Villegas Views: Mobile First or Content First? Yes.

One of the highlights of technical communication is that you hear a variety of viewpoints. Granted, technical communication contains a wide berth of overlapping topics, and debates on particular issues are going to happen. It's what keeps our field innovative and progressive.

One such debate that I've often heard recently is the one between “content strategy first” versus “mobile first.” I don't think I've ever heard louder arguments, as those seem to be the two philosophies that seem to be yelling the loudest, one arguing that the other is secondary.

So I'm here to answer the question, at least from my perspective. What should be the priority–content first or mobile first? My answer is: Yes.

Now, you may say, “Wait, that's not answering the question, Danielle. You have to choose one.” My reply to that is: no, you don't. If anything, you should be using both, almost simultaneously.

The argument for thinking mobile first is that we are currently being driven more and more to using mobile technology. Those in the e-learning field are really the first ones that I've seen that are truly embracing this and running with it. Theoretically, m-learning is part of technical communication, falling into the category of academic or instructional design and learning (IDL) communication. This is an accurate assessment. Those in the IDL and Academic SIGs were the first to embrace mobile wholeheartedly, seeing the potential in mobile technology as mobile tools. But as mobile become more prolific, mobile documentation is growing and changing as well.

Now that society and business are realizing those benefits, mobile is not necessarily moving more into mainstream technical documentation as quickly. What are the key elements needed to make that leap?

The first thing one does when thinking about mobile is to develop a strong content strategy. So here, content strategy comes first. Content strategy is all about having a plan and mapping content out. One has to think carefully about the audience and why a mobile app is needed to retrieve information. For example, are you putting a manual online? If so, does all of the information need to be available on a mobile app, or just the most frequently accessed information? Understanding the true who, what, where, why, how much, and to what extent an end-user would use a mobile device to access the information is vital.

The next step in creating your strategy is figuring out what content is going to be delivered. Will it be video? Will it be text and images to be read? Will you be trying to gamify the information in order to help your end-user learn a concept? The choices are endless, but it does make a difference. For example, making a long PowerPoint-based video that goes on for an hour is not conducive to a mobile device. Human learning, of any kind, need to be done through chunking the information into smaller pieces. Think about an index or table of contents, as it helps to break down the sections of content.

It might be at this point that one might say, “Danielle, you make a good point, but what if we decide through content strategy that a mobile option is not in the cards right now? Then that proves that content strategy comes first!” I hear you. But let me ask this … is not having a mobile option a permanent solution? As technology changes over time, I don't believe this to be true. You may not need a mobile option now, but don't think that you'll never need one. Forcing yourself to think mobile first, even if you aren't doing mobile now, requires you to start thinking about how you need to streamline your content. Is all the information that's currently being used really needed? How can we make this content more efficient? If we do eventually include or upgrade our information into a mobile output, how can we make that an easier transition later in time? Again, remember the basics of human learning—we learn in smaller doses, not larger doses, for information retention. It's about thinking both mobile first AND content first.

So there's no need to choose a side. I see this as a “what-comes-first-the-chicken-or-the-egg” question. You need to have a content strategy so you know where you are going, but if you don't think in mobile terms—whether you decided to do mobile or not—you miss out on the opportunity to clean up and streamline your content, but you need content strategy to determine that content … and it goes around and around. Technical communication is multi-faceted, and it involves multi-tasking. Being able to balance both content and mobile strategy equally while planning and mapping out content should come easily, if technical communicators put their minds to it.

Danielle M. Villegas writes the blog TechCommGeekMom.com. She graduated with her MSPTC degree from NJIT in 2012, and is currently a Web publishing consultant for BASF North America and an instructor for World Learning teaching business and technical writing.