A service design approach to content creation and management: downloadable template

There are many contact points in a student’s journey from their initially considering applying to a university, to enrolment, time during their programme, and beyond. Given the number of staff across faculties, departments, and schools, the content and messaging students receive at different points in their journey can become disjointed.

Common content problems include too many content creators and editors across teams creating duplicate content, with limited or unclear ownership. Often, governance can become complex, or disappear entirely and content can end up duplicated, out of date and ultimately useless to the people it’s meant to help. Content works as part of a service, and this is also true in the context of higher education. Service design is concerned with the connections and wider relationships between touchpoints and user needs. Taking a service design-driven approach to content means that we can link known data and information about audience sentiment and motivations with specific touchpoints. We can understand the gaps between what currently exists, the content audiences need, and how resources in different parts of the organisation are used to meet these needs. We can also then connect this to data and technology, and think creatively around what is currently used, what could be used more effectively, and how to frame business cases to acquire new tools, skills, data and technology. Taking a service design-driven approach, universities can be more flexible and responsive in content decisions. They can make more effective use of channels and personalization, not just thinking in terms of campaigns, but linking content to business goals, follow an overarching map of the service to be created, with a clear understanding of why. Working in this way, institutions can understand resources and skillsets available and capitalise on them through a more effective content team structure that focuses on the content project at hand to assemble the best skills for the job. Use this template board to place content decisions in the context of an over-arching service design, informed by the desired business outcomes that drive content creation and the people, resources and technology available to support. If you’re interested in having a more in-depth discussion about your content strategy, get in touch with the team at london@curio.co