Bad content in the user experience will cost you more than good content. Then why not start creating a culture of content-oriented design for your products?
Let’s imagine that a food chain doesn’t put the ingredients of the food on the packaging. It’s not calling the end product into question, but it is damaging the view of the product itself. Are they hiding something? Does this food have characteristics that I shouldn’t know about? These are questions that begin to echo on the customers minds..
Documentation Debt starts right here. By not providing the necessary information, we may be creating doubts regarding the origin, purpose and use of the product. Most of the time, the lack of or reduced content is not seen as contributing to the customer abandoning the use of a product. And although the effects of the lack of content are not as apparent as code, for example, it allows the documentation debt not to be seen in the same way.
We are already familiar with the concept of Technical Debt which, in essence, corresponds to the cost of reworking a solution caused by an easier but limited choice. Derived from this concept, Documentation Debt represents the hidden cost we accumulate by not creating enough content, by providing poor quality content or by creating superfluous content. It is, to put it succinctly, a side effect of the lack of time.
We are in documentation debt when:
- different product resources speak differently, showing various inconsistencies in the voice and tone used;
- we create content, but no one knows where to find it or how to use it;
- products evolve over time, but not the content;
- we create redundant content that irritates or confuses the user;
- the content isn’t focused on the user’s real needs, it doesn’t inform them and it doesn’t guide them to take action;
- we create content that is not aligned with the target audience.
The effects of debt
When some of the above situations occur, there are short- and medium-term effects on the users:
Dissatisfaction: The lack of content or the existence of inconsistencies in the product result in a fragmented and not very consistent user experience. When products, design and content are consistent, users can become self-taught and quickly transfer knowledge to new contexts. By confusing the user with different types of content, we are contributing to the general dissatisfaction with using a product;
Loss of confidence: The bridge of trust we establish with our users begins long before the product/feature is launched. This closeness begins with the promotion of the product and, in this regard, we have to ensure the experience we promise to bring to the user is actually the one they enjoy from the moment they receive the welcome email.
Waste of resources: As with Technical Debt and Design Debt, Documentation Debt also contributes to increasing the costs of something that could have been solved initially, and would probably have been less expensive.
Bad UX content will cost you more than good UX content.
Pay off debt
In the several ecosystems, each product is different and each team is focused on solving different problems, with different priorities and availability. It’s difficult to come up with a general solution to pay off the product documentation debt.
Ideally, it is necessary to carry out a general audit of the existing content and ascertain what is missing. This strategy is irreplaceable since it allows us to dive into the content and survey what isn’t working or what doesn’t exist.
However, when time is short and solutions have to be turned into actions very quickly, we should focus only on dealing with the pain points. Namely, what creates more tickets, doubts (internal and external) and difficulties in completing the experience. Following onboarding flows, analyzing the most used features and recently introduced resources are small strategies for the first front.
When we choose the first battle to fight, we are already paying off the debt. Step by step. And, if there’s a chance we may have bitten more than we can chew, we should carry out an audit of the content, define priorities and draw up work matrices so that, together, we can reduce the debt.
Paying down content debt is not just about fixing existing problems. It is also about ensuring that you can identify and even prevent future problems before they arise. So measure, measure and keep measuring.
In summary,
Updating content and finding what’s missing is a large-scale job. Paying off the documentation debt takes time and effort. But it’s through small changes that huge differences can be made. We just have to start.
