Season 2, Episode 3: Kris Mausser
Kris Mausser is a content strategist who has honed her craft zooming out and diving deep on complex problems related to enterprise content, intranets, websites and products. She is an international keynote speaker, workshop leader, and former nominee of Canada’s Top 40 Under 40.
Kris currently works on product content strategy at Shopify.
Dan Klyn: So far it is just me and Kris Mauser, and that is totally okay with me 'cause I'm so excited to talk with you today about everything. And I'm also excited that today is International Women's Day and that I get to talk to somebody who I consider a pioneer in the fields of information architecture and content strategy in particular. So, thank you for being here, Kristina.
Kris Mausser: Well, you're so welcome, Dan, and please call me Kris.
Dan Klyn: Okay.
Kris Mausser: [Laughs].
Dan Klyn: Okay. so, so I want to know, the thing that I want to know more than anything is something that I wanted to know for a long time and the understanding of it has alluded me. You might even be able to anticipate my question. So, I have a question that I will ask but then I will ask that you pause and allow me to you a second question which is the route that I would like to use to get to the first.
Kris Mausser: Okay.
Dan Klyn: The first, the first question is, "What the fuck is content strategy?"
Kris Mausser: [Laughs].
Dan Klyn: Like, what is it? What, what it, how, what is the stopping, where is it's edge? Like, I want to know what it is but I think the best way to know about that is for you to talk about your career and, and, and you can go as far back as you'd like and we have as much time as anyone would ever stand to talk about this. So I would love to get to that, what that is because you currently work on product content for Shopify. You are an expert in content strategy. We have worked together on client projects where what Tugg does, information architecture isn't enough to encompass content strategy. And so we've worked with you but I was not on those projects and so I don’t—
Kris Mausser: [Laughs].
Dan Klyn: I don't understand yet. So, so that's the, that's my, that's my perhaps tortuous way in today, if you would accept that as the pathway in. How did you get to here and does that explain what content strategy is?
Kris Mausser: Okay, so I'm going to start where I start nowadays in 2020 and say that like language and people who enjoy meaning of language, I'm going to say that the terms content, or content strategy as a term, as a thing, is ever evolving, right? And so I think that, you know, yeah, I will talk about the early days of my career. I'm happy to do that, and we can, we can see how that has evolved in terms of content strategy, because it's an interesting story. But at the end of the day, I think that, you know, when I talk to people who are entering the field now, I think it's understanding that content strategy was popularized in 2009. So here we are roughly ten years later going, still doing the like, "What the heck is this thing," right? And, and I've seen the evolution of it. And we have the same problem in the content strategy world that the IA's have of like defining the damn thing. Like, what is this thing? And so I like to look at it as the problems it solves as opposed to what the thing is. So—
Dan Klyn: Nice.
Kris Mausser: How I—yeah, so how I got into content strategy, was in the early days of the web. I was a web designer [laughs] and you know, those early web master days.
Dan Klyn: I was going to say, were you a master at some point?
Kris Mausser: I was a master webby person, yes. And, and, and you know, I went to school for, for web design. Actually it was called web publishing. That's what my official certificate is in. And and so, yeah, so the early days of the web, I learned how to program websites and design websites and back then people were the mastery of the thing and the thing was creating websites. And I had as a side kind of like experience, I had this degree in English literature and I loved to write. But I actually thought that part of my life was over and it was like, "Okay, I'm gonna design websites. I'm all about graphics and cool html coding, you know, cold fusion, things that we don't even talk about any more.
Dan Klyn: Oh, dear.
Kris Mausser: Exactly. I'm dating myself.
Dan Klyn: No, that's a word, I have thought about it. It made feel a little bit like ooh, like eeeh.
Kris Mausser: Cold fusion!
Dan Klyn: Yes.
Kris Mausser: [Laughs] Yeah, so especially the early html days of code, the words ... Can you see me, because I see that my internet connection is unstable? Okay.
Dan Klyn: It says that it's unstable but I can see you just fine, so keep going.
Kris Mausser: Okay, fantastic. Okay, so, so when you're coding there are words behind the presentation layer and how you think about those words behind the presentation layer in code became as interesting to me as the presentation layer itself, because you had to think about, before you started coding you had to think about, "Where am I gonna put up this call out box?” Because if I start coding and coding is a very linear thing, I need to think ahead of time about where I'm going to put the content on the screen, right?
Dan Klyn: Yep.
Kris Mausser: And so for me, I started dabbling in information architecture probably before it was even called, popularized as information architecture because of the constraints of the technology. So you have this linear thing and you're trying to do something creative.
Dan Klyn: Yeah.
Kris Mausser: Where the content or whatever you're trying to express in, you know, in this world wide web is something that you have well thought out. And so that's really how I started getting back to the content side of design because you know, we had to kind of, like I said, think about all those things and then think about the relationship of one thing to another. So as soon as you added the complexity of multiple web pages, for instance…
Dan Klyn: Yep.
Kris Mausser: You had to think ahead of time. Like, "Hey, if I'm going to put a link here, I'm going to code this link, where's this link gonna go and what's the most logical flow for that link to have happen, at it's very basic premise? Because for the first time in like history we had this dynamic content where it wasn't just, you know, write a thing, publish a thing, put a book on a shelf or put a magazine, you know, in some, front of someone.
Dan Klyn: I think it's hard to, to appreciate adequately the recentcy of that phenomenon. Thank you for reminding me of that because holy shit, that's pretty different, that every—
Kris Mausser: It's very different.
Dan Klyn: That everything else in human culture up until Tim Berners-Lee or where ever we say that that started.
Kris Mausser: Exactly, because we always could define the structure and the content for the meaning and we were very prescriptive about that. But now we opened it up to this whole world of like, "Hey, we don't ... We have this thing that people don't really know how to even use."
Dan Klyn: Yeah.
Kris Mausser: You know, we kind of had some, we had some mental models of like, "Okay, I have a magazine. I'm going to have maybe a table of contents and I'm going to have some content that, you know, maybe we'll run out of room and we'll have to send them over to page 324 for that last column of content." That was kind of like the-
Dan Klyn: That was pagination.
Kris Mausser: Exactly, it was like the very linear approach to things. But as soon as digital-
Dan Klyn: It was pinned to a number.
Kris Mausser: Exactly, yeah.
Dan Klyn: Yeah.
Kris Mausser: And it's, and it wasn't really in ... You as the content creator, were still incredibly prescriptive about what you wanted people to do.
Dan Klyn: Mm-hmm [affirmative].
Kris Mausser: Right? You were like, "Hey, go to this page number." It's not like the user or the reader could say, "I'm gonna go to some random page and find this content." They couldn't do that, so you had to, you could be very prescriptive about that journey.
Dan Klyn: Well, I'm even thinking about the course packs and xeroxes of when I was an undergrad and maybe you had this where you went to school as well, where the context has been torn apart. It's a xerox, but the evidence of the original environment is preserved. Line breaks lots of the, the thing that in total builds the meaning of the piece travel with it, even when we were chopping it up and faxing it and putting it in a different context. Still some of its context traveled along with it and then Claude Shannon decides that context is irrelevant to transmitting information and yeah. Wow. So, when—
Kris Mausser: And, and I think.
Dan Klyn: And at this part of the story, where are we? Are we, is this 2001, 2000-ish?
Kris Mausser: Yeah, I mean like '99, 2000. I mean this was kind of like when the, you know, CD-Rom, like publishing houses were like, "Oh, we want to control the context again. We're going to create these CD-Roms that have like, you know, this bounded context for our content and our meaning. And so—
Dan Klyn: And did you work on those, too? Did you work disc space media also?
Kris Mausser: I never did, no.
Dan Klyn: Okay.
Kris Mausser: Quite frankly, I liked the unbounded context.
Dan Klyn: [Laughs].
