The Elements of Content Strategy - Erin Kissane [10]
Immersion matters
In a 2006 interview, the late Anne d’Harnoncourt, director of the Philadelphia Museum of Art for twenty-six years and daughter of famous curator and museum director René d’Harnoncourt, was asked for a word of advice to young curators. Her advice was “to look and look and look, and then to look again, because nothing replaces looking . . . to be with art.”8
Most of the content that most of us work with (most of the time) is not art. But the curatorial notion of consciously being with art—what critic Michael Fried calls “presentness”—is doubly relevant to our work.9
In one sense, it can refer to our own immersion in the content we work with—our pursuit of a knowledge that goes beyond simple familiarity. In the same interview mentioned above, d’Harnoncourt discussed her father’s groundbreaking 1939 exhibition of Native American art at the World’s Fair in San Francisco. René d’Harnoncourt, she recalls,10
spent years of his life really getting to know the people who made these objects, and so when he presented them, whether it was a sand painting, or totem poles from the north-west coast, or whatever it was, he tried to do . . . something that really respected the context in which it was made and at the same time would allow it to communicate to an audience not accustomed to seeing these things as the very, very beautiful and powerful things that they were.
The degree of expertise, sensitivity, and good judgment required of prominent curators may seem excessive to the content specialist whose “collections” reside in databases, but this description of a curator’s work should be ringing bells. To do our jobs well, we must balance an understanding of the context in which content is created (sourcing, business goals, workflow) with an understanding of the context in which it is read and used (user needs, delivery channels). And immersion in both worlds is what makes the right balance possible.
The second way in which curatorial ideas about presentness and focused attention cross into our discipline is all about the user.
In effective museum and gallery installations, visitors are usually invited to spend time simply being with art—or artifacts or other content. Curators and exhibition designers understand that people require certain things to have concentrated experiences: things like unobstructed access, good light, and freedom from distractions.
Now imagine going into a museum and trying to walk up to a Matisse, only to run into a glass wall ten feet away from the painting. To get past the wall—which is now frosted so you can’t see the painting at all—you have to write down your full name and address, and then show ID to prove that you are who you say you are. Once you’ve submitted to all this, you discover that the “painting” is only a small print—you have to go into another room full of billboards to see the original. Finally, you reach the painting. The descriptive label is written in miniature gray text on a slightly lighter gray background, so forget trying to read that, but here at last is the art.
That’s when the circus clowns pop out of the woodwork and start honking little horns and waving signs advertising tooth-whitening products and diet pills. This is content online.
The fact that anyone reads anything at all online is a demonstration of an extraordinary hunger for content. Leaving aside the distractions of email, other websites, and real life, we have built tens of thousands of websites around the idea that no matter how demanding, annoying, and abusive our sites become, our readers will keep coming back for our content. But is this really the best we can do? Of course it isn’t. And we should consider it part of our work as content strategists to ensure that all the effort and attention poured into creating and managing great content isn’t drowned out by interfaces that obstruct, annoy, and distract.
In a 2009 A List Apart article, designer and editor Mandy Brown challenges web designers to create space for readers. Echoing d’Harnoncourt,