The burning of the Library at Alexandria is an evocative image that we can use to guide our ways of thinking about how we record critical institutional knowledge. Documenting content-related patterns, guidelines, and team decisions is always important, but especially so in uncertain times.

Many content design practices call the documents or site that contains their content guidelines and patterns a content design system. It’s a term that conveys that the team has created something beyond a basic style guide, and reinforces that its creators are designers and systems thinkers.

Yet it can create a dueling design systems situation by implying the existence of two design systems. Is there a better alternative?

Want to use analytics and other user data to improve your content design system and make it more data-driven? ✨

A while back I wrote about how you can use questions you receive about content guidelines to help with the often overwhelming decision of where to focus your efforts as you and your team use your limited time and resources to build out content design system materials. Here’s Part 2, with tips for leveraging analytics and other types of user data that you may already have access to in order to help prioritize which sections, components, and templates to build or expand. 

What are the practical applications for a “General Content Principles” section in a style guide? Do we add this section for largely performative reasons? Can it be leveraged in a way that provides real impact and value for a content design practice?

I recently reread Erica Jorgensen’s fantastic book Strategic Content Design: Tools and Research Techniques for Better UX, and I wanted to share some amazing and actionable ideas she offers to leverage the power of content heuristics.