Nice thought process. Makes me think about what I’ve read (and tried to practice) in ‘task-focused’ design: i.e. work through with the users need (both external and internal users) to accomplish and design to support those task flows rather than impose a single workflow across the system. Once you sort out the tasks it’s easier to plot them side-by-side and see where they overlap and differ. It’s often not too difficult to make a screen slightly more flexibly and suddenly support multiple task flows and user types.

Great stuff!

Jason

I like what this means for the convergence of content strategy and information architecture. A process like you describe should force the question: “What does the user need to make a decision in this state/page?” Part of that is what message or content they need to be presented (often a concern of Content Strategists), another part is what functionality needs be presented (traditionally a concern of IAs).

When we view it that way, it’s clear we need a unified approach, with its own vocabulary, structure, and process. From my view this floats at some higher level than Content Strategy and Information Architecture.