Centennial College Safety Watch App and Website Content Revision
Summary: Content Planning for an existing Platform is as essential as Content Planning for any new Platform. Every piece of content has its shelf-life, changing terminologies with changing times, simplifying content and rearranging it in a more meaningful and usable way is the only way websites and applications can stay relevant. The task here was to evaluate Centennial College’s Safety Watch app, and the Safety and Security section of the College website to reflect its ease of use, accessibility, recency and relevance of content. As someone with a content background, I wanted to rise to this challenge.
​
Table of Contents:
1. Content Audit and Qualitative Analysis
2. Interviewing Users and Persona Creation
3. Content as Conversation and Content Structure
5. A Chatbot
6. Reflection
​
The Process:
Step 1: Content Audit and Qualitative Analysis
There was a huge chunk of content on the website that just wasn’t structured well, making it difficult for users to navigate through. So, I created a Spreadsheet and evaluated each page/link where there was a mismatch between the content and its interpretation, headings and associated text, voice and tone, ambiguity and professionalism. The findings were an eye-opener into how seemingly user-friendly content has glaring errors in its positioning, structure and meaning.
Step 2: Interviewing Users and Persona Creation
Once the errors had been recorded, it was time to find opportunities in what potential users of such content may need and expect from such website and application content. Thus, I started interviewing students about their experience with similar content, instances wherein they’ve had to access such content on the go, and their behaviors around using a Safety platform. It was interesting to know how many of them would not even consider navigating their College’s resources or use them as a last resort simply because the content wasn’t structured well, even if it was available.
Step 3: Content as Conversation and Content Structure
If Content moved around in linear flows, our lives would be so much easier as Content Planners. Sadly, that’s not the case, one paragraph ties into another, within the same paragraph there are linkages to other pages, there exist rules, conventions, content niches; everything that eventually decides how usable that content is. Similarly, for the Centennial College Safety and Security centered pages/screens, there was a division of content into urgent/non-urgent, awareness-generating, informative and grievance redressal suggestions. I was able to characterise this content on the basis of its importance and positioning.
Step 4: Content Strategy
This familiarity with the existing content led to a major break-through in my research and analysis. More than the quality of content, it was its presentation that was lacking. The purpose of such content was to help someone in distress find the most descriptive account of resources suggesting an appropriate course of action. But if someone had to read the provided non-interactive PDFs and huge paragraphs in order to find relevant information, the purpose of having an entire section dedicated to finding this information easily is defeated.
Step 5: A Chatbot
I conceptualized a Chatbot that would step-by-step take in inputs from users and keep directing users towards their end-point. Sounds simple? Not really! Just having a Chatbot alone wouldn’t solve the purpose. Since the nature of the content points to it being used by someone in not ideal circumstances, I made it a point to design these conversations with the Chatbot as ones that come from a place of empathy. The Voice and Tone of these conversations has never mattered more than it mattered in this Project.
