What Did You Learn? #41

Transcript

Ahava: Hi, I'm Ahava Leibtag! Welcome back to "What Did You Learn?" I'm really excited today to have with us Anita Cheng. Anita is a content designer with the City of San Francisco's Digital Services team. Welcome!

Anita: Hi, I'm really happy to be here!

Ahava: I'm so excited to talk to you, we have a lot to cover. But before we get into that, you know we've all been trapped for a year. What's the one thing that you found that sort of kept your mental health at least somewhat baseline?

Anita: So I've always been a knitter, but now I just am knitting a lot more. I actually don't have any right next to me. I was working on like this sample piece just to block it and just sort of...

Ahava: Oh look it matches what I'm wearing!

Anita: Oh it's kind of pink! Yeah yeah yeah! Yeah, so it's gonna be a lot bigger as a sweater. I'm like maybe halfway through the sweater. I don't know...a little less because of the sleeves. But I've just been knitting a lot more. Because sometimes when you're like anxious, I'm just gonna do something with my hands.

Ahava: I'm a quilter. I haven't really quilted that much this year.

Anita: It's hard because you have to sort of concentrate. You got to have a space you know? Whereas I can just sort of sit the knitting on my lap.

Ahava: So take us through the life of Anita Cheng, in a day. Like, what does somebody as a content designer in such an important critical time for public health do, in order to help the City of San Francisco communicate better with the people that live there?

Anita: Yeah, so right now it really depends! Next week we'll be really busy, because we have reopening. We are going to reopen some indoor dining, indoor gyms, indoor movie theaters...The most exciting times I think were in the last year when we were closing things down a lot. Like week after week we were like, "Okay we're gonna shut this down, we're gonna shut this down," and then in the fall we were starting to...we opened things back up. And like every week, it seemed to be something different, and it was just hard to catch up with. But now I have more of a team that will tell me what's going on. Even if I don't know...right now it's like, "Hey you're working at DPH, you're on the team that's working on the guidance...could you give me a heads up about like, the big things that are coming up next, so I can at least have an idea?" And then I have an Airtable of course. I love Airtable. Airtable lets me know what is going on at that point in time, with all the pages. I have like 50 pages that I'll kind of babysit and be like, "Okay, if this guidance changes, I have to change like, these 5 pages because they mention that a little bit." I just want to make sure that they're accurate and then....

Ahava: I love that term, "babysit those pages."

Anita: Yeah babysit, like nurture, or garden. I was like, "Am I a farmer or gardener?" I feel like I'm trying to be like, "I don't want you to be outdated and die out that way. I want you to be current and healthy and stuff."

Ahava: Thriving!

Anita: Thriving yes! That is a good word, I'll have to remember that.

Ahava: We define plain language...I mean plain language is defined as, can people find what they need, understand what they need, and use it. And I think almost the entire society has pretty much failed at that mission of getting people this health information. Because it's so confusing! And so as a content designer, and a content strategist, and a copywriter, and all the things that we do when we're content designers...you look at something like that—Walk me through your mental model of, "How am I going to attack this guidance and make it clearer for people?" Because I have to put up the language, I know I have to do that. But how am I going gonna explain it?

Anita: We have a really strong content strategy on the website, where we're like, "People go on government websites to get stuff done." And even if that stuff is like, "I'm going to learn about coronavirus." Like that's not really a thing people do, they don't learn about coronavirus. They go there to be like, "What do I do now?" Like masks, what about masks? And so like having that idea of, it has to be by audience. If you're a business owner, if you own a restaurant, you have certain tasks you want to do. And it was like okay, restaurant owner tasks they have to do. Like they have to know if they can open. And if they can open, what's the capacity limit, as well as what they can do. And then like a lot of the PDF guidance that they'll have to post. It's like sorry, these are requirements!

Ahava: So do you babysit these pages by putting up like capacity? Like do you actually design it out so that it's almost like a dashboard or a graphic display, or are you hamstrung by the constraints of the compliance and the legal authority behind them?

Anita: Yeah so I just have these templates that I have. I mean they're in Google Docs, they're not anything super super fancy. I have like, "Okay I'm going to talk about it like this." You can open to like, say 25% capacity. I have to say that up front because that's the thing that changes all the time. And then it's other things to keep in mind. Like if you're a restaurant owner and you want to do outdoor dining, you have to keep your tables 6 feet apart. Like that is a requirement that they have to know. I used to rewrite kind of everything, but now I've found that it's getting more difficult to maintain. So I'm trying to cut that back and be like, "Okay on a page like this, this is the stuff that you have to know if you do nothing else." You have to assume that most people are not going to read everything on a page, so you have to give them the most important stuff.

Ahava: That's what we do in health care. It's like, "Here's what you need to know, and then the rest of it." It's kind of like, we always talk about the bite, snack, meal, right? Like give them a bite, then there's the snack, and then if they want to go into the meal, if you want to go the whole thing, go ahead! So how often are you on the phone with compliance or the lawyers?

