The Conceptual Content Model

Last Updated: 2nd July, 2009

Let’s dive straight in with a content model.

A content model should be both simple and concise. Note that there are no technical squiggles or obscure symbols in sight. Just boxes, lines and labels. This is a conceptual content model. Deliberately high level to be inclusive. Conceptual content models target content owners, contributors and stakeholders. They are a visible starting point for discussions, with a single objective: reaching content consensus. It never fails to amaze me just how many content management projects never start here and invariably next get there.

At this stage, it is important to point out the difference between a content model and content modelling. The two are not the same. A content model is a representation of your content. A tangible deliverable resulting from the act of content modelling. The hard work is all content modelling. This involves all the sessions, discussions, fights, workshops, analysis, debates, testing, interviews, prototypes, role playing, web site reviews, and so on required to shine a light on all the content types, their associated contexts and relationships. This post focuses purely on the content model. We’ll get into content modelling techniques later on in the series. That’s when all the fun begins but let’s get back to the content model…

An event has a detailed program and someone responsible for organising it. An event is held at a recognised venue. Any any additional event information can be found through its related articles.

Revising the content model

After many more discussions (content modelling) with the event organisation company, we find out that they need to keep track of event speakers and their ever changing profiles. So we update the content model.

Now its not long before we need to know a little bit more about our content types. So what are the essential characteristics of an Event, of a Person, of a Venue? I bring your attention to the word ‘essential’ because this is key. A Person typically has two eyes, two arms, a couple of legs, has phobias, has family, eats food to stay alive, you get the picture. If you need to know this for event organisation then its an essential characteristic, so make it a property of the content type. But please do not add properties because:

(b) is by far the worst offender. If its not being used today its waste. Drop it. Move on. Staying mean, keeps content models lean and your customers keen. So without much ado, here’s the next version of our content model:

We’ve added some properties that expose the essential characteristics for our content types. The conceptual content model remains simple. This is enough for us thrash out the initial scope of our content space. Do not under estimate the amount of effort required just to get to here. Remember, content models should be the result of intense collaboration and continual agreement. Both wicked drains on time. If you ta-da a content model and drop it from 50,000 feet in the laps of those that need to understand and agree with it, rejection will surely follow. Start small and expand as a group.

With a conception content model in place, the next step is to elaborate further and produce a detailed content model. Again, this is not a content model for the techies, but one annotated with more information around the kinds of relationships between content types, the kinds of values that content type properties should hold (e.g. text, numbers, images), some rules about creating content items from content types, the lifecycle of content items, and so on.

I often get asked the question around where content models fit with relation to other key IA/UX deliverables such as content maps, excel spreadsheets holding various different kinds of information, site maps, navigation schemes and the like. I still use those and the content model does not replace them. It complements thems for larger, more involved projects. Content models are an incredibly lightweight means to communicate the different kinds of content types and their inter-relations on a single A3 piece of paper.