Pair-writing can be challenging, but it’s a great way for subject experts and content experts to collaborate and learn from each other while creating effective web pages. We recently did some pair writing with staff from the Sustainability team and wanted to share our experiences and the benefits we found from pair writing with subject experts.
What better way to talk about pair writing than writing as a pair! Over to you Paul...
Paul. So, it occurs to me, Faith, that this was our first real experience of pair writing with people not in our team. For anyone reading this who is as new to it as we were, how would you describe what pair writing involves?
Faith. Pair writing is when two people with different roles sit together to work on a piece of content. In this case, we, as Content Designers, each sat with a member of the Sustainability team. They, as the subject experts, helped us with the facts and information, and we advised them on how best to structure the web page and make it easy to understand, along with making the content accessible, of course! Paul, can you tell the readers how this pair writing project came about?
Paul. Of course. The Sustainability team wanted to:
- develop existing and new content about how researchers can make their research (in whatever field) more sustainable
- pin all this new and updated content to a topic page, making it easy for researchers to find the information they need
Alice and Rachel – our subject experts – had already done a lot of the groundwork and had a hierarchy of pages. Some would blend content from two old pages together; others would need to be written from scratch, and some required little more than a review and the updated team title. Now that it was time to create and edit content on the website itself, they wanted our input, and we thought it could be a great opportunity to do some pair writing: they’d join us in the office for a two-week sprint, and we’d work on the content together. In this way, we’d blend their vision for their content and in-depth knowledge of their subject with our knowledge of content design, accessibility, and our publishing platform, Typecase.
But! How would they feel about spending two weeks with you and me constantly saying things like, “Well, yes, that’s good, but have you thought about…”? Would we ask one too many boneheaded questions about sustainability and watch as they marched off, laptops tucked under their arms? In short, would they accept our invitation and how would it all go?
Well, it would be a very short blog post if they had said ‘no’, so that’s answered, but how did it go for you, Faith? And what did you like about the experience?
Faith. I think the whole pair writing experience went very well. Firstly, Rachel had a good understanding of Typecase and our guidance already, which really helped when creating content. She was very open to feedback and even reminded me about how to use our guidance a couple of times!
As you and I had never tried pair writing before, I was apprehensive about how it would go. But once we got stuck in, I found that it was a great opportunity to put the content design and digital accessibility skills I’ve learned over the past year into practice. It was interesting learning new things about sustainability and climate action too. How about you, Paul, what did you enjoy about our pair writing experience?
Paul. Just like Rachel, Alice really knew what she wanted to achieve – which helps enormously – and clearly uses Typecase a lot. So, while it’s not essential for pair writing partners to be confident with Typecase, working with Alice and Rachel felt much more like a balanced collaboration than it might have done. That was great as discussions involved a lot of suggestions, thoughtful pushback, and playing with opportunities to use Typecase’s features creatively.
And, I’m not going to lie – it feels good to share little bits of Typecase knowledge that you’re not even aware others don’t know. For example, the fact that if you hover the mouse cursor over the bottom right corner of a body text box in the Typecase edit screen, you can drag it to make it bigger (and see all your copy rather than just a portion of it).
Lastly, I liked that pair writing gave me ample opportunity to explore and question my own Typecase knowledge: have I been underusing this (or that) component? When does copy stop being suitable for a Guide page and become a perfect fit for a Campaign page? When, if ever, is bold copy acceptable on a page? Long story longer, I think I emerged from the sprint a bit better at my job because I’d spent a good amount of the previous two weeks having to bring embedded knowledge out into the open and either justify it, or update it.
Okay, I’ve waffled on far too long. My last question for you, Faith! Was there anything that you’d do differently next time we pair write with people from outside our own team?
Faith. Generally, I think the whole experience was very successful, but for next time, I think it would be helpful to discuss the subject matter more before we start pair writing.
As I wasn’t very familiar with the topic of sustainability here at Bath, it was hard to edit parts of the content and there were particular things like measurements and technical terms that Rachel and I had written differently to you and Alice. So next time it would be good to make sure we’re all on the same page before we start working together.
Is there anything you’d do differently next time?
Paul. I agree with everything you’ve said, particularly when it comes to knowing more about the team’s pages before we started working with them. Having grounded ourselves in their content more beforehand would have certainly freed up more of my brain for content-related advice. However, the fact of the matter is that coming to a subject area as a relative lay person does have its advantages when it comes to pair writing. By obliging the subject expert to articulate their deep knowledge in simple terms, it:
- encourages them to focus on the essential information a page requires
- reduces the use of jargon
- minimises the amount of assumed knowledge required to understand the content
- helps them focus on using plain English
So, maybe sitting with a little discomfort and working through it is all part of what makes an effective pair-writing project! In any event, I hope we get to do it again before too long.
Faith. I think you've hit the nail on the head there. That's great advice to take with us into our next pair writing experience.
Respond
