We open with a familiar truism: Only give your users what they need, when they need it. Your product and technical content must speak directly to your users’ diverse needs, to their parallel goals, with as little clutter as possible. This has forever been the tech writer’s mantra, but with cloud-based, hosted content delivery systems, it’s easier than ever to achieve. Here at iovation, we accomplish this with a sophisticated mix of disciplined, modular content and cutting-edge content management technology.

1. LavaCon
Tanner Volz | Technical Content Manager, iovation
October / 2016
The Multiverse Theory of
User Needs

2. AGENDA
2
 Content is Noise
 Who are Your Users, and Why?
 Designing a Modular Content
Experience
 Managing Modular Content
 Through the Wormhole

3. 3
The Niceties
W h o a m I a n d W h y A m I H e r e
 Work stuff
 18ish years into tech writing & info architecture
 Designed & built numerous enterprise-scale info systems for product documentation
& training
 Personal stuff
 Musician and occasional film-maker
 Nose typically buried in films
 Contact info (sell me to spammers and I will find you)
 tv@tannervolz.com
 503-803-3201

4. CONTENTBLIND
Different people need different things to solve
different problems

6. 6
 Every day we all wade
through many thousands
of words and images
 2009 UC study
estimated Americans
consume 34 GB of info / day
 In 2013, studies suggested
that average social media
users encounter up to 54,000 words & 443 minutes of video per day
 We are contentblind
Our Thesis: Content is Noise …
Yo u r u s e r s c o m e f r o m d i f f e r e n t u n i v e r s e s …

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 We look for
keywords, but need
help seeing them
 Linguistic and design
challenge
 Users buy products to solve
specific problems; anticipate those problems and tailor
content, keywords, and design
… Until We Find What We Need
S o h e l p t h e m n a v i g a t e y o u r u n i v e r s e

8. WHO ARE YOUR
USERS, AND WHY?
Defining User Personas and Scenarios

9. 9
 A deceptively difficult question: Who are your buyers and, more
importantly, why do they buy your products? If multiple products,
which?
 Buyers & users share business problems, but information needs
may differ.
 For example:
 Buyer personas: Sign the checks. Sales & Marketing pitches speak to
them. Content must persuade. Tech savvy buyer may read tech docs.
 User personas: Implement & validate satisfaction of business need.
Technical documentation is roadmap when implementing the solution.
Who Are You and Why Did You Buy?
W h a t p r o b l e m d o e s t h e p r o d u c t h e l p y o u s o l v e ?

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At iovation, writers develop user persona breakdown w/
Product, Sales, Marketing, Client Support. Personas
include:
 Fraud analysts study and understand fraud and crime
 Fraud or risk managers design implementations to address these
trends
 User experience and web designers balance improved
authentication experiences with risk of bad users gaining access
 Web software engineers code the iovation integration into their
web or mobile apps (or both)
Example: High Level iovation User Personas
W h a t p r o b l e m d o e s i o v a t i o n h e l p y o u s o l v e ?

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 Design parallel information experiences for each persona.
 Each persona brings litany of use cases; before you can design a
successful content multiverse, build a user needs taxonomy to understand
use cases.
 User needs taxonomy maps user personas to specific problems that they
need to solve
Develop a User Needs Taxonomy
M a p p r o d u c t u s e c a s e s t o u s e r p e r s o n a s
User
Use case 1
Use case 2
Use case 3

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User Needs Taxonomy
lays out:
 Business needs / pain
points
 Relevant variables, such
as industry vertical
 Common challenges
 Win / loss & financial
analysis
 Cross-department
dependencies / effects
Anatomy of a User Needs Taxonomy
O r , a t a x o n o m y … t a x o n o m y
Use case 1
Industry
Region
Business
needs
Pain 1
Pain 2
Challenges
Time
Resource
s

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 Fraud team lead at an online retailer needs help with:
 Chronic problem with criminals using stolen credit cards…
 To submit purchases…
 Resulting in expensive charge-backs or penalties.
 User Experience or Web Designer at a financial institution needs to:
 Help the Fraud team reduce account takeover…
 While improving a poor authentication experience…
 By reducing painful login steps such as captchas.
 For these examples, these specifics help us recommend:
 Where we integrate, and how
 What initial configuration steps are needed
 Who will contribute to implementation, and how
User Needs Examples
i o v a t i o n e x a m p l e s o f p a r a l l e l u n i v e r s e s

