer developer are

off doing other stuff on other projects

right because those three stores but so

it's it's a real struggle but I think

it's one we got to try to tackle and

take on and see if we can solve yeah but

yeah you're absolutely right that isn't

real

what do we currently have available in

Drupal that spring brings us close to

that experience that's a great question

and and like I said my backgrounds more

in the interaction design side of things

but like we whenever we were doing for

this initial exploration we did look at

I think if somebody mentioned paragraphs

of a has talked about some brick stuff

and I like that I know Xavier and his

team are going to talk about some of the

stuff landing page topic page stuff in

the next section and stuff the baked dog

to try to do some of this right so it's

in there but what I've seen so far is

it's not as visual it's not and it

certainly doesn't have the centralized

components that really give the

designers in the front end developers

the real control over how the page works

I've seen paragraphs and I think that I

mean I understand that the functionality

is there I just feel that one could

think run and with

like to em product and I think they're

fun and gets neglected actually

back in and you actually feel things

like it's not very interactive like

actually just paragraphs like a boss

Brett Lincoln is other information you

have to change somebody to write

actually understand what this is great

there's some early user like UX people

actually looking at the back and saying

how can we make this very easy to use

very interactive

this is visually appealing to you right

and I think that's what it's bringing

back there I don't have that experience

before you start using it I gotcha but

that's one of the things that you will

be I really like its country trying yeah

it's very quickly in its very popular

it's very hard to get in there and get

into it and do need that training and

that's what's interesting about a tool

like this there's a lot under the hood

they'll be having the touch toys but

just my palate over here and like groups

and the drag-and-drop this is something

people are gonna pick up really quick

now there's power under here you can get

in there and you could do some really

interesting stuff more so than they

probably need some training on top of it

but this feels a lot more approachable

this kind of experience whether it's

this exact or something an x-ray that

feels a lot better but still got it

connected back like we're not just

starting to replicate something like Wix

or something like that right because

this has to us to be an enterprise level

product that that has the data control

of data reusability all that stuff I

might miss something about like how this

would work with something

well he I think it's gonna really like

this is part of the question that we're

exploring right now the real challenge

is because some of this some of that

like some of the content is complete

clear like if you have a blog post or

you want to do a feature blog first but

tap that into Drupal for sure right or

an event or but like this little bit of

text right here like this thing if I

come in here and I edit this quote does

this quote only live on this page or are

we trying to push that back into Drupal

as this particular content type and we

maybe we are or whatever right but

something that we know what this data is

and it's going back in a Drupal right

nothing at all maybe kind of matters on

the project and I certainly do support

edit experience in football something

closer to this but I also wonder you

know first who like this people is even

the home court at all yeah yeah yeah if

you could yeah no I mean that that's

that's that's a big question

- right sir no no always drew rhythm

okay okay

can you with with that one are you able

to like have a set of components but

yeah gotcha

right so this is so it's called Brigham

yeah

yeah yeah creates more complexity more

so just for the video I'm gonna repeat

that a little bit but so there's a

you're saying there's a tool out there

called rhythm a theme called rhythm but

you you actually experienced

experimented with it and it creates a

whole new database install that actually

would make it difficult if you ever

decide to transition off of it but it

does create some interesting stuff there

are models yeah yeah

because there's somebody okay there's

some there's some policy stuff going on

I'm not super familiar that those what

I'm most familiar with

great if I assume they're wrong

presenting

that's the kind of English

right

did you say coupled or okay great yeah

so I think there's also more than we can

you to try to follow on that yeah no

we've been following the l5 stuff seeing

what they're doing it's really

interesting and I think there's there's

promise there and curious what direction

they're gonna go in with it

because the thing that we still haven't

seen and maybe this is on there on the

roadmap if Mac we you know right

but maybe it's on the roadmap but but

are they thinking in terms of these

reusable components these are reusable

pieces that that a front enter designer

can't control that's that's kind of I

think the real missing piece and a lot

of the page builders and other stuff

that we've seen where it's like okay get

complete freedom complete control but

honestly they don't content authors

don't want completely complete control

for their layouts that's that's

overwhelming that's too much choice

too many options and it then and they

need to just focus on writing the

content and if a designer could say hey

look this is how that's supposed to look

and you drop it in and go I think it's

still yeah I mean it takes time I don't

mean all this stuff takes time so I'll

like you I'm old enough to remember you

know web pre approval and you know you

start off with this giant block of text

and start wrapping you know CSS around

it soon you have this big glob of

pretty text what was so revolutionary

about Drupal is this whole idea of

structured content friend to me it seems

like we're going back 15 years it's just

much slicker than you used to be well so

let's sorry where you finish so what I

just have one more thing so you know

I've actually kind of been trying to

spool up you know this homegrown thing

for my company and the solution that I'm

taking is that all of the content lives

in a standard note right so it's all in

in proper fields and then we're using

paragraphs and entities references to

pull that data in and so you know I have

a drop-down for an image and so it's

gonna pull that image or I could call

the image on the title or I can pull the

image on the title teaser and then that

block it's gonna be able to be moved

around and you can change the color and

change the opacity or do what you want

right so it's not this slick but it's

maintaining the structure then well that

I mean and that's the question that's

what we're trying to determine like do

you know do you need this cook right

here and the reasonable data I you know

I could make pretty good case that you

do and could you do this in such a way

that I know that this is what this is

and it when I make the edit through you

know an asynchronous call or whatever it

actually writes it back to the database

enter know where its descendant and so

it's all like completely invisible to

the to the end-user right that's that's

pretty powerful stuff so they they're

editing a node they don't even know what

they're doing right then I have to be

aware of that they're just focused on

content and engagement right

but but no I think that's one of the

questions and I also feel like that some