Kris Mausser: So like I liked that de-coupling of content from structure. So, so in the early, early days I got this, this job working government, because of course government and technol—and scientific and academic institutions has brought the content digitized at that point in time. And so I started as this, you know, web designer, web master for Parks Canada. And they had, they kind of said, "Hey, we have this website that this guy in the basement has coded and given that we live in Canada everything has to be translated." Anything that the government of Canada produces has to be in two languages. So we had-
Dan Klyn: Yeah, was that, was that a French basement or an English speaking basement?
Kris Mausser: It, it was an English speaking basement.
Dan Klyn: Okay.
Kris Mausser: But when I asked them like, "Hey, how many pages do you have?" He had 18,000 English html hard coded. This was before CSS pages of content, that were then also duplicated in French.
Dan Klyn: Oh my lord.
Kris Mausser: Everything was hard coded.
Dan Klyn: Yeah.
Kris Mausser: And so, you know, we were also trying to keep up with technology and the evolution of technology and it was like, "Oh, my gosh. Like, how do you ... How do you manage all this content? How do you, you know, make sure that's it's, it's up to date? So there had to be some governance around it. And then if you wanted to change one particular file you had to go and find that page and then find all of the instances of that page to make the exact same update across the board. And so around this time, of course CSS started to come out and you know, things were rapidly changing and it's really hard I think to appreciate now where we have this kind of, a little bit of stagnation in terms of technology. You know, we have our apps and we have our websites and we have our, you know, whatever,
Dan Klyn: Yeah, it doesn't seem like it's ... It doesn't seem like it's shitting the bed every ten minutes and re-doing the whole thing.
Kris Mausser: Exactly.
Dan Klyn: Yeah.
Kris Mausser: Yeah, and now we have this ubiquitousness of technology and, and, and everyone can actually ... You know, the power so to speak of knowing how to implement and, and, and tweak the technology is in the hands of the many as opposed to the hands of the few.
Dan Klyn: Yeah.
Kris Mausser: So, you know, in these early days there were only a few of us who knew how to do this thing and so, so once CSS came about and once we started kind of getting these content management-type systems, they said, "Okay, we have like 18,000 pages in two languages. So how do we organize this and how do we move it and migrate it all to a CMS, so that over time we can like de-couple the design from the content beneath it?And that was really kind of the first time I did information architecture. And, and I'm, I'm putting air quotes around it because…
Dan Klyn: [Laughs].
Kris Mausser: In the early days of the web, I mean I, every time a ... I was early enough on the web that every time a new book came out, every time a Polar Bear book came out, every time a Lindella book came out, I was like, I bought it, you know. And I think ... I remember my first shelf was like probably, you know, eight books 'cause [laughs] you'd wait every month for the next book and you had to physically go to the book store to buy the book, right?
Dan Klyn: Yeah.
Kris Mausser: And so so yeah, so that was kind of my first foray into, into IA. I remember getting a whole bunch of people in a room and going, "Hey, here's these post-in notes, like try to organize this mess of content. And, and then, figure out how we're going to deal with this translation of English content into French," right?
Dan Klyn: I'm curious, reflecting on it today and of course it's impossible to access what you thought about it at the time, but…
Kris Mausser: Yeah.
Dan Klyn: …Reflecting on it today, seems like it could be a hybrid of things. It probably is more clearly that, but if we were to, to get real cartoonish about it and say in the broadest sense what that was about, when the organization went from a FTP folder full of hundreds of html files to a system and to governance, even though you probably weren't calling it that, it seems like it could be purely complexity that's driving that, on the one hand. Or on the other hand is it complicatedness, and I, and I apologize for how parsimonious I'm being with the difference there, but, but I love that, that distinction between what is complicated, hundreds of files, managing changes. If there's a change in the footer to 1999, do you have to do grep search for every other instance of that?
Kris Mausser: Exactly.
Dan Klyn: And what if they'd used the copyright symbol once that, with the ampersand in the code and then other times they used parenthesis and a lower case c, like, so that's complicatedness. But then complexity is, is, is, is different. So, what do you think? Is it easier? Can, can you say it's, it's more of the one or the other at this point in the story which is circa 2001 or so, it sounds like?
Kris Mausser: Yeah. I think it's both.
Dan Klyn: We definitely the comp—we have the complexity now, right, but back then...
Kris Mausser: We had the complicatedness. I mean, you know, I, I, like this is kind of where content strategy comes in. And, and like, because to me the value that content strategy brought to this, both complicatedness and complexity, was in managing the people.
Dan Klyn: Oooh. Hey!
Kris Mausser: It had nothing to do with the content.
Dan Klyn: That wasn't what I was expecting! Say more, say more! It's about people. Holy shit.
Kris Mausser: t's about the people, because here's the thing. If you have an organization that has, you know, 18,000 pages and you have all of that content also translated and everyone wants my thing on this new system, and they all have this, their own mental model of, and people who are early to the web will remember this and probably are still fighting this. "I want my thing on the home page.” Now you have this complexity of, you know, how are we going to get the content, in what format? How are we going to get it translated? How do we set expectations that this thing does not need to be on the home page? How do we ensure that people have their piece of content that they're, you know, owners in, find a place that isn't hidden? So the rest of it…
Dan Klyn: Wow.
Kris Mausser: The technology part, the technology part was easy because I mean, I hate to say that but you know…
Dan Klyn: No, then say it. [laughs]
Kris Mausser: [Laughs] You have content, the content doesn't have to be arranged. The content doesn't, you know, you can kind of say to yourself, "Hey, I want to put, you know, this content in this bucket and I'm going to attest that most people think that, of this content relative to this bucket." But the part that was hard was the con-was the people. And so that, I would say, was where content strategy really shined.
Dan Klyn: Wow.
Kris Mausser: In those, in those days and the potential. And I, and I feel like, like I said, I, earlier in this conversation we had, you know, we had sort of 2009 was when content strategy was popularized. And I say popularized because there were people who were writing. Like Anne Rockley's book, Managing Content, enterprise content for their web, or, came out in 2003. So there were still people talking about this thing…
Dan Klyn: Yep.
Kris Mausser: Of, of content strategy but I would say that a lot of what we were talking about that back then in 2001 and 2002, was information architecture. I mean, that really was what we spoke about when we talked about, when we talked about like these websites and these complex websites. And then this concept of, you know, to use a term you know most people would use would be the concept of publishing.
Dan Klyn: Okay.
Kris Mausser: So we have this like, this IA. We have this structure and this structure can either drive the back end or the front end or both. And then we have this whole publishing dilemma internally in an organization, so that they can understand the medium and they can plan for the content and they can create the content, manage the content and govern the content, which is what we use when we talk about content strategy today, you know. We sort of use this concept of planning and that is the definition, right, or one of many definitions. They've been sort of expanded but in its crux, that idea of, you know, planning, managing, or planning, creating, managing, governing or analyzing. And to me that has less to do with the content and more to do with the people.
Dan Klyn: Yeah.
Kris Mausser: And so that has always been…
Dan Klyn: Wow.
Kris Mausser: The distinction in my world, but my world doesn't exist in the world out there necessarily, and so, you know, moving along in this timeline [laughs]…
Dan Klyn: [Laughs].
Kris Mausser: Once ... and, oh, I just want to put a pin in this because you had mentioned earlier about, you know, how, if you wanted to update some content you had to go in and find all the instances of this content.
Dan Klyn: Yeah.
Kris Mausser: I think, I think really for me the crux of the, the planning for content came about when one of the government ministers who was in charge of Parks Canada at the time, this was a long time ago. So this is historical information now.
Dan Klyn: Yeah [laughs].
Kris Mausser: Sheila Fox, she decided-
Dan Klyn: You not uniquely disclosing this! This isn't on you.
Kris Mausser: This is just a thing.
Dan Klyn: Yeah [laughs].
Kris Mausser: She decided one day that the Parks Canada logo, which was a, a, a beaver that kind of at the time looked like a little bit of a piece of shit, but anyway it was like a beaver. And she decided that it didn't look happy enough and that it should have like [inaudible] 48 hours. Did I freeze there?
Dan Klyn: Just for a second.
