Comments on: Content is dead, long live context

By: Douglas Greenshields

Douglas Greenshields — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 12:55:13 +0000

This is a really helpful article. Context, it seems to me, is incredibly important already. I always thought the obsession with web content as opposed to other matters such as style was merely serving to transition old media forms onto the web. The web is a different place, where ‘content’, ‘context’ and all these other things combine in new and unpredictable ways.
Consider Twitter: individual pieces of content would have next to no value without the context they’re placed in.
Consider Facebook: would anyone bother if it was just about this thing we call ‘content’?
Contextual advertising is what’s growing on the web at the moment. While the jury’s out as to whether this necessarily means a futureworld like that portrayed in Minority Report (I’m actually referring to the Spielberg movie), the act of splitting ‘content’ off from ‘context’, and proclaiming the first of those king, will become increasingly redundant.
Amazon get a lot of their business from recommendations. You can see how a lot of online music sales are already going the same way.
We’ll soon have a greater variety of Web devices. The chasm between the mobile and desktop worlds are narrowing more and more. People use these devices in completely different contexts already. Yet, for example, when people suggest using audio on websites (as in, background audio), we say it’s generally a bad idea, and little more. Yes, it is generally a bad idea, but there are contexts where it is perfectly acceptable, and we need to build up a vocabulary which reflects how the Web is already used all the time.
We should be thinking about appropriate interfaces for our users. When functionality is comparable, a good interface will always stand out. Or, to put it another way, when content is comparable, sensitivity and smartness with regards to context will always win out.

By: Jason Rhodes

Jason Rhodes — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 21:48:24 +0000

I’m not sure if your contrast is a real one. When we say “content is king” we mean that content matters more than design in the long run, because people don’t come on websites just to look at your pretty design. They come for the content, and design should facilitate the content.
To say that context is the real king doesn’t make any sense in this, um, context.
Context is like the masses, or the lobbyists, or something. Ugh what horribly strained metaphors, never mind. Context is one of the things you have to consider as you design your sites to best present your content. So Paul, I think everything you said is mostly right (weak bladdered users might be a bit of a stretch?), but perhaps you overstated your case a wee bit?

By: Johan

Johan — Sun, 13 Jul 2008 22:45:08 +0000

That is the whole point, you need to make the end-user feel it is all real.

By: simon

simon — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 22:41:01 +0000

excellent article. While I’m more of a programmer, I still find that there is a need to consider a user’s context. In my personal experience I have found that too often many websites will give no consideration to time available. In most cases this is obvious by the amount of clutter on the pages especially ads. This distracts and makes learning your way around an unfamiliar site (something we are starting to get adept at) overly complicated. A case in point is about.com
On the pther hand, a perfect example of a website that considers context supremely is Google. There is no clutter and the design and interface as well as infrastructure have all been optimised to be as non-intrusive as possible and make the user experience a breeze. This I believe is a major factor in google’s success as #1 search engine. Compare their efforts to the next 4 search engines. Even #2 Yahoo! has a complex home page hence #2.
If content is king, context is queen, court and subjects – without them he just wouldn’t be king at all!

By: SAL

SAL — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 19:29:40 +0000

I agree with PW we can’t control the factors but knowing the customer context while they are browsing is important for making decisions on the kinds of technology/media used.
If folks are browsing at work for information do they have the time or attention span to watch a 10 minute video on a subject or would they be better off reading a short article that takes 3-4 minutes to get the same info with a print feature to take it with them?
I’ve seen too many sites that opt for the high end tech when I would have simply liked to have an article to read and/or print because I did not have the time.

By: neil

neil — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 19:09:01 +0000

interesting points, totally different angle to other points ive read about web design. I think content is important for so many reasons, haven't given context much thought.

By: PW

PW — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 17:59:08 +0000

Unfortunately, we can't control any of those factors for our readers. The only thing we can control is the content that makes them want to brave all of those factors and keep reading.