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Timi Stoop-AlcalaWhen the concept of “content” comes up it can be hard to get everyone aligned on exactly what you’re talking about.
At IKEA, Timi Stoop-Alcala focuses on the “what” of content via the practice of knowledge domain modeling both to deal with the complexity of content and to highlight its importance.
Her knowledge-focused, human-centered approach has also elevated the role of content in the organization so that content is now recognized as a core competency.
We talked about:
- her work as a principal content strategist at IKEA in their Content Center of Expertise
- her recent talk on “Falling in Love with the What,” an introduction to knowledge domain modeling
- their attitude at IKEA that “content is the interface between our brands and our customers”
- the ubiquitous and varied forms that content takes and how she communicates the importance of this idea to her colleagues and stakeholders
- how she stealthily instills in her org the superpower of an ontological mindset through her use of knowledge domain modeling
- how the concept of world-building from world of role-playing games can help content creators and strategists
- how knowledge domain modeling in the context of a human-centered design practice cultivates empathy and helps in dealing with ambiguity and complexity
- the challenge of deciding where in a typical design development process to put knowledge domain modeling
- the interactions between content modeling and knowledge domain modeling
- the maxim that she includes at the end of every email: “Content starts and ends with people. It rises and falls with relationships.”
- the enduring importance of seeing how content relates to real world objects and their relationships with each other
Timi’s bio
Timi is Principal Content Strategist at IKEA where she strives to cultivate quality, innovation, and confidence in content using a broad set of human-centric design principles and systems thinking. The content maxim she lives by: “Content starts and ends with people; it rises and falls with relationships.”
She’s a change leader and driving force in creating structural and semantic foundations to enable contextual content — essential components for enabling customer agency and responsible personalisation. She weaves the disciplines of knowledge domain and content modelling, taxonomies, game thinking, teaching, and AI conversation modelling in her work.
Timi hails from the Philippines and now lives in The Netherlands. She swears that playing the tabletop RPG ‘Pathfinder’ is essential to becoming a good and happy content strategist.
Connect with Timi online
Video
Here’s the video version of our conversation:
Podcast intro transcript
This is the Content Strategy Insights podcast, episode number 195. The word “content” can mean something different to everyone who utters it. The fact that content is ubiquitous and complex and can take different forms across its many varied delivery formats and uses doesn’t really help people grasp its importance. At IKEA, Timi Stoop-Alcala helps here colleagues understand the scope and impact of content with a simple and succinct observation: “Content is the interface between our brands and our customers.”
Interview transcript
Larry:
Hi, everyone. Welcome to episode number 195 of The Content Strategy Insights Podcast. I am really delighted today to welcome to the show Timi:. Timi is a principal content strategist at IKEA. And welcome to the show, Timi. Tell the folks a little bit more about what you’re doing these days.
Timi::
Hey, Larry. Thank you for having me. Yeah, so I’m Timi, and I am a principal content strategist at IKEA. And specifically, I am with the Content Center of Expertise in the Experience Design Group. And so my team and I, we’re made up of content strategists and content designers and content writers. And yes, we focus a lot on making sure that we look at how we can deliver content on the channel, how can we make sure that we deliver content for responsible person in station, and of course, looking at how might we innovate more on content. And that’s why we are very much into also the structured part of the whole content development. And just making sure also that we elevate the role of content in the organization, content as a core competency, and the need for the content perspective in all the work that we do. So it’s a bit of all of that.
Timi::
And lately, what I’ve been up to, well, last week I was just at the European Women in Technology event with my team. And we did this workshop on knowledge domain modeling. Falling in Love with the What, that was our workshop.
Larry:
Oh, I love that. Falling in Love with the What. Tell me more about that.
Timi::
Yes.
Larry:
Tell me a little bit. Obviously, can’t do the whole workshop, but if you could give an overview of what you talked about.
Timi::
Yeah, so knowledge domain modeling, and by that, I really mean coming from the thinking, I think, that was started by Carrie Hane and Mike Atherton in their book, Designing Connected Content. They had this content stack. And that has inspired me a lot when I first read that. And I think part of that stack is around domain model. And I think for me, I took that as a way to help explain why content is actually data, and it’s also knowledge. And in my head, especially these days, I think the real value comes from looking at content as data and knowledge together.
