Process diagram for the content production stages adding up to 10 hours for each page

Question: how long does it take to produce and publish good-quality, unique content for a single webpage? To research it, write it, source and prep the media for it, review and revise it, upload it, test it? …a few hours? Half a day? A full day? It’s probably best to know before you start.

Well I reckon (based on some painful lessons over the years) that it can easily take up to 10 hours for a page to go through a typical workflow. While some pages obviously take far less time (and the process does get quicker), some are frankly a slog to push over the line.

If we’re being realistic: unfamiliar subjects need research and collation, applying the style guide and voice takes skill and perseverance, sensitive content needs several sign-offs (and several revisions!), CMS uploading introduces errors, and thorough testing is required before publishing… it quickly adds up.

Yet content STILL continues to be a peripheral afterthought for many web projects out there.

Think about it this way…

A typical, mid-size website could easily have 25 pages with unique content… at 10 hours a go that could be upwards of 250 hours, and that’s a lot of man/lady-power.

Still a peripheral part of a project? Nope. We’re talking about a serious chunk of work to resource and manage.

It’s no wonder you hear time-and-again how unfinished content has pushed back a site’s launch.

Content Strategy to the rescue at Digital Eskimo

We don’t treat content as peripheral to our web projects. We consider the content integral, and quite simply critical, to the overall user experience. Bad content = bad experience. End of.

During busy web projects we advise and support our clients through the difficult and time-sucking process of producing high-quality content. We have battle-hardened materials and templates to help you plan and manage the process.

But we don’t write it for you. Instead we prefer to give you the means to production and to do it for yourselves, so you can do it well, and continue to govern the quality of your site’s content after the initial launch.

Our content strategy services stretch beyond content production process support, but we know that this stuff has to be right for your site to be a success and on time.

Your next website project

If nothing else, please remember the magic number ‘10′ and give yourself a healthy scare, nice and early, about the effort it will take to produce all that new content you have in mind. You will be better prepared and more realistic about the challenge ahead.

Even better give us a call and we can give you some specific advise that will save you time and pain, and improve the end result (your site).

What do you think?

Does this sound familiar? Is 10 hours unrealistic?  A client recently retorted: “10 hours? You can double that!”. Please leave your comments.

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The graphic was commissioned in the lead up to the NewsStand campaign which called for an inquiry into Australia’s media. NewsStand also deployed our campaign platform Do Gooder in a successsful 11th hour bid to encourage Parliament to vote in favour of the inquiry, something that only a year ago would have been considered only slightly more likely than a pig flying backwards from Burke reading the Age (as everyone knows it would read the Daily Telegraph as the Age isn’t available in rural Australia!)

The inquiry was widely considered an important piece of work and its recommendations well received (except by the media organisations it reviewed who were predictably dismissive – ironically proving why we need change!) by independent experts, political; parties such as The Greens and credible progressive media outlets like New Matilda , Crikey and so on. One of the most important recommendations was to replace the ineffective industry operated Press Council with a statutory review body, the Australian Media Council; which if  well implemented will have significant positive outcomes for our media diet.

I (a little belatedly!) congratulate the NewsStand team of Kate Walsh and Ed Coper and the coalition of supporter organisations and must say I’m extremely proud that Digital Eskimo and Do Gooder played our part in the outcome.

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We’re stoked to announce that the online extension of the Compost Revolution is now available to all councils throughout Australia. A collaboration between Digital Eskimo and Randwick, Waverley and Woollahra councils, the project allows residents to learn about composting and worm farming in the comfort of their own home. The online approach means people who wouldn’t normally get to a face to face tutorial can take part, massively mainstreaming the programme.

Already a stack of councils have signed up for the revolution and with over 90% of people who received bins still using them up to 8 months afterwards the impacts are substantial– and growing.

It works like this: Residents take a 15 minute tutorial and then once completed they answer a short quiz to ensure everything’s understood. Successful revolutionaries are then provided with information on how to claim a free bin, vouchers or any incentive their council choses to offer.