Kris Mausser: Okay, we had to spend, we had to spend like three days until midnight every night changing every instance of this beaver on every page so that it, it had a slight smile.
Dan Klyn: It needed, it needed the slight smiling beaver.
Kris Mausser: Yes, and so—
Dan Klyn: Did anyone notice? Did anybody actually notice?
Kris Mausser: [Laughs] probably not. I think she might have, but you know, and, and that's where all these things started coming up, when you have this massive website, you know. It's the problems and the tools that you bring to them that help to solve those scenarios.
Dan Klyn: Yeah.
Kris Mausser: And I think that's when, you know, around 2004 or 2005, that's when we started hearing from like Boxes and Arrows and you know, "Hey, there's this discipline called information architecture.” I mean, correct me if I'm wrong but I would think that it was around that time, because people started realizing, "Hey, like this is a thing and we have to keep this, this thing going. And here are all the tools we're using to, to manage this thing" [laughs].
Dan Klyn: Yeah.
Kris Mausser: You know, while the technology was keeping up in tandem. So, so yeah, so after that I, I actually kind of stepped away from the web briefly and did some marketing stuff. [laughs]I think the beaver killed me.
Dan Klyn: [Laughs] "I'm done. This is, I need a break after that."
Kris Mausser: I need a break from this.
Dan Klyn: No, but I don't think anyone would blame you.
Kris Mausser: Yeah, and, and you know, Canada…
Dan Klyn: Or even judge you.
Kris Mausser: Was around that time, probably there was probably a recession and I needed to find … Anyway, so I, I kind of stepped away and came back to it when I started working with I started my own business, because it was that idea of, and I'll always remember this. So I started my own business again, going back to this concept of web design, web master.
Dan Klyn: Yep.
Kris Mausser: And I was at a networking event and all these people were in front of me. And back then it was sort like the wild west or the gold rush. Everyone was a web designer. And so I remember being in this long line of people and they were shaking hands at this networking event. And the person in front of me said, "Oh, I'm a web designer," and then the other person said, "I'm a web designer," and "I'm a web designer." And it was like 2004 and I said, "Hey, I have this business that had started out as a web design business. I have this business and I do content.” And they were like, "What?" [Laughs].
Dan Klyn: [Laughs].
Kris Mausser: "I do, I do content."
Dan Klyn: Yeah.
Kris Mausser: For web, for digital, like for web products, for digital products. And and it was my different, it was like my USP, my Unit of Selling Proposition. It was like, "Hey, yeah, I can do this thing. I can do the coding. I can do the design but you know, who's talking about the words?” And back then people would have this way of invoicing clients where it was like, 50% up front and then you would go do it for—
Dan Klyn: Those were the days.
Kris Mausser: It was a, it was the days. And then you'd do a prototype or a design and you'd pick three designs and someone would, you know. And then you would wait for the client to come up with the content. And the length of time between the initial like mock up proposal to wrapping up the site and launching it was getting longer and longer because the client was the one who ... People were going, "Well, we need content."
Dan Klyn: Yeah, they had some photoshopped comps that indicated approximately where the content would go. And then it's like, yeah, so, so give it over.
Kris Mausser: Yeah, just, just ... And, and it was like long and you know, this long printed copy and these massive PDF files and you know, "Well, we want the structure. We need the structure so that's why we're going to create PDF files and we'll just link to every PDF file out there.” You know, and that was around the time when people were starting to go, "Hey, wait, there's this accessibility thing," and you know, PDFs aren't, back then, weren't accessible. And so my proposition to people was, "Hey, I can take the burden of creating the content, figuring out where the content goes off of your clients or off of your staff, so that you'll have a website that you can launch, you know, in two months instead of a year. [Laughs] And and that's again about the people. It's not really about the content.
Dan Klyn: Yeah. Yeah, and also about time, which I think…
Kris Mausser: Time.
Dan Klyn: … is the other …
Kris Mausser: Yes.
Dan Klyn: Dimension that I think is so fascinating. somebody that I think you know, Jeffrey McIntyre, his, his thumbnail definition of content strategy at one time was "Well, think about IA over time."
Kris Mausser: Yeah.
Dan Klyn: And, and another word that you said, just a second ago which I, is so powerful that it's hard to imagine for, for, for folks today that there was a time when the web wasn't publishing, when it was published. When it was thing that was done that was put into the environment and there was a, there was nothing when that happened. Time would stand still until the next decision to either do something different or to change that thing. And the word publishing a gerund, something that is on-going and continuous. That's something that first generation Polar Book, not so ... You know, like what you ... Here's designing complex websites and we designed it. Now what?
Kris Mausser: Exactly, and you would just, you would just kind of do the, "So what." And that was the other that I would tell people was that, "You know, this thing has to be evergreen. You can't, you're not creating a brochure. Like, you're falling back into the mental model of, you know, set it and forget it or publish and, and ship it, or whatever your model it is. And I would say that, you know, that really ... It was hard because a lot of, a lot of people back then [laughs] which sounds like it's like 40 years ago. But, you know, 15 years ago [laughs] they were sort of going, you know, "Well, I don't have time. I just want to have this, this presence on, on the web and I want it to look sexy and I want some content there.” And I would think that that would probably be around the time, 2007, there, there were two things that happened around then that really changed things. There was the rise of the user and the rise of you know, the iPhone [laughs]. And that changed the power dynamic. It was no longer that kind of like—
Dan Klyn: Yeah.
Kris Mausser: Gutenberg model of, "Here, we've got the printing press and we have the power." It was like, "Hey, I have the power," you know. "I have this and I have, I want to do what I want to do." And certainly people who've been in user experience prior to that knew that, but I would say that, that that power dynamic shifted around that time. Would you agree?
Dan Klyn: Yeah. I'm trying to think of 'cause there were lots of smart phones. And so it's not that there's lots of smart phones because those were…
Kris Mausser: No.
Dan Klyn: Mostly nerds. It's that there's a device that folks have.
Kris Mausser: Yes.
Dan Klyn: Where it matters what we do. And we thought there was just one of those and now there’s…
Kris Mausser: Yeah.
Dan Klyn: And now there's two. And then my God when the iPhone—and then when the iPad comes out, for me personally as a, expert making flash-based…
Kris Mausser: [Laughs].
Dan Klyn: Blank…
Kris Mausser: Yeah.
Dan Klyn: When that came out it's like, oh, well, okay, I guess one of the most lucrative activities that I engage in at that time was making pixel perfect, kerning just right, highly interactive, lots of video and cool shit in flash. So, huh. Thanks, Steve. You changed everything.
Kris Mausser: Steve changed everything.
Dan Klyn: Yeah, but it wasn’t smart phones it was the iPhone. I think, I think you're right.
Kris Mausser: It was the iPhone, I, yeah. And I mean don't want to, you know, maybe some historian will say like, "You're, you're putting too much causation on this."
Dan Klyn: Mmmmm, I don't know.
Kris Mausser: But, but you know, this is my kind of read on my own experience in history and it was the iPhone that changed that. Because, you know, we had flip phones and we had Blackberries, sort of like people were doing their, you know, their Sneaky Snake game or whatever. But that was still in the hands to your, to your point of a very small group of people. And the iPhone, like I remember I got my first one in Detroit. I [Laughs].
Dan Klyn: [Laughs].
Kris Mausser: I went across the border. We didn't have them in Canada yet. I snuck it across and then I jail broke it and I was like, "Wow, this is so cool. Like I can move the apps around and I can you know. And, and not long after Facebook became a thing and now we have user generated content. So there was this confluence of things that happened in a very short period of time that we had to think a little bit differently about content.
Dan Klyn: Yeah.
