Karen McGrane: Pioneering Content Strategy and UX – Episode 151

Content Strategy Insights

Karen McGrane The web has changed a lot over the past 25 years. Or maybe it hasn't. Enterprise content architectures are maturing and finally beginning to separate content from its presentation. But old-fashioned artifacts like PDF files still abound, and authors still expect WYSIWYG editing experiences. And when Karen McGrane reflects on her work at Razorfish 25 years ago she's struck by how the team structures and business practices they adopted there are still relevant today. We talked about: her work at Autogram, the agency she founded with Jeff Eaton and Ethan Marcotte the content modeling practice at Autogram the implications for content strategy practitioners of the emergence of headless CMSs and decoupled content architectures the enduring challenges presented by PDF documents and WYSIWYG interfaces her take on the benefits for any business of having a niche, like Autogram's focus on content modeling and design systems the evolution and possible merging of content systems and design systems in enterprises the uneven adoption of new kinds of authoring experiences for decoupled systems the role of language and the importance of using shared terminology her take on content personalization how they're using AI at Autogram her observation that tagging may be one of the best uses of AI tech in content workflows her reflection on the early days Razorfish and the genuinely visionary work practices that emerged there Karen's bio Karen identifies and solves problems with content management and user experience design across print, web, and mobile. She has partnered with some of the world’s largest enterprise businesses to streamline their digital operations and governance. On a good day, I make the web more awesome. On a bad day, I just make it suck less. Connect with Karen online Autogram Twitter Mastadon LinkedIn Reddit Video Here’s the video version of our conversation: https://youtu.be/9xC3bPFieJ8 Podcast intro transcript This is the Content Strategy Insights podcast, episode number 151. As web technologies and business practices have evolved over the past 25 years, publishing, user experience design, and enterprise software systems have all converged on each other. Few content strategists have had as good a front-row seat to observe and participate in these developments at Karen McGrane. From her early days at the pioneering agency Razorfish to her current work at Autogram, it's not an exaggeration to say that Karen has seen it all. Interview transcript Larry: Hey, everyone. Welcome to episode number 151 of the Content Strategy Insights podcast. I am super extra delighted today to welcome to the show Karen McGrane. Karen probably needs no introduction, but I'm going to give her one anyway. She is one of the longest practicing content strategists out there, and she's gone by other labels, as well, information architect and other titles in the past. But one of the things that distinguishes her, many things distinguish her in this profession, but one is that she came in right out of a human computer interaction program at Rensselaer Polytech. So, she was ready for all this design stuff that we've been adding to the profession the last few years, way before any of us. Larry: She was, famously, the UX lead at Razorfish in the early days of that famous agency. She's worked for everybody, the New York Times, Conde Nast, Disney, Citibank, Time Inc., you name it. She wrote a couple books on Content Strategy for Mobile, on Going Responsive on responsive web design. She also did a podcast with Ethan Marcotte, the inventor of responsive web design, and they codified and articulated the whole notion of this now embedded practice. And she taught for many years, and still does teach, at the School of Visual Arts in New York City. I'm exhausted from that intro. Karen, tell the folks what you're up to nowadays. Karen: Well,