Timi::
And I see knowledge domain modeling as a way to really understand the subject deeply, profoundly. That you know it so well, it’s almost like falling in love with the topic. You know it like the back of your hand, and you understand what the main concepts are that comprise this domain, how are they related in the real world, how do your customers understand it and your domain experts. And then knowing, how might we use this knowledge to best serve our customers? Or in IKEA’s case, how can we use this to make sure that we create better lives for the many people? So we’re trying to popularize and advocate for knowledge domain modeling in omnichannel content development.
Larry:
Well, the way you talk about it, it almost sounds like a prerequisite. I’m curious about one detail you mentioned about it, about the value of connecting content as data and content as knowledge. Is that the point of your modeling projects?
Timi::
Yeah. I think in many cases, I mean, even up to now, when we talk of content, especially in large organizations, many teams might have different meanings, different definitions for content. And so sometimes it’s based on, “Okay, what do you deliver?” The content that’s delivered, maybe, or “What’s the content that’s produced in a particular channel?” I think it’s understandable. Most people think of content in that sense, but I’d really like to talk more of content. What is it really about, and how it is so foundational in our experiences, the fact that we have to design around content. Content is the interface between our brands and our customers, especially online.
Timi::
And so yeah, we try to make sure that everybody gets to a same understanding of content, and that’s where the challenge lies. And that’s where I think knowledge, to me, modeling comes in, because we then get to explain a lot of the things that many teams are trying to solve now, in terms of delivering for omnichannel and personalization are about working with data and how to model knowledge, especially with the AI-mediated experiences.
Timi::
I mean, you see on LinkedIn and a lot of discussions around data, what needs to change in data, and how should we be thinking and modeling knowledge and knowledge management, and all of that. But at the heart of that is content, because a lot of the data and the knowledge is mainly expressed and experienced as content. But in many of the conversations, sometimes content is forgotten. And yet it’s the one that’s very complex to manipulate, very complex to deliver. I mean, you can talk about data or how do you create knowledge, how do you document that? But at one point, it transforms into content, and content also transform data and knowledge. And yet I think sometimes it’s often forgotten, or is out of sight.
Timi::
And so I have this passion for always raising my hand and asking, “Hey, have you thought about it from a content perspective? And when you’re talking about making decisions that affect data and knowledge, do you have a content person in the room, and are you thinking of the impact on content?”
Larry:
Yeah, I want to dive a little more into the details of that. But something you said a minute ago, I wonder, I want to tie it back to something you said at the very start about that part of your role is to elevate the role of content in the organization.
Timi::
Yeah.
Larry:
And then you said something a minute ago about, “Content is the interface between our brands and our customers.” That just seems like that’s where it all happens. Is that how you’re elevating the role of content?
Timi::
Yeah. The challenge, I think, with content is that it’s all over. It’s everywhere. That it becomes so big, and in that bigness, you assume that everybody’s talking about the same thing. And there’s still a lot of thinking on content that it’s the output, it’s just the thing you publish at the end. And it almost feels as if it’s separate from the way you’re developing your digital products. It has its own pipeline. But in essence, it’s like a current. It cuts through everything. And so part of how we want to elevate content is for teams to understand what are the different forms? What is the spectrum of when we say content, what are the different forms? And when we say structure, what is the spectrum of structure? Because there are many ways to create structure and content. And in the same way that there are many ways to express content on the front end.
Timi::
So it’s making those nuances, making those distinctions. So there’s a lot of, I think, education involved, a lot of posing different questions so that you might think differently of content. So a lot of it comes to definition. So for example, one of the things we’re doing on content modeling is we needed to make sure that we had a work stream that was focused more on the semantics part. What do we mean? All the words that we’re using in our teams, what are we talking about exactly? Are we meaning the same thing? And I am sure you can appreciate the importance of that work.
Larry:
Yeah, no. And you’re reminding me of the subtitle of your workshop, Falling in Love with the What. That’s getting at, right? The what?
Timi::
Exactly. It’s falling in love with the what, because knowledge of remodeling, it’s a collaborative approach to gain content alignment and get passionate about your subject matter. Because I think once you know what we’re talking about, then you will get more positive feelings about it. I mean, I think anyone who’s worked with content would know how frustrating it could be. A lot of the indecision or the complexity that wasn’t discussed at the beginning, they will turn up in content, sooner or later. It will become a problem, and it will come down to the content folks, the ones who create the content, who are going to deliver it. Then all of those get reflected in it.
Timi::
And so there’s a lot, I think, of frustration of trying to develop content. We know this. There’s the glamorous part of it, and there’s the part that frustrates, I think, many content folks. But if you are aligned and you have a way to wrangle the complexity from the very beginning, and if you have a way, I think, for the content perspective to be present right at the start, then I think a lot of the complexities and the problems, you can address it right away.