Kris Mausser: And, and structure. and we couldn't be as prescriptive about things anymore because it wasn't, it was no longer this mental model shift from, "Yeah, we know that this is digital content and it behaves differently than a book or a magazine.” But you know, we really didn't have to deal with that reality of, until that kind of user generated con- content, the rise of the user, the, the mobile device. You know, making sure that content was now [inaudible] or figuring out what content people use on the digital, the mobile device versus us a desktop. So that's kind of the area where content strategy became popularized, in 2019, because we kind of realized, and I think around that time in 2009, I think that's when people started wondering, where the web was incredibly IA heavy and I would say, because of, you know, like I said the backend structure and the front, the front end, like the, the the display part was always very IA heavy. I think the pendulum started going like, "Hey, is IA user experience and user experience matters more than this structure." So we have this kind of swing happen where it was about the experience and some of that experience was the content. And so that's when, you know, Christina Halvorson's book came out in 2009 and her book came out of, of I guess a conversation that happened at one of the IA Summits of 2008. So I might have some of timing wrong, but I think that people were talking about structure but they were also starting to talk about, you know, the stuff, the container. Like, not just the container but what goes in the container at that moment.
Dan Klyn: The contained. Yeah.
Kris Mausser: Exactly.
Dan Klyn: Was there ... So, one of the things that the library science people in the field, one of the reasons I think that IA was such a welcoming idea to them, was that they thought that they didn't know how to draw good or they didn't think of themselves as being, skillful as visual and graphic designers. And so, oh, great, there's a, a place in computing for somebody who isn't entirely technical, who has a point of view on the way things should be put together but is neither the construction crew to build it nor the décor or aesthetics crew. That there was this place independent of what it looks like and independent of how it also, it gets built, where we can add value and, and do stuff. In calling your, your business, one of your businesses web design, did, are you proficient in visual presentation and is that part of ... How does that fit into this story, the, the question about the, you know, someone who presents information in a visual, aesthetic way?
Kris Mausser: That's a good question. I think you know, I think what really resonated me with that impression is that I feel like, this is probably a sweeping generalization, but with UX and IA and content, there was a place, to your point, for liberal arts majors [laughs] to find a space in technology. We didn't to be the coders. Like, it, if you wanted to be an early adopter, you had to code. I mean, that was just how it was and I mean, I can trace my first code back to like some computer camp I did when I was eight or nine and that—
Dan Klyn: Yeah.
Kris Mausser: You know, I did some coding back then. So, true GenXer, right? But I think that, I think you're right. I think that the, this thing, this idea of like, "Hey, we have this presentation layer and we have to design it or structure it or create content for it," was a really place for people with, you know, arts degrees or the more broader thinkers. And it gave us that space in technology that wouldn't otherwise or hadn't otherwise been an opportunity for us, right? So, to come to your question about visual design, yeah, so part of my diploma was actually in the basics and fundamentals of graphic design. So I do know letting and kerning and you know, where you should put an image relative to a box.
Dan Klyn: Yeah, yeah.
Kris Mausser: In terms of like, you know, then should—
Dan Klyn: The rules.
Kris Mausser: I know the rules of the design, of, of design in general.
Dan Klyn: Yep.
Kris Mausser: And so, I actually really enjoyed that part of, of the job [laughs], but you know, it was, content was more important, I think, in, in that point. And the limits to my own understanding of you know, Adobe Photoshop. You know, I, it's funny, because I tell people, I'm like, "I, I had like Flash 0.0 and Adobe Photoshop 0.0 and Quark Express and you know, I knew all those fundamentals of the thing. But then, you know, it comes a point both with the code and the design that it kind of surpassed my general knowledge of this thing, right?
Dan Klyn: Yeah.
Kris Mausser: Like it started to [inaudible] started coming to the table. And the work that they could do was far greater than anything I could do. That was also the age of like the beveled edges of web design and you know, like a light source, and…
Dan Klyn: All of that, back to the iPod, that was the visual language of the iPod and the iPhone…
Kris Mausser: Absolutely.
Dan Klyn: Was, it had, you know, you were holding something that was beveled, so and, and the skiumorphic or however you say that word.
Kris Mausser: Mm-hmm [affirmative].
Dan Klyn: The drop shadows, the Corinthian leather…
Kris Mausser: Yeah.
Dan Klyn: Ufff, those were
Kris Mausser: That was the experience. It was that like, "I'm holding a thing," and so we need to bevel those edges.
Dan Klyn: Yeah.
Kris Mausser: And that kind of extended beyond my own design [laughs] capabilities. I mean, I don't know, sensibilities, like looking back, but also capabilities. I don't think, I think that that was kind of outside of my realm and I was like, "You know what? We're all starting to become like I'm either a designer or user experience designer or I'm a IA or content strategist, and that's kind of that … You know, we all started siloing up which I also, I think, I, I spoke at a … I was the keynote for UX Edmonton a couple of years ago. And I was talking about how by siloing ourselves I feel like we started to kind of hinder ourselves as an industry. Because I think that you didn't necessarily have to be experts in those other things, but what I feel makes me a really great designer, like whether that's if you want to call me a UX designer or a content designer now, is because of all of the experiences I had back then. And conferences, you know, we went into this like specific "I'm going to an IA conference. I'm going to a, you know, content conference," and whether you—
Dan Klyn: It's like we're, we're still doing that.
Kris Mausser: I know we are! I know.
Dan Klyn: [Laughs].
Kris Mausser: And I'm not trying to slam what you know, is happening in a couple weeks [laughs].
Dan Klyn: Well, I don't have to say. We don't know if it's happening in a couple of weeks, but...
Kris Mausser: Yeah, I know. I know. But, you know, I do feel like there, you know, there's a, there’s value in knowing the periphery things, or the tangential or adjacent things, even if you don't plan to, to do that…
Dan Klyn: Yeah.
Kris Mausser: In your own job. And, and I think that, that that then becomes up to the individual to go and seek out that information. And so, it's not so much, it is not the fault of conferences because conferences are you know, revenue generators that meet, you know, product market fit that and people go to those conferences and people make money off of them. But I do think that as an industry, I think that some of the conversations that started happening on Twitter or well, we didn't have that Medium, but in blog posts started to get a little more diluted because we were talking about the deeper aspect or deeper elements of our individual disciplines as opposed to like, what does this mean, as a whole? Do you feel that?
Dan Klyn: I'm probably, not probably, I am guilty of perpetuating that.
Kris Mausser: [Laughs].
Dan Klyn: Yeah.
Kris Mausser: I think there's a place for that, I do. I do think there's a place for that but, you know, it's interesting.
Dan Klyn: Well it's, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's that thing about moving from unconscious incompetence through the other phases and there's, I at least have had in myself and have seen in other practitioners, a journey from interest to mastery, in a very powerful initial mastery. And I'm reminded of Alan Watts said something about the student who first attains satori goes to Hell, or is in risk of going to Hell. Like, is strait as arrow is just going to, that's going to be terrible. Like, you don't, it's dangerous to attain understanding and power as a, as a younger person, let's say. So, there's the, "I'm interested in this." "Holy shit, I'm awesome at this." I'm basically the equivalent of a senior because they don't, I'm better at most of this stuff than them.” And then now I feel like I'm more into, "Oh, God, I don't know anything at all," and and I'm less interested in knowing things than in helping make things happen. And so, so and, and I think that's why I started out with this question about definition and boundary because the more I know, the less I know. And, and so I'm curious, if we fast forward a bit from 2009 to 2019 or '20, has there been a, have people generally become clueful? Has the, "What is it and where does it fit and what its value is," has that become clearer now?
Kris Mausser: So I don't think it's become clear just in, in my own experience, you know, working with information architects, working with user experience designers. There's definitely a question when you come together as a team of where the boundaries are from one job to the other.
Dan Klyn: Yeah.