It’s a simple, effective and proven way to reduce a household’s personal carbon footprint and a great way for councils to engage the community and reduce CO2 and waste expenses.

Join the revolution and get your free worm farm, compost bin or prize

Work for a Council? Learn more about the benefits and our low cost plans

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A lot of people I’ve spoken with over the break agree 2011 was a tough year.  A year of relative slog and frustratingly slow progress. A year we optimists – just about all designers and entrepreneurs are optimists by definition (im a bit of both so god help me!) – would describe as all about ‘ground work’. A few steps forward and at least one (or even two!) back.  And like every good optimist the world over  i am already seeing the signs that 2012 is the year that we might just start breaking through on the many progressive issues we focus on and really consolidate on the hard work of the past few years.

And you know what, those two steps forward could become four, eight – or even a stampede if more people took up their seat at the optimists’ table – after all it’s the failure of imagination and our lack of belief in our ability to change that is the first, and i’d suggest most formidable, block that prevents us from changing everything. We could then get on to amping it up and seriously leveraging the ground work done to date. Making this the year we gain serious traction on our responses to the climate crisis and chronic (and the inextricably linked) social justice issues and finally begin to transform our personal, political and business systems for the greater good.

I always find i’m extra optimistic after taking stock of what our little company in Surry Hills was able to achieve in just one year. So in the interests of being able to boldly take my seat at the optimists’ table again this year  i’ll ask you to join me in taking a moment to look back on the great work Digital Eskimo, our clients and community of collaborators produced  in 2011.

If you’re a subscriber to our DE updates and invite emails you would have already seen our end of year email (there’s a few additions and link fixes though so might be worth a  second squiz!).  If not here it is and here’s to another year at the table!

View the ‘Annnd its a wrap!’ 2011 end of year email from Digital Eskimo.

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Digital Eskimo and the Australian Human Rights Commission have just launched the Something In Common project. The initiative incorporates an unusual double website approach; the first – Tell Me Something I Don’t Know – is a uber-sharable mouse-stopper of a microsite delivering surprising info bites like “1 in 4 retirees are living in poverty”. People can then dig deeper to learn more about the issues through inspiring videos of real Australians, take action on the issues that they feel most strongly about and tell their own story on the Something In Common website.

“Tell Me Something I Don’t Know” summed up an attitude that prevails in society where people are looking for new ways to creatively engage with human rights outside of traditional media.  It was this and other research-driven insights that led Digital Eskimo to develop the online strategy that underpins an exciting shift in the way the Australian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) is promoting the understanding of human rights issues through social media.

Check out the sites here and spread the word:

Tell Me Something I Don’t Know

Something In Common

Bigups to the team!

Digital Eskimo is proud to have co-designed the online concept, social media strategy, brand and user experience of this ground breaking project with the team at AHRC.  I’d like to especially thank our technical partners on the project  Morgan who went above and beyond the call in building the site on a shoestring budget. Finally my gratitude and respect to the masterful team at DE who put their blood sweat and (just a few!) tears into the project; Ben Crothers, Senior Design Strategist and lead Experience Architect ; Liam King,  Experience Architect, Anika Ebner & Yvonne Lee, Producers;  Ben Hoh, Lead Designer; Mark Elizondo, Designer ; and Chris Oates, Technical Lead (DE).

More info:

Media release (from the Australian Human Rights Commission)

Listen to a podcast with myself talking to Disability Discrimination Commissioner, Graeme Innes about the project

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Our Founder and Creative Director, David Gravina, was today named (for the second time) among Sydney’s top 100 most influential people by the Sydney Morning Herald’s the(sydney)magazine.

The article recognised the work of  David (and the crew here at Digital Eskimo!) on the Your Rights at Work and Raise the Bar campaigns and mentions our awesome online campaign platform, Do Gooder. The awards recognise people across a broad range of disciplines and pursuits and then categorises them accordingly, with Dave garnering a slot in the appropriately named ‘Altruist’ category.

From the article:

David Gravina’s design firm, Digital Eskimo, has driven successful online campaigns like Your Rights at Work and Raise the Bar. Now he’s giving his secrets away. In July, DE launched Do Gooder, a platform that allows other campaigners to build websites using DE’s most effective tools.

