A framework to simplify, anchor, and drive progress in work with digital channels.
Strategic content design with the Core Model is an interdisciplinary framework for developing and managing digital content that achieves strategic goals by addressing key user needs.
This approach consists of a set of concrete tools and methods to systematize insights, bring strategy down to earth, and gain traction and alignment for priorities within the organization.
The framework comprises an overarching process and a set of simple methods to:
Prioritize based on strategy and user needs
Solve problems through interdisciplinary collaboration
Work continuously to create value over time
In this context, content design is about much more than text on a webpage. My definition is that “content is what’s required to solve a user task.” Content design is about creating that content.
As Sarah Richards puts it, we must “work insight-based to create what the user wants, in the way they want it, and where they expect to find it.”
Strategic content design means starting with strategy and user needs to anchor and define the most important content, through interdisciplinary collaboration over time.
It’s about choosing to focus on one thing (a core) at a time, increasing digital maturity in the organization through simplification. And it’s about measuring the impact of actions and adjusting course along the way.
The Overarching Process
To ensure we work stategically and user-oriented over time, the framework consists of three steps:
These steps aren’t a linear process, but activities that should run continuously.
Prioritize: Continuously work with qualitative and quantitative user insights and operationalize the strategy, then select the most important priorities (cores) to focus on right now.
Collaborate: Work across silos, disciplines, and organizational levels to specify what needs to be done to solve the problems.
Fix: Prioritize actions, assign responsibilities, and follow up on their impact over time.
The process isn’t about creating the solution itself but about concretizing and aligning on what needs to be done to make it happen.
That said, the framework also includes a set of recommended methods and approaches to translate these actions into concrete steps.
Qualitative and Quantitative User Insights
The starting point for strategic content design is that decisions must be based on real user insights.
There are typically two traps to avoid with user insights:
Too little insight: Steering blindly without enough data.
Too much insight: Falling into analysis paralysis from over-researching.
To move forward, you need just enough insight—sufficient to provide a solid foundation to start. Over time, you’ll discover what insights you’re missing and can adjust your efforts accordingly.
A key point with quantitative user insights is to chase a baseline—measurable indicators that tell you whether you’re on the right track.
Qualitative insights are needed to understand the problems you’re solving for users, including factors like motivation, barriers, and alternatives.
From experience, some insight methods are more effective than others. Here are my favorites:
User testing of the existing product: To identify the biggest usability issues today. (You can also test competitors if you don’t have an existing product.)
Interviews with representative end-users: To uncover underlying user needs. (Interviews and testing can be combined into a “testerview.”)
Top customer service inquiries: To know what people struggle with in the product and where the greatest improvement potential lies. (Also a solid baseline for reducing inquiry volume.)
Top tasks and completion rates: For indisputable data on the most important user tasks and whether people can complete them. (Plus, the best baseline for measuring improvements.) See skyra.no for an example.
For a good baseline, you should also gather other relevant metrics as needed—revenue, key conversion goals, churn, activation rates, etc.
Prioritization Based on Strategy and User Needs
The next step is to connect user needs with strategy and use this connection to prioritize what’s most important to work on right now.
To do this, I’ve created a simple roadmap for prioritization:
You follow this roadmap through these six steps in sequence:
User Insights: A concise overview of the most important findings from qualitative and quantitative user insights.
Strategy: A review of the organization’s key overarching guidelines.
Micro strategy: A definition of goals and metrics for what we’re creating, often based on Objectives and Key Results (OKR).
Target Groups: Prioritization of target and user groups based on strategy and insights.
User Tasks: Linking prioritized target groups to the most important user tasks, primarily the top tasks identified through insights.
Choose Cores: A holistic prioritization of the most important “cores” to work on next, in what order, and who should tackle them.
In this context, a core could be a problem, a user task, a webpage, a process, a product, or anything else that solves key user tasks while meeting prioritized goals.
The roadmap can be filled out directly in a digital template (Miro/Mural) or on a large whiteboard.