Kris Mausser: Like, "Hey, am I stepping on your toes if I do this?", or you know, are you stepping on mine? And, and that's kind of where I feel that, you know, in defining the thing and siloing the thing, it did create some parameters around the thing that, you know, maybe didn't need to be there in the first place, you know. Because I feel like where content strategy in 2009, part of, you know, the, the model that was shared in Christina's book initially was about the people side of things. So there was an acknowledgement that there's this content and there's this structure, but there's also this people side of things where there's, you know, a work flow in the organization that feeds this kind of content and structure. And there is governance around this content that is a people-led initiative. And then the other evolution of that model to where we are today is really kind of indicative of how people are defining the parameters of what it is they do and where the dust has settled. And some of those people elements are now, and I'm not, you know, trying to slide on this, but I think it's, it is reflective of even just my own experience in a product company, where you know, it is about the structure. It's about the system. It's about the content and the user flow within that system. So it's filling the gaps and needs of what we don't have necessarily under maybe user experience, you know. And it's, it's those touch points. But we have kind of gotten a little further away from all of the people aspects I think that that also had to come into play, you know. You can't necessarily plan for content without stakeholders and you know, other people involved [laughs]. Because, you know, content still comes from a place of you know, a person [laughs] whether that stakeholder is, is a developer or a, you know, a designer or the business itself? But you know, planning is a, is function. Not a function of the content, it's a function of the people.
Dan Klyn: And you are in a product world today at Shopify. You have in the past been in let's say information is the product and, and if we made a contrast to say, you've been in a world where the infor—the delivery of information is the product. You now work in a world where that remains true but there are also goods that you know, there's a … You're in a product organization that's making a platform, that's making products and services. How does a content strategy practitioner look at those? Do you … If somebody were considering those two directions, a young content strategist had, had opportunities in both of those directions, what's ... Is it, is it different when you go on one path relative to the other?
Kris Mausser: I believe it is because one, one is more about ... Well, they're both about the user. The product though is about, you know, one, like one of the design principles at Shopify is like, and I'm gonna totally bastardize this, but it's the concept that, you know, there's one destination and many different doors. So, the user, it's up to the user how they want to arrive or do the thing.
Dan Klyn: Mm-hmm [affirmative].
Kris Mausser: So looking at that as a product, I'm a little ... You know, it's almost like a product feature [laughs], you know?
Dan Klyn: Yeah.
Kris Mausser: How, how versatile is your product? How ubiquitous is it to the user's experience in their journey, is a different way of thinking and more of a puzzle than if you have the information delivery and it's more about what is the information and how do want others to experience it? Or how do you need for others to experience it, in a less confined way. Does that make sense?
Dan Klyn: Yeah, yeah. No, it totally does.
Kris Mausser: Because, because really, with a product company, I feel anyway, that the, there's a lot of bounded context and the distance to the code is very flat. So you have the code base and the engineering and [inaudible] back on top. And so, you know, the words you choose, the, you know, like the taxonomy, the controlled vocabulary, all of those become part of the experience, but also are very tightly coupled to the back end.
Dan Klyn: Yeah.
Kris Mausser: Which is a little bit more like the early of web design.
Dan Klyn: Yeah.
Kris Mausser: Whereas, you know, looking at, you know, information architecture and information from the broader context, it's, it's not as tightly coupled to the back end anymore and it's more about the front end and the relationship and the meaning to the user. You know, the meanings that are created by the boundaries, we don't have as much control over that in a product where things are very tightly coupled.
Dan Klyn: That's fascinating. Do you, do you sense a, a difference in the, what kind of a background somebody needs in order to thrive in either of those environments?
Kris Mausser: I think that … I think on the product side having a ... and you and I have talked about this, having a very strong informational architecture background is, is a, is an asset because of the way product is created. I think that, I think that creating delightful experiences and imparting meaning is probably more a function of structure than it is about words. There is a layer, there is an element of UX writing and I'm not trying to say that there is no, you know, content design or UX writing to it, but so much of that is so tightly coupled to IA that I feel like that is an area that a lot of people even if they, even if it's not necessarily their background, it, just having some knowledge in it is going to give them a better, probably set them up better for success. I mean, I would even say user experience designers in a product field could benefit from some IA [laughs].
Dan Klyn: Isn't it, and isn't it funny that, that, that there's plenty who haven't really gotten much of it yet?
Kris Mausser: Yeah.
Dan Klyn: Through however they get trained, that that isn't explicitly something that, that's a thing.
Kris Mausser: Yeah, and I mean, you know, this is also where definitions get really fuzzy because you know, content inventory is, and content audit, for instance, were the domain of the information architect in the early days. And they sort of became absconded and it's a tool. So it doesn't really matter but it's, you know, who's use, who's using the tool to define the end results or the end goal? And so some of those same practices that an information architect would take, whether it's like, "How do you get from ..." You know, "What is this like point? Where does this relationship to, from point A to point B, and how do we make sure that that makes sense, like there's sense making there and place making, all of those things are really baked into product design.
Dan Klyn: Yeah.
Kris Mausser: So to me, if you want to be a great product designer or a great product content strategist, having some of that IA background is, is really beneficial. And even the understanding around controlled vocabulary is … I was doing some research on what's it called, like story, story telling and design. I'm going to screw this up because I don't remember the terminology, but there is this idea of basically controlled vocabularies in the back end of product. Because product is so huge and the code base is so huge and you have so many different people working on it, if you're referencing code somewhere else or legacy code and someone, you know, was having a beer and coded in late one night and going, "Yeah, I'm just going to call it, 'the thing.’" And then someone else, the thing breaks, that there's a break somewhere in their system, you're trying to find out, "What do you call this thing?" Like … Oh, domain driven design. That's what I was referring to.
Dan Klyn: Yes.
Kris Mausser: But it's that idea of like, "What do you call this thing and how am I gonna go and, and tackle it?" So even things like controlled vocabularies in a product company are important so that people can actually you know, code faster [laughs]. You know, you'll have, you can actually get the thing done and shipped faster and then everyone know when they say, "this", they mean “this.” So, it, I feel like, you know, content strategy in a product company if you're working on products specifically is somewhat of a misnomer because the strategic and people are going to get upset with me for saying that, but the strategic aspects of content, like if you flip those two words around, like strategic and content, first of all, it's a little more tactical and you're [inaudible] and part of that road mapping. So, it's more about information architecture and UX writing, I would say. With, you know, some hierarchy and content design. Like, those are the three. Like information architecture, content design and UX writing. Boom, that's, that's kind of product content strategy right there.
Dan Klyn: Do, do you think we're doing any better? It's, it's kind of an unfair question, but of the organizations that you know about, not limiting it to your current role, but you worked for a long time as a consultant and worked with lots of different kinds of companies. If they've got a deficit, is there, is there a, a one that is a, a deficit in common that they have that holds them back from doing good content strategy work or using information architecture well in, in their environments? Have you ... Is there a greatest hits of what, what's broken among the many different organizations you've worked with?
Kris Mausser: Yes, and it's not having anything to do with the content. It's again, the people. So, if you have organizational structures, those organizational structures often are content creators. And that content leads to either duplicated efforts or you know, an abundance of content that needs to be curated or managed or archived. And then there's this whole other—
Dan Klyn: Probably that last one the most.
Kris Mausser: Exactly, and then there's this whole other aspect of content, of archiving in and of itself. Like when, when do you pull things down? When do you, you know, who's in charge of this thing and how many stakeholders are involved? So, to me the, that, that would be the greatest hits. The other thing that I find is really interesting that has happened which I think makes sense given how organizations are structured, content strategy has become the purview of marketing. And so that creates a whole other dynamic that we need to solve. And it's interesting because, you know, for a couple years ago Joe Palitzi, actually, who's like the content marketing side of things said, "Oh, you know, we've been calling content strategy synonymous with content marketing strategy.” And content marketing strategy also uses some of the things that content strategy uses but I would say that content strategy in its purest form is about the user and the agnostic relationship of content for meaning. So looking at it from a very like not, "What's the message" or you know, "How are we gonna convey this?" It's more like, "How do we structure this thing to create meaning once the meaning is detached from the person creating the content.” Whereas content marketing strategy is really about the relationship. How do we meet the customer where they're at and give them content or have them give us content that, you know, for a benefit of the business, right? Like there's … The tools are the same. It's the application that's a little different.
