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The Art of Translation

Getting Tech and Marketing on the Same (Web)Page

@anna_edits | @post_kate

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@anna_edits | @post_kate

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Does this seem familiar?

@anna_edits | @post_kate

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Mistranslations

	Scenario A	Scenario B
Comm Says	“We want a video banner like XYZ University”	“Make a line break in this heading”
Web Says	“We can’t do that because of accessibility requirements.”	“Websites don’t work that way.”
Comm Hears	“We don’t know how to make it work. It’s impossible.”	“We’re lazy and don’t want to help you.”
What Comm Actually Wants	An engaging landing experience to attract prospective students	A nice visual display for their text.
Reality	Maybe video isn’t an option as proposed, but there are other ways to make an engaging homepage experience	Because screen sizes vary, line breaks will change and a forced one won’t look good. Rewriting the header might be better.

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Mistranslations

	Scenario A	Scenario B
Web Says	“Your website needs to be migrated into the standard framework.”	“Your videos have to have captions.”
Comm Says	“No. My site is special.”	“No one here knows how to do that. Can you do it for me?”
Web Hears	“We don’t care about the research and expertise you’re providing. We just want what we want.”	“We don’t care about accessibility or your staff time”
What Web Actually Wants	To provide consistent user experience; protect campus from accessibility/security liabilities.	To ensure all users have equitable access to content
Reality	There are ways to customize the standard framework to meet accessibility/security needs and still look “special”	Accessibility is everyone’s job. Web can direct people to resources to learn how or to contract out.

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Where are we going wrong?

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How do we fix it?

Be curious!
Ban “that’s not my job” from your vocabulary
Admit you don’t know everything! (And neither does anyone else)
Find and act on common values.

**Tip: Values and beliefs are not the same thing. You don’t have to agree on every belief to share the same value.

@anna_edits | @post_kate

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Kate: Step outside of your area of expertise. Ask genuinely curious questions—especially, “why?” or “what’s your ultimate goal?” to get a deeper understanding. the more you know about all the things, the better you can be at predicting pitfalls and successes. It allows you refine project requirements and eliminate unnecessary work. [RAI--asked for custom site, really wanted an easily update-able site that looked like it came from the university, reverted to the standard]
Anna: Doing good work is part of your job (or should be) Don’t let artificial barriers stop you from doing things that will actually make your job easier, more efficient, more fulfilling, more productive. We both started out in positions where none of this was “our job.” We did the things anyway, and now our jobs have grown to encompass them.
Kate: Connected to “be curious” but more about vulnerability. You don’t know everything about everything--and that’s ok. Vulnerability is a good thing: It is how you can learn about the work others do and teach about the work you do. Also builds relationships.
Anna: Perhaps the most important tip is…

Belief: guns are good (or) guns are bad

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What do we value?

Communications

Web Tech

efficiency

data-driven decisions

refinement

user experience

consistency

The Message

audience impressions & understanding

clear, concise, compelling communications

first impressions

attracting and engaging readers

conversions

future-proofing & scalability

security

accessibility

documentation

adaptation

graphic standards

functionality

browser compatibility

clean code

looks good

@anna_edits | @post_kate

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Find Your Key Partner(s)

Someone whose work intersects with your own
Someone who’s willing to collaborate
Someone who will challenge you

@anna_edits | @post_kate

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Develop Your Partnership

Meet for coffee! Meet for coffee again! (or tea!)
Get to know the whole person
Make it a working meeting
Be patient
Have fun

@anna_edits | @post_kate

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Get out of the office to break out of your predefined roles. HBR article: “the right level of background noise may disrupt our normal patterns of thinking and trigger the brain to think abstractly, and thus generate creative ideas.” Meet on a regular basis. Block time out on your calendar and commit to it.
We don’t necessarily need commonalities outside of work (e.g. baseball team) but we need to find common values outside of the task in front of us.

-we take work seriously
-we seek collaborative and meaningful work
-we look for human connection within our work

It’s healthy and productive to have relationships with people who are unlike you—it deepens the quality of your ideas

Common agenda at ALL meetings and in all conversations - rolling agenda and list of items that overlap (web content in our case). Send that email while you are sitting there, or schedule that meeting--often our most productive times are when we aren’t even talking to each other, just decide and do.
Patience—we started this 8 years ago as a part-time position and an ASC, started this in small ways and on small projects. It took a while to build trust and understanding. Now we have more autonomy and can dedicate more time to larger, higher-level projects.
Have fun--brainstorm wild ideas. Long-term partnership, have been able to pull each other up. Best part of my week

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Start Small

Communicators Guide

Brought together guidelines and best practices in one spot
Helped us identify our common agenda and values

@anna_edits | @post_kate

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Then Go Big!

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Articulate Your Shared Values

Chico State Web Governance Policy—Vision and Values

Visitors to the CSU, Chico web environment will

know where they are through a consistent visual experience
be able to navigate to University information and services quickly, easily, and without barriers
know what to expect from their interactions across the campus web
find accurate, up-to-date content that adds value and meets their needs
have an inclusive and accessible experience
be able to trust that their data will be handled securely

In order to do that, our values include an emphasis on

audience needs and expectations
access for all
security
branding and visual identity
data-driven decision making and continual improvement

@anna_edits | @post_kate

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Convince Others to Come Along

Get more people on campus to buy into the common values.

Be outspoken advocates
Don’t make people feel stupid
Educate campus community

Key Advocates

Our Teams

Campus Community

Core

Duo

@anna_edits | @post_kate

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Cooperative alliances (speaking to common values at ALL meetings)

Strength in numbers, especially cross-departmentally—this is a model that illustrates the way our core partnership and slightly larger group of advocates are on board with certain central values even more than our respective departments. We bring back these idea/projects/values and discuss them with our teams in staff meetings, on Slack, and in other intradepartmental communications.

Speaking up helps people FIND US. The more we speak up about things we value, the more we attract people who value the same thing. (presentation on social media accessibility lead to questions about web accessibility, Web Services creation of branded assets approved by UCOMM led to branding help requests from other areas, like SalesForce bolt-ons)

You don’t have to prove you’re smart (explain acronyms and jargon, don’t show off)

In addition to being an advocate, be patient in explaining this to people. Take the extra time to help them understand why these values are important and why they too should become champions.

�In order to do this, you need to educate your stakeholders. This is something we took on this summer.

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Common Values = Common Projects

Site Maintainers Workshop

3 presentations
4 hours
50 attendees
100 cups of coffee

Values Imparted

Purposeful decision-making
Optimizing user experience
Accessibility
Partnership

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The Best Part of All!

@anna_edits | @post_kate

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Bonus Tips

Ask for forgiveness, not permission
Work on things that may fail
Ask for feedback
Hire a team with shared values
Help people stay current
Compromise can look different
Be brave

@anna_edits | @post_kate

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Questions?

Anna Harris

@anna_edits | acharris@csuchico.edu

Manager, Web Services, University Printing Services & Rapid Graphics Copy Center

California State University, Chico

Kate Post�@post_kate | kdpost@csuchico.edu�Manager, Strategic Communications & Annual Giving�California State University, Chico

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