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Neighboring Content Universes
i o v a t i o n e x a m p l e s o f p a r a l l e l u n i v e r s e s
Subscriber 2:
Finance
Subscriber 1:
Retail
API Reference
 Account takeover scenarios
are shared
 High friction authentication
unique to Suscriber 1
 Fraud prevention concepts
mostly apply to Subscriber
1, but overlap with
Authentication concepts for
Subscriber 2
 Web integration is largely
identical; Subscriber 2 also
includes Mobile SDK
 All API reference material is
100% common
Mobile
SDK
Account
Takeover
fraud
scenarios
Iovation Fraud
Prevention
concepts
Iovation
Customer
Authentication
concepts
Auth
friction
Web
integration
Use cases
Concept
s
Integration
Reference

15. 15
What Does a User Needs Taxonomy Look Like?
N o b o d y s a i d t e c h w r i t i n g w a s e a s y

16. DESIGNING A
MODULAR
CONTENT
EXPERIENCEModularize content to support parallel content
universes

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 Content modules are like single lego pieces; each is one part of a
kit.
 Similarly, each content module serves one goal:
 Procedural: How to do something (“Walking to the Bakery”)
 Conceptual: What something is (“What is a Bakery”)
 Process: How something works (”The Lifecycle of a Scone, From Sugar to
Sewer”)
 Reference: List of facts (“Scone Ingredients”)
Content Modularization: What and Why?
T h e f i n e a r t o f r e c o m b i n a t i o n

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 A topic, or article, collects related modules focused on a single content goal.
 Each module is about one aspect of the topic’s goal.
 Accomplish this, and you can recombine content modules (aka, cutely, chunks) to
serve many different user needs.
Modularization: How Does it Work?
A K A T h e F i n e A r t o f R e c o m b i n a t i o n
Image credit: http://www.eurobricks.com/forum/index.php?/profile/2351-whitefang/

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 Take an article that’s a mess of intermingled content types…
Tagging Disorganized Content
I t ’ s a b i t l i k e o r g a n i z i n g a h o a r d e r ’ s g a r d e n s h e d
Procedure
Reference
A bunch of
concepts
Some unrelated
reference content
Process
Random collection of
proceduresProcess diagram that
probably should have come
first

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 Break it down, tag it, and reassemble it into chunks
 Unrelated content belongs in another topic
 Ruthlessly kill repetition
 Write once, then reuse, reuse, reuse
Creating and Assembling Modular Content
C o n s o l i d a t e a n d r e d u c e
Series of related
procedures
Introductory concept
Supporting
reference
material
Process overview with
“how it works”
diagram

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 Focus: Each module answers a single question.
 Don’t repeat: Say everything once.
 Short and sweet: If it takes more than a few sentences to explain a
concept, you may be trying to explain a second concept. Create another
module.
 Label all modules: Use ridiculously obvious headings that speak to user
needs.
 Mix it up: Some content needs complex process diagrams. Some need
simple reference tables. Use all of the tools available to you.
 Templatize: Content, like formatting, benefits from templates. What content
should a concept include? Figure it out and make it a template.
The Art of Writing Modular Content
T h e r e a r e c o u n t l e s s b o o k s a n d c l a s s e s o n t h e t o p i c

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A new topic on reducing Account Takeover fraud includes
the following modules:
 “What is Account Takeover” - Conceptual module that defines Account
Takeover. Use it anywhere we talk about Account Takeover.
 “How Business Rules Help Stop Account Takeover” - Process module
about features we will use (iovation business rules) to solve the problem,
with a diagram to illustrate.
 “Defining Business Rules to Stop Account Takeover” - Procedural
module that walks through setting up the business rules.
 “Account Takeover Parameters Reference” - Reference module with all
the technical details needed to set up the rules.
iovation Example
B u i l d i n g a t o p i c o n a c c o u n t t a k e o v e r

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These tenets are all inherited from established structured writing practices.
They emphasize semantic tagging of content, strict modularization, reuse,
multi-lingual content management, and on-demand content assembly. Read up
on these.
 Information Mapping: http://www.informationmapping.com/en/
 DITA (Darwin Information Typing Architecture): https://www.oasis-
open.org/committees/dita/faq.php
Structured Writing Resources
S e e a l s o …

24. MANAGING
MODULAR
CONTENTItalian Herb Mix is fine until you just need some
basil

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Slice / dice content forever but without a way to manage it, this is what awaits you:
Modular Content is Nothing Without CMS
T h e h e r b m i x m e t a p h o r w o r k s b u t w e ’ r e s t i c k i n g w i t h L e g o s

26. 26
What is Content Management?
To o l s y o u n e e d t o b u i l d w o r m h o l e s a c r o s s u n i v e r s e s
Image credit: Jeff Pellettierhttp://photos.hgtv.com/photos/viewer/lego-storage-/basement-lego-lounge-
with-built_in-storage-system_1