Dan Klyn: Yeah. Huh. Is there a, a ... Is that a problem, the synonymy of content marketing strategy and content strategy and the ... It sounds like and I'm probably putting words in your mouth now, so please readjust this, but I think I heard in there that there's a … If those words are a thing, they're moving toward marketing content strategy generally is, there's a tractor beam of the Death Star of marketing and your X-Wing fighter of content strategy is being pulled into, that's no moon. Tell me, say more about that or, or should, should we not speak of these things?
Kris Mausser: [Laughs].
Dan Klyn: [Laughs].
Kris Mausser: [Laughs] Well, I think they need to be spoken about. I think that, you know, I think it's a natural progression of content and ubiquity which is why we started this ... I wanted to start this call talking about the history because you know, where it, you know, content was the sort of left to the few it is now part of the many. And the many content creators in most organizations happen to be in coms and marketing.
Dan Klyn: Yeah.
Kris Mausser: And so it is very much a thing and it certainly isn't something that, you know, it's, you just can't go, "Hey," like stake in the ground. Like, "This is my thing." You don't want turf wars…
Dan Klyn: Yeah.
Kris Mausser: In that way. And to the business, if you look at the business rationale, marketing in a strategic manner benefits the business, whereas some of the other stuff that we do were maybe it's content strategy for the sake of surfacing the right content, making sure the content is structured properly, making sure the organization is, is creating content in a consistent manner so that it's like consistent and clear across every channel, that component is a lot harder of a sell as you know, because that doesn't necessarily translate to more dollars right away.
Dan Klyn: Right.
Kris Mausser: That's like am inefficiency thing as opposed to, “Hey, we're driving traffic and we're going to get some, some hits because of the content and editorial calendar and whatever we're using.” So, the tools are, are the same, right? I always tell people that the tools are the same. It's just the degree to which the problems they solve and the rationale for, for using it.
Dan Klyn: Well, it's, it's almost time. I want to ... We've had a, a couple of very faithful listeners and so I'm eager to hear if they have questions for you. But so maybe one last thing for me before I stop hogging you is, SEO, the—
Kris Mausser:[Laughs].
Dan Klyn: If there's ... I, I have the mental picture of the words content strategy and there's a, a gravitational pull towards something called marketing. In the gravitational field I, that we just talked about, where's SEO and is that more or less something that content strategists should be smart about?
Kris Mausser: Okay, so like we've been talking about, you have, you know, you have these tools in your tool kit, right? You have a hammer and you have a saw. And SEO is one of those things to the extent that you use that hammer or saw. You can use a hammer to hammer a nail and hang a picture. Or you can use a hammer to do demo work, right? It's the same hammer. So, to me, SEO is pretty similar, not in the sense that you're doing demo work but you can create—And I still do this. I do this actually a lot because there was a time in that continuum where SEO was a part of content strategy and there was a part of like digital, creating good content. And I would say that I use SEO to do a gut check on words and meaning. So, I will check the word like, event was something that came up recently in one of my projects. And I did like a SE ... I did a keyword search, not to, for the use of, you know, event to drive traffic or event to, you know, connect with people but for me it, it was a language gut check more than a dictionary, because you'll have a dictionary that says, "Event means this."
Dan Klyn: Yeah.
Kris Mausser: But how is it actually being use? When I say, "event," what is the meaning out there? And so I still use SEO as a gut check for what users are using, what language users are using and what's their mental model of the word when they say, “X. ”And then applying that as a quick and dirty way of doing user experience like UX design so that you know, the words we're using are matching up with what are users are using.
Dan Klyn: Oh, man, I love that.
Kris Mausser: But there is also, there is also this like piece that, you know, it can also be used for other things. So all of this, whether you call it content strategy, whether you call it IA, it's really a tool box of things and how do you use it and how do you apply it? That's really where experience and you know, if you, if you think of your career trajectory, forget what it's called. Just learn the thing and then apply it at the right point in time for, whether it's for the user's purpose or the business purpose. That's really what it comes down to [laughs].
Dan Klyn: That is, that made me feel optimistic and My God…
Kris Mausser: [Laughs].
Dan Klyn: That doesn't happen as often as I'm accustomed to it.
Kris Mausser: [Laughs].
Dan Klyn: So I'm, it really helps me to hear you say it that way.
Kris Mausser: All the feels on a Sunday, I, I try.
Dan Klyn: Yeah.
Kris Mausser: But it's true. But it is true, you know, and I mentor people now. I mentor like up and coming IAs and content strategists and that's what I tell them. Like, "Just fill the tool box with all the things and then as you grow learn when to use what tool."
Dan Klyn: Amazing. Well, let's see Francesca had her hand up so I'm going to unmute her and I think she could turn her own camera on if she wants to. But ‘m curious Francesca, thank you for joining us today. Do you have a question for Kris Mausser?
Francesca: Hi, everybody. Sorry about, I'm, I'm on line from Italy and I, I was not ... I not see you both at the moment to, to not on my camera. Okay.
Dan Klyn: Perhaps you can now.
Francesca: Thank you. I, I'm learning this in real time here. Oh, there you are. Hello!
Francesca: Okay. [laughs]
Kris Mausser: Lovely to see you.
Francesca: Hi, and sorry I was not able to understand everything of this conversation because I just came back from a mountain bike ride. So a little bit tired, but I was very interested because I'm I've been, I'm an information architect. I've been a consultant for about 10 years, here in Italy. I, I met Dan in our Italian Information Architectural Summit.
Dan Klyn: Was that in Bologna or in here in-
Francesca: Here and, both in Bologna and then well, but we, we didn't met by, by each other but I attended a workshop in Bologna some years ago. So, but I—
Dan Klyn: Great.
Francesca: Andrea's my friend, as well. I was very interested because about seven years ago I, I was hired by university and was asked to start work on content. And so I, I, I am trying to make it a match between information architect for my, my skills about information architecture and content strategy. But one thing that Kris said, impressed me, and is what she said about people. My experience, shifted from information architect to, to content as a, shifted me from more technical and conceptual skills to more a, skills that you can use, that you need to work with people. To involve them and to making and communicating and, and collaborating. I think it's very fascinating.
Kris Mausser: That's great. I'm glad you got that from that. Yeah, absolutely. That, that is a lot of what I do is, is bringing people together.
Francesca: Yeah.
Kris Mausser: And, and then and then taking what I learned and going and architecting and, and writing or all of that. But I would say the bulk of what I do is with people.
Francesca: Thank you.
Dan Klyn: Yeah Francesca, I had the same moment when she said, "People." That was so not the word that I was expecting to hear.
Francesca: Yeah.
Dan Klyn: And it was like, "Oh."
Francesca: Oh, yeah, yeah [laughs].
Dan Klyn: It's people. And then another observation that I'll make is that in architecture often times the pictures of the buildings don't have any people in them at all. There's this fetishization of the structure through photography and through a depiction strategy that's like, maybe the equivalent of perfect photoshopped comps where every line break is meaningful. There are no widows at the bottoms of any paragraphs. And the, the, bringing people into these architectures, thank God for content strategists for, for, for helping that happen 'cause left to their own devices architects kind of want to forget about the people sometimes, I feel.
Francesca: Yes, I totally agree.
Dan Klyn: That's a great analogy [laughs].
Francesca: Thank you.
Dan Klyn: Well, well I hope to see you again sometimes, Francesca.
Francesca: Yeah, yeah, maybe—
Dan Klyn: Thanks for joining us.
Dan Klyn: Are you affected by the quarantine at all?
Francesca: Sorry?
Dan Klyn: Have you been affected by the quarantine? Do you live in, in Lombardy?
Francesca: No, not at all. I live not so far from Lombardy but for now we are free to move but we are asked to, to move as little as possible.
Dan Klyn: Well we, we hear about how bad it is there and I'm thinking all of Italy is in my thoughts, especially those places so effected. Those are some of the most beautiful places I've ever been and to think that they are—
Francesca: Oh, yeah [laughs].
