Citizensheep. "Michael Grimes lives in Birmingham (UK). This is his blog about anything that he fancies."

In a recent forum* post someone asked how to deliver online content to offline users. An understandable question maybe, but (I believe) a mistaken objective: communicating effectively should be more important than ensuring everyone has the same experience.

The poster seemed to want two things. Firstly, to “leverage the strongest, most engaging elements of online campaigning and communications and transport them to the offline world”.

This is interesting but flawed. ‘Online’ and ‘offline’ are two different realms; replicating the benefits of one within the other would at best be a waste of effort, and would in fact probably be impossible. It would certainly seem to defeat the object of operating in two different realms in the first place.

To me, his second point is the key one: to “make finding relevant content easier, not harder”. However, the answer is not to make content available in as many formats as possible so as to give every potential user exactly the same experience.

Rather, we should be understanding our audiences (who are we targeting and why) and ensuring we are as accessible to them as we possibly can be; audience first, content and delivery second.

This is not simply about the presentation of our content, but about the whole design of our organisations.

For example, when someone phones our switchboard can we guarantee the call will be answered immediately? Will that person be able to provide a satisfactory answer? Will they have the initiative, for example, to offer to post a DVD or a web page transcript? Are they able to do that at no cost to the recipient? If not, are there systems in place to manage the transaction?

So how we organise and present ourselves is at least as important as how we present our information. Moreover, it’s about how we understand and manage our internal processes. (It’s a no-brainer really, but surprisingly ill-understood.)

In order to give the best service to our users – not just those in the extremely broad categories of ‘online’ and ‘offline’ – we must understand our target audiences; and we must strive to appreciate fully their experience of the points at which they interact with us.

*The forum cited is members-only, so I haven’t included links to it. If you’d like to know more about the post referred to please do contact me.

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Accessibility,Communications,Design,Digital engagement