Jared Spool

For nearly 40 years, Jared Spool has been helping publishers and software developers create better experiences for their users. Along the way, he has also helped companies apply UX design principles to the process of creating content for their customers.

Jared is one of the best-known and most widely cited practitioners and educators in the UX field. We had a wide-ranging conversation on content strategy and how it manifests in user experience design.

We talked about:

his definition of content strategy (including Karen McGrane's content-as-gift analogy)

the relationship between content and design

how the evolution from static content to template-ized dynamic content at first messed things up but ultimately demonstrated the importance of content strategy

the big push to sophisticated and highly customized content management systems at big media outfits like Vox, the New York Times, and ProPublica

tools that support editorial workflow and examples of companies using them

the importance of tracking editorial success and how to measure it

the dearth of off-the-shelf third-party tools for tracking and improving editorial operations - "everything is bespoke"

how the shortage of well-trained UX and content strategy talent led to the creation of the Center Centre

his thoughts on the new "UX Writer" job role, and on the inadequacy of job roles in general

who on a UX team can/should write the UX copy

how to assess the skills set of your team

the availability of his first cohort of Center Centre students for residencies (contact them if your company might have an opportunity)

Jared's Bio

Jared M. Spool is a Maker of Awesomeness at Center Centre/UIE. Center Centre is the school he started with Leslie Jensen-Inman to create industry-ready User Experience Designers. UIE is Center Centre’s professional development arm, dedicated to understanding what it takes for organizations to produce competitively great products and services.

In the 39 years he's been in the tech field, he's worked with hundreds of organizations, written two books, published hundreds of articles and podcasts, and tours the world speaking to audiences everywhere. When he can, he does his laundry in Andover, Massachusetts.

Video

Here's the video version of our conversation:

https://youtu.be/8ENJ0iKQ4-E

Transcript

Larry:

Hi everyone. Welcome to episode number 25 of the content strategy interviews podcast. I'm really happy today to have on the show Jared Spool. Jared is a legend in the user experience world. He's been doing it since before it was a field. I think it's safe to say he was there at the start of it. He's best known as the found of the User Interface Engineering company. I'm not sure how long ago that was started, but it's been around for a little while. More recently, a couple years ago, he founded a school, a university, for user experience professionals called Center Centre down in Chattanooga. I'll let Jared tell you a little bit more about what he's up to these day, and a little bit more about his background.

Jared:

In 1988. That's when we started UIE. Center Centre was started in 2013 and we merged in 2016.

Larry:

Oh. Okay.

Jared:

So, we're now Center Centre UIE.

Larry:

Nice. Very cool. I guess maybe you could talk about it in the context of the Center Centre curriculum or just in general, how you think content strategy ... First of all, how would you define content strategy, and then how would you contextualize it within the field of user experience design?

Jared:

Well I would ask a content strategist, that's how I would define content strategy.