Dan Klyn: Suffering there is, is terrible, so
Francesca: Thank you very much but there is a, a there is a, we are feeling, we are starting to cope with uncertainty and so but as Italian I can say we have a very, very strong health system. They are the most treating, their ability to be resilient and I'm very, very ... I'm very proud of it [laughs].
Dan Klyn: Oh, it's so, no it's so good to hear because in the United States we have no such pride or—
Francesca: Too bad [laughs].
Dan Klyn: There's a lot of fear here right now, based on the incompetence of our…
Francesca: I feel very lucky in this moment [laughs].
Dan Klyn: Yeah, yeah.
Francesca: So.
Dan Klyn: Thank you.
Francesca: Thank you.
Dan Klyn: Do you have any, any follow up for Chris before we go move on to Tracey's question?
Francesca: Mmmm, no I, I, I'm very glad to be, to have been connected with you and so thank you very much for this conversation.
Dan Klyn: Great. Thank you.
Kris Mausser: Thank you!
Dan Klyn: Okay, let's let's see now about Tracey and I will unmute Tracey. And if you'd like to start your video, Tracey, you're welcome to but it is not a requirement. Thank you for being here.
Tracey: Oh, thanks for having me. Hello.
Dan Klyn: Hi.
Kris Mausser: Hey!
Tracey: Hi, it's been a really, really great chat so far. Thank you both. okay, so I think my question ... Okay, so, well, I guess first of all, I'm Tracey. I'm in Vancouver, so nice to meet you both.
Kris Mausser: Hey, a fellow Canuck.
Tracey: Yeah, a fellow Canuck, yeah. I guess my question is around like, okay, so I thought it was really interesting how you said like, IA is important in terms of like a product context and that one of the design principles of Shopify is kind of like one de-one destination to many different doors. I guess I'm wondering like, okay so if a key aspect of IA's like choreography and thinking about like that, that structure, how do you, like at, at a company like Shopify and like on a, a on a team that big, how do you scale the practice of IA, because I feel like it's really, you know, its’ like with design systems it's easy, it's easier to create like components, like design components that scale pretty easily. But IA is so like, you know detailed and kind of contextual and it really is kind of in like the nitty gritty. So how do you take like many small teams working on features and kind of like keep an overview of that structure at scale, and like scale an IA practice?
Kris Mausser: Yeah, I mean, I, that's above my pay grade right now [laughs].
Tracey: [Laughs].
Kris Mausser: But, but I, I do think that we, you know, Shopify does a great job of breaking up the various parts and of the features and product line, and, and and the content strategists themselves, we don't have an IA per se. Like, we don't have an information architect. We do have information architects working as content strategists and practicing information architecture, but their title, their job title is content strategist or some variation of that, depending on their seniority. And we actually have a really great and strong content strategy team. I know Shopify's really well known for that, where we have a lot of communication amongst content strategists. So, coming back to that people concept, a lot of my job is, is touching base with those various people, those content strategists and making sure that we are, you know, structuring, labeling. If there's a new label or term that we have to come up with there's like a consortium that forms around that term and a conversation around that with all of the people whose various touch points would, you know, be involved in that decision. So we, we kind of know own product area, our own product line, and the things we're working on. But it's up to us to pair and continue to, you know, work our own network so that there is that consistency. And it, and it works really well. I mean we're up to like 55 content strategists now. All of varying capacities within IA. And, now anything that would be a bigger project, like a search project or you know, I don't know, some kind of global IA conversation, would be probably be left to, you know, a person.I know at Facebook, but you know, I can't really say with Shopify but I know at Facebook there are people who are in charge of like, they're sort of ... They sit higher in the product in terms of their, their domain. And then they're responsible for a whole area and then they do the IA for that. And so I've seen that also work within product companies.
Tracey: Yeah.
Kris Mausser: But, you know, I really do feel like it's the one area like, IA and content, a lot of us are introverts, a lot of us are kind of, you know, working on the thing and really but the thing that makes you the, the best IA or content strategist within a product company is chatting with all the people and gaining all the context and keep those conversations going so that you can create a fairly consistent experience.
Tracey: Okay.
Dan Klyn: Wow, but yeah. Thank for saying that that way. Again, I'm just like, man I'm so cynical about this stuff but it sounds like, like it's possible, like you're, you're in an organization where good decision making about strategy and structure are happening. That's great.
Kris Mausser: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, and, and the super part too is that it becomes kind of ... You become an invaluable person on the team, I think, because a lot of designers will say … Like for instance in my, you know, my team, I have designers who are working on a feature and that's what they do. But because I have to know about all of the features and all of the relational and tangential things, I become fairly valuable to the team because I have that greater context. And a lot of content strategists are IA that Shopify had that broader context, because we're always talking to each other. So, in meetings we actually probably know about areas of the product that even the PMs might not be aware of.
Dan Klyn: That's a, that's amazing. Does that, do you have a follow up, Tracey? Is that help, help you.
Tracey: Yeah, I don't have a follow up and that was very helpful. Thanks.
Dan Klyn: Okay. You're welcome.
Dan Klyn: I will maybe just add one small thing which is, we at the Understanding Group, are weird for so many reasons and one of the reasons is being a specialty information architecture consultancy. So, we get brought into sometimes massive organizations, Fortune 5 size companies where there are no information architects involved yet. And the desire though is to have order and to be able to make changes to the order that are more than an incremental thing that gets slipped into the next release. Like, like a, "You can't get there from here," a, a wicked problem let's say where there is no correct answer for, "We're here, we say we want to be there." There is no correct, well no right way but there are many ways that could be good. And the thing we've tried to do and I don't know that we've really succeeded yet, is to make ... And back to back to what Kris, Kris was saying earlier about domain driven design, if we had a, a set of maps and models that reliably described the real world… holy shit. Like, pardon my French, but like, that is among the … Two, I think two of the things I love best about working as an information architect, one is being thanked for meetings. When somebody says, "That was the best meeting I've been in this whole quarter." Like, I feel like, "Wow, we're making, we're, we're helping human beings thrive in some way, because everybody hates meetings. And we may help them make some good decisions. So that's a big one. And equally big is, if we can make a, a model, like an object model of what are the things? That isn't a picture of an implementation.
Kris Mausser: Yeah.
Dan Klyn: We, we bump into, you know, we ask for this stuff when we show up. Like, "So the environment as it exists today, please share with us the maps and models that you have and that you use to understand this world.” And it's like a dog that's been shown a card trick. It's like, their head will cock and maybe an ear will go up or an eyebrow. But like, raps and rodals (impression of Scooby Doo)?
Tracey: [Laughs].
Dan Klyn: Like, we don't got time to make maps and models of the world as it exists today. We only have permission to be bringing, reaching into a future where growth is where it's supposed to be, and then bring more of that into the now. There's this weird must be positioned to the future, must be reaching into the future and pulling parts of the future into the now every two weeks. And if you can somehow get the organization to look the other direction to, to say, "What have we done? What do we have? Like what are the things?” There's this, I, I've seen it where most of the things that would be good to do that we think we need we already have. We just don't have a map or a model or, or in a perfect world, maps and models that are at the right different levels of granularity. I think that's the other thing about institutionalizing IA, is you need to have built in what Jorge Arango talks about as zooming up and down from different levels of abstraction. Like, organizationally, the org doesn't have a capability for doing that 'cause it doesn't know that it needs one. And it seems like, again, it's more of that looking back what we've done. And we know what we've done is terrible. We need to, to be focused on the future. So, for, for, for me, the, the, thing that I have not yet seen happen that information architects that I work with, that we try to make happen around institutionalization of IA, is could there be a set of maps and models that is not about the particular implementation of the CMS today, because two weeks now it'll be useless. So it can't be so detailed that when somebody ships the next dot release of your product, the map is wrong and now it's useless. So it's, it's a funny, like one or two steps up the abstraction level of saying, “what is a ..." like if you're working with a car company what is the interior? Like, then people look at you like, "Oh, my God. What are you on?" Like...
Kris Mausser: [Laughs].