27. 27
Just some of what a good content management system provides:
 Topic and asset management including versioning and publishing
workflows
 Authoring with both WYSIWYG and code editing support
 Extensibility to incorporate web-standard technologies
 Content reuse down to the modular level
 Variables for brand names, verticals, etc.
 Content conditions for different scenarios, such as different outputs
(HTML v PDF) or classes of users
 Semantic tagging of content, and separation of content from formatting
 SEO management, particularly important for public content
Defining Technical Content Management
A b o t t o m l e s s t o p i c ; t h e s e a r e a f e w t h i n g s t h a t m a t t e r t o u s

28. 28
 We use MindTouch, a SaaS solution with robust content creation tools,
availability and performance, and structured authoring features
 Keyword metatags enable us to track both content type (such as
“procedure”) and substance (such as “Managing Users”); It’s very easy to
find the content we need, when we need it; also ensures excellent SEO
flexibility if we take any content public
 Our stylesheets (CSS) handle all of our formatting for HTML and PDF; the
authoring experience is entirely focused on content
 We heavily reuse content to serve different purposes, with variables to
manage terminology changes
 Permissions allow different users to see only what they need
Overview of Content Management at iovation
W h a t w e d o , i n 5 b u l l e t s

29. 29
 We store reusable content (topics and modules) in a dedicated area; all of this can be
reused anywhere within the content hierarchy
 This is one of the most powerful tenets of the content multiverse: the same
content can exist, in parallel, in many places at once
Reusing and Transforming Content
A l l o w c o n t e x t t o d e t e r m i n e w h a t u s e r s w i l l s e e

30. 30
With simple variable statements, brand names change on-the-fly in topics that
are reused across product lines.
Reusing and Transforming Content
A l l o w c o n t e x t t o d e t e r m i n e w h a t u s e r s w i l l s e e

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Using privileges to manage the end-user experience:
 MindTouch provides great tools for showing different content to different users
 Groups of users can be set to see only specific hierarchies or part of topics
 User who subscribes to one product only sees content for that product
Using Permissions to Hide Content
R e d u c i n g n o i s e b y e n t i r e l y e l i m i n a t i n g i r r e l e v a n t c o n t e n t
Hidden
content

32. THROUGH THE
WORMHOLE
What does this mean for the user experience?

33. 33
 Now that you have:
 Profiled your
different types of
users
 Anticipated the
unique content
needs for each
 Broken your content
down into reusable
chunks
 You can build your
content universes.
Designing Parallel Information Universes
R e u s a b l e m o d u l a r c o n t e n t w a s m a d e f o r t h i s

34. 34
 Assemble chunks into information universes for all user types:
 Use variables to target text to use cases – brand names, verticals,
features, etc.
 Use big bold headers and organizers that target business needs
and make navigation RIDCULOUSLY EASY. For a universe of blue
legos:
ORGANIZING BLUE LEGOS INTO BLUE BOXES.
 Or for a universe of green legos:
ORGANIZING GREEN LEGOS INTO GREEN BOXES.
 Use permissions to hide topics that a given user doesn’t need, and
combine permissions with variables to hide inline content.
Designing Parallel Information Universes
R e u s a b l e m o d u l a r c o n t e n t w a s m a d e f o r t h i s

35. 35
An integration engineer follows distinct paths depending which product the organization
bought from iovation. This is what it looks like to an author. We see all universes at once.
Assembling Universes
A s s e m b l i n g i n t e g r a t i o n c o n t e n t f o r d i f f e r e n t u s e r t y p e s
Customer Auth concepts
Fraud Prevention
concepts
Customer Auth workflow
Shared
procedures
Fraud Prevention
workflowFraud Prevention
procedures
Shared reference content
Reusabl
e content
iovation content repository
Customer Authentication Integration Guide
Fraud Prevention Integration Guide
Help system / knowledge base

36. 36
And this is what it looks like to an engineer working with the Fraud Prevention
product.
Users only see their own universes
T h e n o i s e w e t a l k e d a b o u t e a r l i e r ? G o n e
Fraud Prevention Integration Guide
As far as the user is concerned, there is only one universe. It’s linear, easy to
follow, and free of noise.

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 At iovation, this is just the
beginning.
 How to incorporate
content hosted in entirely
separate systems, with
very different delivery
models?
 At what point is designing
for reuse more complex
than is beneficial?
What’s Next?
E x p a n d i n g u s e c a s e s t o v e r y d i f f e r e n t u s e r m o d e l s

38. Q&A