Michael Andrews: Managing Content in Design Systems – Episode 147

Content Strategy Insights

Michael Andrews The emergence of design systems has created new content strategy and content management needs and opportunities, especially with the advent of headless CMSs. As a long-time UX practitioner, content strategy evangelist, and content systems expert, Michael Andrews is uniquely qualified to talk about how to manage content in these new systems. So far, the most important lesson he has learned from working with content in design systems: Don't forget to apply the basic content strategy lessons we've learned over the past 20 years. "You really are not going to be as good a content designer as you can be if you don't tap into the incredible body of knowledge that's been developed over the past 20 years in content strategy." We talked about: his work at Kontent.ai and his history as a UX and content practitioner the emergence of content practice in design systems, currently "more guidelines than executable processes" the problems with tightly tying content to specific uses in a design the main benefit of headless content management - "decouple the visual layout of the UI design from the content itself" - so the same message can be conveyed in multiple channels how content strategy practice manifests in design-system work the current state of tooling for working with content in design systems the benefits of working with content from a single source of truth governance issues that can arise when working with content in design systems the benefits of bringing well-established content strategy and content modeling craft to design-system content how a content model can help manage content variants and variations in a design systems the importance of having the right content structured and ready for uses like personalization experiences Michael's bio Michael Andrews is content strategy evangelist at Kontent.ai, a headless CMS. In this role, he champions better practices for managing all kinds of digital content. Over the past two decades, he has worked as a consultant in the fields of user experience and content strategy in the United States, Europe, and Asia, advising clients in a diverse range of industries. He’s spoken at various content-related conferences, blogs extensively, and has written two books about content metadata. He has an MSc in human-centered computing systems from the University of Sussex. Connect with Michael online: LinkedIn Twitter Video Here’s the video version of our conversation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EFPeiDA2RJ8 Podcast intro transcript This is the Content Strategy Insights podcast, episode number 147. As design systems have emerged over the past several years, content designers and content strategists have begun to work with their design and engineering colleagues in new ways. As a content strategy evangelist working for a headless-CMS company, Michael Andrews has a unique perspective on this growing segment of the design and content worlds. His biggest take-home lesson so far? Don't forget the basic content strategy lessons we've learned over the past 20 years. Interview transcript Larry: Hey everyone. Welcome to episode number 147 of the Content Strategy Insights podcast. I'm really delighted today to welcome back to the show, Michael Andrews. Michael was on about three years ago talking about metadata strategy, but we have a much more topical thing to talk about today. We're going to talk about the role of content and design systems. So Michael, welcome. Michael's an evangelist, a content strategy evangelist at Kontent.ai, and welcome Michael. Tell the folks a little bit more about your work there at Kontent.ai? Michael: Well, thanks again for having me on again, Larry, delighted to be here. Yeah, I work at Kontent.ai, which is a headless content management system and really trying to bring the new and best practices of content strategy to our customers and folks who might be interested in moving to a headle...