At Barbarian Group, content strategy lives within the user experience department. (Our unofficial internal mantra: “We do the unsexy shit so you can be sexy.”) It’s a happy relationship. There’s tons of overlap within the two fields, especially as we consider what’s best for users. Because we take a ‘content first’ approach, content strategists and interaction designers here often work alongside each other to determine the right user scenarios and information architecture for a website.

But I wanted to learn more. I came into content strategy as a former journalist, a person with strong editorial planning skills but little knowledge of web design and development, let alone how a creative agency worked. While it was easy to think about editorial calendars, workflows, and voice/tone guidelines, the more technical skills were a bit harder to wrap my head around. The practice of interaction design was something that interested in me, in particular, because I realized that content strategy work at the start of the project didn’t mean my job was over. Even after the audits and analyses, it’s important for content strategists to stick around through the lifecycle of a project, making sure that the careful consideration of content upfront is reflected in design and development.

(As an aside: this beautiful diagram from Richard Ingram also led me to understand that despite where I came from – editorial – the technical and strategic approaches to content strategy would be important skills to acquire.)

While the role of a content strategist may be multidisciplinary, cross-training can benefit anyone in our field. When we work on teams, everyone brings their strengths to the table. But having an understanding of what we all do is also important. It helps us to give each other useful feedback. Most importantly, however, it helps us make sure that we are all talking about the same thing.

Ambiguity can derail a project. It can create situations where the clients and the project team have vastly different expectations. When I talk about style guides, I may refer to editorial guidelines, but when a designer uses the same term, the meaning is totally different. Take the oft-thrown around term ‘content type.’ Am I referring to the format of the content (PDF, document, JPEG), the source of the content (user-generated, in-house, freelance), or am I talking about its style (informational, humor, Q&A)?

For me, I wondered if my user personas would look the same as an interaction designer’s personas, or if there were key differences in how we’d approach it. I wanted to be able to intelligently comment on wireframes and prototypes, and I also wanted to make sure real content could be used in early designs as the UX team worked collaboratively. Luckily, Barbarian Group really encourages its employees to expand their knowledge (shout-outs to James DiStefano and Frank Marquardt!).

Recently, I attended a wireframing class at General Assembly to further my skills in interaction design. It was taught by a former YouTube UI designer, who showed us some of his early sketches and user tests for features of the site, including the creation of the playlist feature. In addition to some hands-on Omnigraffle work, I was able to learn a few IxD techniques that I think will help me with specific content strategy planning work. He showed us some ways he thought about key user tasks which map nicely to how I think about matching business objectives to user needs when I come up with strategy.

So, yes, cross-training is good. Learning how to wear multiple hats can only help the project team communicate and collaborate better.