In our industry, we are good at arguing who’s job is more important:
“Content First!”
“But design is important too!”
Sophie feels that the problem is the word ‘first’. In our culture, first is the most important and should therefore tell everyone else what to do. This creates a major problem in waterfall projects, where content actually comes last.
Sophie argued that we do is fundamentally collaborative. She suggested that the web is more like music: If we think as content as the musical score and design as the musician who interprets it and ask “which is more important?” we find that actually you need both for the experience.
Like a musical score, structured content is abstract content. There are very few people can read a score and hear the music in our head. We may need to create structured content, but we still need to experience it in context.
Sophie concluded by emphasising that we have to stop sitting in silos arguing who has the most important job – we need to organise our teams as collaborative groups, sharing the vision.
