IAC23
“Headless” CMS tools, in which the structure of content is decoupled from its presentation as “pages” on the front end, have seen rapid and growing adoption over the last several years. This is with good reason: decoupled approaches to content are unrivaled in their support for creating flexible, reusable omnichannel and personalization-ready content. In practice, however, many organizations struggle with adopting a “decoupled” mindset: when our familiar “page-focused” shortcuts for structuring and authoring content are gone, we tend to fill in with what we know: more pages.
In this talk I will provide an introduction to headless CMSes and identify the conceptual gap decoupling creates. I will then identify and show real-world examples of three places where information architects can use principles from the practice of taxonomy to fill these conceptual gaps and make the most of their headless CMS: between digital resources, within digital resources, and within block level content.
Andy Fitzgerald is an independent Information Architecture and Content Strategy consultant with applied expertise in structured content design and knowledge graph engineering. He works with mission-driven organizations to craft information design solutions that communicate complexity clearly, align business and user goals, and scale effectively over time.
Prior to forming his own practice, Andy held design and director positions with Frog Design and Deloitte Digital where he tackled the problem of effective communication in complex information spaces for a wide range of client organizations in healthcare, education, financial services, retail, entertainment, and transportation. Andy is an active member of the IA and experience design communities and has spoken and led workshops at UX and IA conferences all over the world.