Timi::
And so you will feel good about the process and you will start, you can then really bring out your expertise and the knowledge that you know about the thing that we want to collectively work on, whatever that is. Could be a topic, but it could be whatever product that we’re developing and whatever experience we’re trying to create.
Larry:
Right. You said something, I was going to ask you a question, and I think you already answered it at the tail end of that, of what you just said.
Timi::
As you can see, I can get very, very passionate-
Larry:
Yeah, no, no, no, no. It’s awesome.
Timi::
… about those topics.
Larry:
But what I was going to ask about is again, back to that elevation of the role of content in the org, but part of that is we all know that phenomenon you described earlier of basically, “Oh, should have involved this earlier.” You talked about the working with content, revealing issues in prior planning and design work that was like, “Oh. I guess if we’d had more thought about content, that wouldn’t happen.” And then you talked about how-
Timi::
Exactly.
Larry:
… you’re working to get earlier in the process and stuff. But I wonder, another thing we’ve talked about before about how you think about this stuff, and one of the ways you talked about this is cultivating an ontological mindset, I think is how you put it.
Timi::
Mm-hmm.
Larry:
How does that figure into what you’re talking about, that ontology mindset?
Timi::
Yeah, the first, often, we don’t really say that it’s an ontological mindset. I would love to, but then my team will laugh at this. We have to see, “Okay, how do we explain that? What do we mean?” Because sometimes that’s met not with curiosity, but with broad brush and question. And that’s fine, but I think it’s also a challenge. How can we best explain this, so that people actually know, you know that ontological mindset? Well, you kind of have it. You’re born with it. You grow up, and you discover the world, and you have these concepts in your head, pretty much the same way that you see taxonomy every day in the way things are organized in the supermarket, for example, or it’s there. So we need to be able to make that connection. But that ontological mindset, I feel like a practice like knowledge domain modeling helps bring that out, gives you the ability almost to be more aware of it, that it’s an actual superpower that you can tap into.
Timi::
It helps. I see knowledge domain modeling as a personal tool to help clarify my thinking. Then I am more aware of first asking, “What is this really about, this domain or this problem? What is it?” Before thinking of jumping into solutions right away. And then breaking that down into concepts. And then with others better, because then you have somebody could check on how you’re thinking. And so getting that ability to break down things.
Timi::
And I think if you’re also a content creator, and if you’re a writer, that comes more naturally. You tend to break things down in concepts, because you know you’re going to weave them together in the story. And in fact, I think the most interesting stories, the same way I think in world building and games, the most interesting plots and scenarios come from knowing how to switch and knowing how to do that “in the meanwhile” things. You say something, you tell the story. And “in the meanwhile,” and then you go and switch, right? To be able to do that, you need to be working with concepts so that you can mix and match.
Timi::
And that’s why I find it so interesting, and I think that’s a core skill that we should develop, especially among digital designers and content teams, and even any cross-functional team. The ability to master concepts, I think, it helps us master also how we design for meaning or how we design for semantic web. And you would know this more than anyone. I think it starts with concept.
Larry:
Absolutely. And I love the way you described. I have to say, well, one quick thing about the correlation between world building. I have a number of friends who are either novelists or game designers, and they do these elaborate, they’ll spend months building the rules and the ideas around a world before they start creating stuff in it. And this seems analogous, but well, not opposite of that, but it’s more like identifying what you have. “What’s all this data and knowledge and content we got to work with here, and what concepts will we organize it around? And then we can do more powerful stuff with it.” Is that the idea?
Timi::
Exactly.
Larry:
Yeah.
Timi::
Yes, exactly. I mean, the what, where, when, how, why of things, and how are they represented? How would you represent them? Then you would gradually go to concepts in the end. Okay, maybe you start with a very specific thing. And then soon enough, you will go and try to abstract that, I think. If you’re trying to create experiences and stories, you need to be able to give the specifics, but also see the larger context. And I think that’s when you switch to concept. And that’s why I love knowledge, I mean, modeling because it’s a culmination of systems thinking on one hand, and also, that human-centric design. Because the practice of doing it means doing it with people, and also being aware that, “Hey, it’s going to get messy first.”