You can also conduct a priority workshop to anchor these priorities efficiently. A priority workshop is a structured session where you guide decision-makers, people with user insights, and other key stakeholders through each step in sequence.
Interdisciplinary Collaboration with The Core Model
Once you’ve prioritized the most important cores to work on, you need an effective process to turn those problems into concrete actions.
There are countless methods for agile product development, but some challenges can still arise:
Jumping to solutions without considering alternatives.
Forgetting alignment and ownership by not including key stakeholders.
Missing the context and customer journey before and after what we’re solving.
An alternative is to run an efficient process with The Core Model, a simple and agile tool for prioritization in interdisciplinary collaboration.
The Core Model consists of a simple canvas (core sheet) and an effective workshop format (core workshop). The model is about (among other things) combining the user perspective with the strategic perspective and viewing the solution in the context of the user’s customer journey.
At the same time, we work concretely, ending up with something tangible enough to serve as a shared starting point for further work.
The Core Model is typically used by:
The team conducting a simple core workshop together, allowing all disciplines to contribute.
Running a full-day core workshop to include relevant stakeholders across the organization.
Combining the two, bringing in a few people from other teams or departments for a more complete picture.
Or keeping it as simple as two people sitting down with a core sheet before starting the solution.
The method is described in the (Norwegian language) book "Kjernemodellen - et praktisk verktøy for å lage bedre digitale tjenester".
Fixing Problems and Following Up
The key point of the Core Model/core workshop isn’t to fix all problems on the spot but to make an aligned prioritization and identify concrete actions needed to make the solution a reality.
These actions are prioritized in action cards, which might include both low-hanging fruit that can be solved immediately and root causes that need tackling in other ways.
The action cards should also include a plan for maintaining the solution over time and identify steps to gather more user insights where needed.
The action cards can then typically be integrated into Kanban, Jira, Trello, or other follow-up systems.
Core sheets can also serve as a simple design brief or technical specification for what’s to be created. A main point is that the designer and/or developer has been part of crafting this spec in the core workshop.
And then, of course, you must fix the problems, using the methods and collaboration forms your team and organization already employ.
Process for Continuous Improvement
To know if we’ve fixed the problems, the implementation of actions must be measured against the goals we set during prioritization:
Does the completion rate for the top tasks we’re working on go up or down?
Are there fewer or more customer service inquiries in the category we’re addressing?
If the numbers trend in the right direction, we can pat ourselves on the back and move on. If not, we take a step back and adjust.
Over time, we can supplement with more user insights, follow up on top tasks, prioritize new cores, and continue working with The Core Model and core flow—as a complement to existing methods.
A nice bonus of using The Core Model is its intuitiveness, so all disciplines can “keep up” and understand the connections along the way. In other words, the organization’s digital maturity increases over time with its use.
When Does This Fit In?
The Core Model and strategic content design are flexible tools that can fit into various cycles of operations and development.
Here are some examples:
Product Teams: Regular priority workshops, core workshops to tackle new problems, updated core flow in a Miro board, continuous supplementation of user insights, and tracking of metrics.
Redesign Projects: To prioritize the most important areas to work on and anchor the process with key stakeholders (i.e., avoiding “The Tale of the Typical Website”).
Project Organization: The whole process as part of a kickoff, with ongoing follow-up throughout.
Tight-Loose-Tight: Priority workshop as part of “tight,” The Core Model as a tool in “loose.”
Core Sprint: An efficient 2-day process to tackle a problem.
Remember that strategic content design should never be a linear process—you should always be prioritizing, collaborating, and fixing!
Connection to Other Methods
The Core Model and strategic content design fit well into agile development processes and play nicely with other methods like:
Jobs To Be Done: As a starting point for user tasks.
Objectives and Key Results: As a basis for micro-strategy and solution goals.
Customer Journey Mapping: As a starting point for choosing cores.
Object Oriented User Experience (OOUX): To prioiritize core objects.
Kanban/agile: For following up on action cards.
Iterative Design Processes: For fixing problems.
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Kind regards,
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