It’s already having an impact: the NewsStand campaign used its Do  Gooder site to get 3500 people emailing their MPs about a national media inquiry; just days later, an inquiry was announced. Gravina, 41, tasted his first such win when he was just 10, succesfully lobbying his local council to build a BMX track. “I hope Do Gooder will contribute to people experiencing the power i felt when the BMX track was announced”, he says.

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Here at Digital Eskimo, we’re finding more and more success in the power of storyboarding to help us and our clients to think more creatively … and then to help us communicate to others exactly what it is we’re thinking. A very useful tool when your job is to ‘imagine that which is yet to be’ (one definition of Design i like)

We sketch out storyboards as a way of generating ideas and solutions for client projects. We also use it as a fun and insightful activity in our co-design sessions, where all participants get to illustrate their own experiences on storyboard templates. We also find storyboards to be a really compelling way of communicating user experience and business strategy to our clients and their teams, from designers and developers, through to business analysts, project managers and executive decision-makers.

We love them so much that Senior Design Strategist Ben Crothers has just written a series of articles on storyboarding over at Johnny Holland that show you how you can make storyboarding work for you and your team too.

Have a read, then try storyboarding for yourself:

Storyboarding & UX – part 1: An introduction
Storyboarding & UX – part 2: Creating your own
Storyboarding & UX – part 3: Storyboarding as a workshop activity

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This Thursday 29th September we’ll be hearing from John Seed – Australian environmentalist, director of the Rainforest Information Centre, recipient of an Order of Australia Medal (OAM) for services to conservation and the environment and prominent figure in the Deep Ecology movement.

Deep Ecology is a philosophy of nature that invites us to experience ourselves as part of the living Earth, rather than separate from it, and supports us to find our own role in powerfully protecting the planet.

The late Arne Naess, Emeritus Professor of Philosophy from Oslo University, Norway who coined the term “deep ecology” pointed out that our “ecological ideas are not enough to protect the Earth, we need ecological identity, ecological self”.

Through music, film and poetry, John will show us how to nourish our ecological identity and align ourselves with Earth.

When: Thursday 29th September from 6:00pm
Where: Our studio – Level 2, 44 Foster St, Surry Hills
RSVP: Through Eventbrite by Tuesday 27th September

RSVP now

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How many people get to say their day job lets them build devices capable of travelling through time?

Well, that’s just what we did for the Sydney Institute as part of their recently launched “Sparkies, Foodies & Fashionistas” exhibition.

The exhibition, which is essentially a celebration of the organisation’s rich 120 year history, is more than just a display of artefacts and photos (many of which haven’t been on public display before). It’s a showcase of the latest techniques and technology that the Institute uses to train their students across a broad range of areas, from engineering and fashion to electronics.

After seeing our successful Water Worx display at the Powerhouse, the Sydney Institute approached us to design an interactive element that would provide an informative and playful user experience while promoting TAFE Sydney Institute as the past, present and future-ready leader in vocational studies.

Inspired by HG Wells and TRON, we built the iTime machine – an interactive iPad app that effectively turns visitors into time travellers, letting them journey through the Institute’s 120 year history to explore the expansion of study areas.

You can read more about the iTime Machine here, or see it in person at Ultimo TAFE’s Muse Gallery (until the 28th August).

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As passionate supporters of cycling and champions of Sydney’s cycle ways, we were happy to crank up our support by nominating our Chief Design Strategist Anthony Ditton to be one of the faces of the City of Sydney’s Cycle Ways new “Everything’s Connected” campaign.

Anthony features in one of four new films produced by CoS that celebrate the stories of real people who cycle in Sydney. The personal vignettes demonstrate not only how diverse our cycling population is, but also show how riding bikes has an incredibly positive benefits for lifestyles and the city.

The films will be shown at local cinemas starting from late August, but for those of you who can’t wait that long, check out the other videos here.

And if you’re wondering, YES that is a Do Gooder t-shirt he’s wearing. Nice product placement!

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