Tracey: [Laughs].
Dan Klyn: You, Abby Covert has some amazing stories about working with giant trans-national organizations and she asked them about the, what a customer is And they're just like, "Who the—What, we, we certainly do not have time to ask a question at that level of ... A stupid question. A dumb question." Not a stupid question, a dumb question. So, so, so helping the organization be dumb enough to say, "Well what are our things?"
Tracey: Mm-hmm [affirmative].
Dan Klyn: Back to what Kris was saying about content audits, site audits, all that stuff is just key to being able to have the organization working in a way where the architecture is good. And the left hand isn't screwing up order because the right hand has a different order.
Tracey: Yeah.
Dan Klyn: And there isn't “the” order and I don't, I've not seen a, a design system yet that presents the order. It presents a kit of the parts that work good in somebody's sense of the order.
Tracey: Yeah.
Dan Klyn: But I think there's just so much work for all of us to like make this, be at the ... Like, how do you show an organization its things and the relationships and the names of the things and the synonyms for the things? There's, there's some tools but so much work to be done.
Kris Mausser: And throwing in complexity to that is we have you know, global products and many languages, you know, 18, 25. So when he said, "the thing," what does ... Can we, can we all agree what this thing is so that if we translate this thing or we localize this thing, is it the still the same? That is another area that, you know, information architects can certainly help [laughs].
Tracey: Very interesting.
Kris Mausser: Yeah. Dan we, we can't hear you. Nope.
Tracey: Nope.
Kris Mausser: Yeah, you're muted.
Dan Klyn: Oh, Rodin, I just unmuted you. The question you have about, is it really just maps and models? There's this other piece about the agency that actors like us have to act on what we already know. Can you say a little bit more about that question 'cause, I, I think it's a terrific question? Huh, I'm trying to unmute Rodin but it's not working. Oh, well. Tracey, or Kris, do you have a response to that agency that we have as actors in our environments and what we know? [Laughs].
Kris Mausser: I am ... Sorry, I'm just reading, reading the question. I, I would, I need to unpack agency. I need to figure out like what, what, what does that mean?
Dan Klyn: Yeah, for me-
Kris Mausser: Can we just do our own thing? [Laughs].
Dan Klyn: Well, freedom to act.
Kris Mausser: Freedom to act, okay.
Dan Klyn: To choose.
Kris Mausser: And do we as, we meaning IAs and content strategists? Okay.
Dan Klyn: I think so.
Kris Mausser: Yeah, I think, I certainly ... there's definitely a piece of that. If you've done your due diligence and you have you know, talked to all the people, at one point you do have to just call it. I think that's something that, personally ... This is a personal opinion [laughs].
Dan Klyn: Yeah.
Kris Mausser: I think that if you have done your due diligence as a practitioner at some point, people [inaudible] working with people, at some point I feel like you should be the one in the position to have the final say. Because the other thing with, with anything, maybe not a building, but anything that we're architecting that is not digital is the impermanence of that. We can always change it.
Dan Klyn: Hmmm.
Kris Mausser: And I think that people have gotten ... I think people have gotten fearful of that. Like, "Oh, if we do this one thing and we call it this one thing, or we have a relationship." Like, dude, it can be changed. Like we just ...
Dan Klyn: [Laughs].
Kris Mausser: Yeah, it make some time and you know, people be get, get upset with you for changing the code base, but you know, if you've done your due diligence as a practitioner, I feel like at some point you should be the one to also be given the, the freedom to say, "This is the thing," and not necessarily, you know, and, and present the model and go like, "This is, this is what I see in the world out there.” What do you think, Dan?
Dan Klyn: I think the, the, there's maybe even a duty, maybe even a moral imperative that ... And we may not actually have the agency, so there's the in law, there's the, the Latin phrases de facto and de jure. So we may not, from an org chart level have the, the power to be an agent to affect the kind of changes that we are advocating for but there's some kind of power of rendering a picture where … If we can, if we can express what we think, even if we don't have permission to implement that or to ... The likelihood that it happens, and this, this'll be an interesting thing that Rodin and I can talk about offline maybe is, we're both interested in the work of the architect Chris Alexander who disdains drawings as something that you would work off of, that instead you would be active in the environment, building it together in real time, using your feelings to know if you've done it right and tear it, take that course of bricks down if, if they don't, if they don't feel right. But in, in digital and, and per what you said, Chris, with the, the, the, the belief that everything can be changed any number of times. If we can render some map or model I think, even without permission, that is a de facto taking of power even if we don't really have it.
Kris Mausser: Absolutely.
Dan Klyn: Tracey, I'm curious what, what you would make of of this in your organization or in the context you were thinking about scale, how do we scale IA? Does the question of agency and who has power and permission, the ability to act, is that hard in the context you're thinking about?
Tracey: Yeah, I would, I think so. I think that, like, you know, as, as you both were talking about kind of like how to scale, it sounded to me like kind of like the three conditions you need seem to be like that model, like maps and models, communications, so having a connected team that is like collaboratively making decisions but then, like this leadership appetite and like values and then organization saying like, "We know we've made a mess and we need to look toward the future.” And I think like, I don't know, where I run into problems with agency is like, I have found that IA can't really be like a grass roots sort of effort, you know? It does need that sort of ... You, you, you know, you need agency [laughs]. But I think I like, you know, interpreted question in a much more like, a much less abstract way [laughs]. Yeah.
Dan Klyn: And we're better off for it, so—
Tracey: [Laughs].
Dan Klyn: Glad, I'm glad that I asked you and thank you for for that point of view. Yeah, the top—
Tracey: You make a good point though.
Dan Klyn: Down-ness of IA, there, certainly it needs to, to, to be good and to attract the participant of everybody from the bottom up. But there does seem to be almost inescapably a making change happen from the top down-ness to IA that really does beg that question of agency and power. Yeah.
Kris Mausser: I think culture has a lot to do with. I, I remember sort of one of the last models I did of, of content strategy with, for an organization. It was like an enterprise content strategy and piece of that was culture. And I think that you need that culture whether it's for IA work or content strategy or however, the tools that you plan to use, because so much of it does cut across you know, the, the silos within, with the organization and, and you know, you do need that culture that supports that.
Tracey: Yeah, definitely.
Dan Klyn: And, and we've come back to and maybe this unless Francesca or Tracey or Rodin have further questions, maybe this is a good place to to pause for today on this main point, this, this at least unexpected to me that people, that that's, that's really what's going on here, is people. What kind of agency that we have, what kind of complexity we're asked to solve in. What kind of complicatedness is intentionally or unintentionally, causing us to have a bad day and challenges, expressing ourselves and being our best selves. So ...
Kris Mausser: It, it feels very soil and green. It's the people! [Laughs].
Tracey: [Laughs].
Dan Klyn: Yeah, there's this bar, you, you've given us a candy bar of, of content strategy and it's made of people, yeah.
Kris Mausser: [Laughs].
Tracey: [Laughs].
Dan Klyn: I love it.
Tracey: Awesome.
Dan Klyn: Well thank, Kris, thank you so much for being up for this and Tracey and Francesca and Rodin, thank you for being here. I really do think that conversation is a meaningful ... It might be the smallest meaningful unit of change and just to be able to talk with each other about this stuff that we care about is a gift. And and I'm delighted that that there are women today on International Woman's Day who want to talk with me about this and so thank you.
Tracey: Thanks, Dan.
Kris Mausser: This has been great.
Dan Klyn: And with y'all's leave, there will be a transcript made of this and if you'd like your contributions, any of our guests, if you'd like us to edit those out for any reason, I'm omni-findable on the internet so just shoot me a note and I'd be happy to keep this between us chickens, as Mr. Resmini might say.
Kris Mausser: Sounds great.
Dan Klyn: Well, thank you all and look for a, a recording and transcription of this up on the internet soon as soon as we're able to. So, thank you so much.
Tracey: Thank you.
Kris Mausser: That was great.
Tracey: Take care.
Dan Klyn: Bye.