Anita: Actually, it's been interesting because early on, I was getting all my stuff checked by the City Attorney. And then after it got too much to check, he just sort of was like, "Okay, I have no notes for you. Like I trust you now." So that was in the summer, and then we actually switched to where Public Health would check my stuff. And that's a lot more complicated, because they have a whole process of how they write the guidance. And I'm still working on like, trying to make sure that whatever I write is accurate to their direction as to what the nuance is. Because there's a lot of nuances, which is why the language is so complicated.

Ahava: I want to ask you about...What do you think, in your own professional career or even personally, you know, what do you think is the biggest lesson for a public health content designer, during any time particularly, but really during a crisis.

Anita: Yeah I think the most important thing is being consistent with every other messaging that's going on. Because I think that's...One of the things that has really set San Francisco apart is that we're very aligned on the messaging. It comes from the Mayor's Office as well as Public Health. And it's really important. Our Mayor London Breed actually listens to our scientists and our public health experts because then she knows like, "Oh I have to say this because that's what the scientists are telling me. And then we have to do it that way because otherwise the consequences will be terrible." And so we're all aligned with, "Oh this week we're going to say this about testing. Like this is our testing supply situation, or our vaccine supply situation, for instance. Like this is where we're at right now. " So we can't over-promise because we just don't know. And we have to say that. Like, vaccine supply is low - we're gonna have to tell them the truth.

Ahava: As a content designer, I think that a lot of people are kind of flummoxed by what exactly that person does. And what it sounds to me, what you've described is like an octopus. You have your hands in eight different areas and you're trying to pull together all this information and display it. If a content designer came to you and said, "What do you look for when you hire a content designer?" Like what's the most important thing that that person has to have or the two most important things? What would you say they are?

Anita: I think being able to take in a lot of information at once, especially in this context. Normally it wouldn't be so bad. Like normally we would have time to like, read something and meet with people and understand. But right now we don't have that time.

Ahava: Right.

Anita: So I'm reading like, this guidance and then it's also coming from a message from the Mayor's Office. Like okay, I need to somehow make these things make sense.

Ahava: You need to knit them together.

Anita: Knit them together! Oh great, fantastic! Oh, the metaphors! And then being able to also give reasons as to why you are writing things a certain way. Like this is the audience I'm writing to, and this is the task that they want to do. Because everyone wants to add something because there's so much complexity in the situation. People are like, "Oh, if we give them more information, it's better!" But you can only do that when they're ready for it, right? Like when they're on like the website, when they land on something like this, they have to know certain things. And then if they want to know more, we could give them that. But we can't just dump them all into that at once.

Ahava: You know, I always say a great content professional protects the audience and advocates for the brand. You know what I mean?Like that's your number one job is to make sure the audience is getting what they need, but the brand also has to be there.

Anita: Yeah.

Ahava: And here it's a public mission, right? Like you have to get people information, even if it was just noise ordinances in San Francisco, you know? There are rules about what it does and what they communicate to their constituents. Okay, you and I are sitting at a cocktail party....we're looking back at this and you're thinking about the tools that you have in your professional toolbox. What's one tool that you have sharpened during this time, that you know you will continue to use throughout your career?

Anita: I was really hesitant about asking people for help earlier. That was kind of my personality, like, "Oh I can do it myself." But when you need to talk to somebody like, ASAP, and you don't know them, you have to ask people like, "Hey have you worked with so-and-so? What are they like?" And I found that people will just tell you because they want you to succeed right? It's like, okay now I'm gonna be shamelessly asking people, "Hey have you worked with this person? What are they like? What's going on in this situation?" Asking for advice as well, because when things change so fast, you can't always take the time to really think through a situation. Like, "Okay brain, I'm gonna take a break and think about what i'm gonna do. " It's like, "No, we can't. We don't have a couple days, we have a couple hours." So it's like, "Hey boss, can you like, help me untangle this thing right here?"

Ahava: This has been a crash course for all of us and how important it is to have people who know how to make information clear and that kind of thing. In your job and in what you do, do you find that you often have to push back against the people who are giving you the information, or talking about the nuances of the language? And how do you do that in a way that leads to a better product?

Anita: I always want to go back to what they care about, which is other people learning their information. So it's like, "Yes, you have a lot of things you want to tell them, but you also want to give them the bite-size thing first, right?" And then they could be like, "Okay,this is what I'm here to learn," versus being intimidated by a giant PDF with tiny text, which helps nobody if they're not ready for it. Slways going back to, "This is what you want, this is what I want, and then we can somehow meet in the middle and this is this is how we can all help."

Ahava: Anita, it was really great to have you here! Where can people find you?

Anita: So I'm on Twitter at AnitaYCheng. I'm also on Instagram but I don't post many pictures, because I haven't been going...Nobody's been going anywhere that much honestly!

Ahava: What's there to post?

Anita: What's there to post??

Ahava: Keep people apprised of your knitting. When does that pink piece of fabric turn into a sweater?

Anita: That's also a process!

Ahava: Exactly, it's all a process! That's what we learned today! Well thank you so much for being here Anita. I know that I've really enjoyed our interview, and I know that my audience will as well. So thank you.

Anita: Thank you, hope so too.