of this stuff really doesn't need to be

reusable

maybe not but when it does it does get

rich

for me too so we're using a lot of

components through paragraphs and so to

get around that a little typically do is

create a custom a heavy and then that

way like if you wanted to have microsite

header or something along those lines it

has enemy that that you matter enemy

records into you know the actual page

but then you know it does become a

little bit difficult because you don't

have like any of that do this running

metadata we might have something Pro

pasty something along those lines so it

would be nice to be able to reduce the

comment I know that there's work being

done on urban us to try to make so that

when it's a little bit more easily

usable yeah you know I should say

paragraph bundles but we always on on

it's reusable through the UI so we work

around it but we do run into some issues

in terms of like with multilingual and

and then there's also a some issues just

in terms of any kind of as you're

working through a kind of a hydration

process to where you know once that Andy

is updated its updated across the entire

sentence there's there's some

complexities there that

yeah we have just about five more

minutes so take a couple more questions

hopefully sure this is a great desktop

builder but a lot of things where I've

seen working on teams as a gold first so

anticipating that and I found myself

building components giving it to others

color option and over a little bit so

let's take that image of some flowers or

text and then imagine that they're gonna

want to put the next row is going to be

text on the left and an image on the

right so what happens I'm responsive but

they're gonna be times with edges are so

all of these components like they can't

like the way this is built with what I

like about this particular content

builder Nijs and I haven't met the folks

at Nova studio yeah any anything to say

this though but is that it's all

pre-baked like they can't just say okay

I put an image here put an image here I

got to find my component here's one

maybe this is close enough to what

they're looking for and responsiveness

is already baked into the Konev because

a developer built that component and

expected it to work in a certain way and

expects the page structure to behave in

a certain way so so it's that's like

great it just seemed like there's times

when two components are

to photos but actually so this is just

awareness yes the other would respond

differently in my mobile environment

yeah yeah yeah that's swap I'm mobile

which aside yeah it does get it does get

a bit much pretty quick and we got a

there's got to be that balance like okay

you do have control you can't do this

stuff and doing it in a fairly standard

way a fairly controlled way but if you

really want all this stuff maybe we need

to go back to our front end access yeah

and to solve that particular problem

I only expose full-width components so

that the salt

I'm just saying we should we start gate

opponents respond we need training to

spit as much don't you get into sitting

well what I mean is that you can't use

it what I'm going to do these mechanical

component next one next one

they choose a component that has right

that's yeah that's that's what we do

yeah man but and that's how this

particular system works is it's like

stacked one on top of the other so if

you went for two images side by side

together half of that component but but

yeah again but that also like this does

enforce a certain style of design right

so it so it may be it works for all some

brands and not for others because

there's brand doesn't kind of fit into

the stack so that's another challenge

another thing that again I guess what I

build them for mobile world yeah oh yeah

absolutely no I think I think that's a

big when we were talking earlier about

governance over content creation period

and that this is kind of kind of ties

into that like are you following

copyright in best practices are you

writing sort of bullets are you writing

in long paragraphs are you thinking

about mobile or you think of just about

the desktop because that's where you're

designing right and how do you kind of

make sure yeah yeah I mean you have any

money in that regard

you can just go into a simple really

possibility improvement on that very

existence well and this is I mean this I

wouldn't say this even a full bliss you

way it's kind of a editor but it's not

like I don't have complete control I'm

really can restrict it to the components

of it pre-built from yeah saying like

you may have an improvement yeah

well then the other thing too is this

doesn't like not every page is going to

fit into this right like I have a blog

post I post a blog post that's that's

going to go into my blog post haste if

I'm late like if I do a calendar an

event like that's gonna be my events

content so not every content type air

pieces per page that's created or

content that's created needs to look

like this that's only this one's deals

though right

yeah the flexibility the ability to come

marketing like this getting is giving

you has had a bigger and bigger presence

right what is being selected tranquil

well I also think you're seeing a

backlash from the IT departments or like

can you help me with these guys because

they keep asking for my resources and

taking my time and they're never happy

so please can you like give them the

tools that they can do their stuff right

so I've had their building overlook

overloaded network too and would rather

work and more interesting things than

page loads especially when they already

launched other questions other thoughts

insights other solutions okay I'm good

what happens to your user experience

design role essentially era calling the

I am

design how their own static well then I

get to go to other tickets

that's excited wait work on other pieces

it's like working another problems

because I think this is really like

content engagement right like it's you

know no understanding like what CTA

works would CTA where am i highlighting

this particular white paper download or

this other piece of that thing right but

that's not what is that is that

necessarily a good thing to have people

who don't really know but but they're

not exactly designing all their own

pages they're using these reusable

components that gives them some

flexibility to do that and ideally

hopefully they're watching the data and

the usage and seeing what's converting

and even if we go a step further because

this is just one piece and my imagined

future of stuff where we can actually

have a be testing tools built into this

right like it's like this video and say

okay play this video or this video show

this CTA

or the CTA and then adding

personalization on top of this I mean

you guys what you guys are doing

customer journey stuff right this is

this get into it pretty nicely recognize

that when you say ideally they're

checking all of these things means

they're not especially when you're

dealing with 8300 right so so there has

to be so that's another kind of level

here and I did this one I had actually

thought of right so I've got given this

part of the conversation here like how

do you build that into the work flow so

that so that that those checks are

happening but people are able to get it

out the door because I don't know I mean

I don't know if it can be programmed can

program those that kind of governance or

does it have to be human human or you

watch what we end up they have to do is

human reveal in and at certain points we

don't want to give them any more rope

ya know it's a challenge time mm-hmm

thank you