Timi::
I think it’s a great way to show empathy on how to handle ambiguity and complexity. I think that knowledge domain modeling helps you deal with them, in an empathetic way that you don’t need to understand everything right away. It’s going to be complex, and it’s fine. You can be comfortable with the mess. That’s one of the mindsets that we try to recommend when we do our workshops on knowledge domain modeling that, “Hey, it’s okay. That’s got to be messy. We need to be comfortable with a bit of mess at the beginning, and then have faith in the process that we will figure it out together. And there’s a light at the end of the tunnel.”
Larry:
I love that. And that’s all people working together. Something you just said reminded me, I don’t know if you follow Jeff Eaton. Not that I play favorites, but he might be my favorite content modeler.
Timi::
Oh, yeah.
Larry:
And he says this thing, “Content modeling is really just the friends we made along the way.” And his point is that-
Timi::
That’s a classic. Yes.
Larry:
Yeah, exactly. The way you just described it, I’m like, “Oh, that’s what Jeff’s talking about.”
Timi::
Yes.
Larry:
In doing it with people. But also, you mentioned just before that, the notion of abstractness. That’s the beauty of an ontology, is that it abstracts these concepts up to a workable level. Is that a challenge? It seems like it’s not that big a challenge with writers and content people, but are there any stakeholders that you have to work with who struggle with the abstractness of the models you work with?
Timi::
That’s interesting. Well, the thing is that in the act of doing the knowledge domain modeling, and this is quite a young discipline in our organization, so our content team has introduced it, specifically because we are doing content modeling. And how do you support content modeling? It’s not just going to be about creating the fields in the CMS, right? It’s all about a new way of working, a new way of thinking about content. And knowledge domain modeling helps with understanding, “How are we breaking things down?”
Timi::
In fact, I don’t know if it’s like this with other organizations, but I think many of our stakeholders or teams at first had more difficulty with content modeling than with knowledge domain modeling. I guess because the whole idea of how you create content, you’re thinking mostly in pages. And now you’re suddenly breaking it down. It becomes a content data model, whereas knowledge domain modeling, at least the way we introduce it is like, “All right, we’re going to sketch back the world to you. We’re going to ask you some questions. And what’s our focus for what we’re trying to model?”
Timi::
In the workshop, we did the sleep domain model. Because IKEA’s focus this year is really on how might we help many people improve, get better sleep. So you will see a lot of campaigns, a lot of promotions, and a lot of content and discussions around improving better sleep. But yeah, what is sleep? What is quality sleep? What is sleep environment? What is sleep culture? So we started with those things in our workshop. And pretty soon, they were going down to the level of, “All right, it’s a product, but it’s a solution as well.” Or “It’s a product, but it can be a cause of a problem. And oh, if you have a problem, there’s a challenge. If there’s a challenge, there’s a solution, there’s a person involved.” And pretty soon, they get into that kind of thinking, and I think that makes it more relatable. So the actual act is relatable.
Timi::
I think what’s challenging is where do you put knowledge domain modeling in a typical design development process? Where is the good entry point? Because a lot of times, with content strategy, sometimes when you’re pulled in, there’s already some decisions already made beforehand that could have benefited from a better corporate strategy. So also, I think what many systems thinkers struggle with, you come in there and then, “Okay, this is good, but then you know that this is connected to a bigger systemic problem.” Same way with when we come in, do knowledge domain modeling, we have to see what makes the most sense for this team. Maybe sometimes they don’t need it, or we just have to accept that “Okay, for the next iteration then,” or “For the next phase of the project.”
Timi::
So I think that’s more the challenge. I see it as it benefits mostly the phase of discovery, when you’re trying to discover the problem and you’re trying to define the problem. I think knowledge domain modeling would be really helpful, especially if you’re thinking of, “Okay, we’re going to create content. What topics are we going to engage your audience with?” And also, if you’re doing a lot of research at the beginning, I think that the standard research process would benefit from the knowledge domain modeling practice, or at least getting information that could be used for knowledge domain modeling.
Larry:
Yeah, it’s really interesting. I love the way you observed earlier that the knowledge domain modeling can help people get their heads around content modeling better. And I guess is that because you’ve sorted out the things you’re talking about, how they relate to one another, and then they’re like, “Oh, that’s why the people stuff on the page is different from the product stuff?” Or whatever. Is that how knowledge domain modeling helps content modeling?
Timi::
Yeah, it’s understanding, helping others understand, “Why are you thinking this way?” “Well, because we started from these concepts, and this is how they’re related.” And now you want to zoom in and model the kind of content that matches with this concept. Well, it has to reflect the structure as well. So it helps people understand, “Okay, that’s why it’s useful.”
Timi::
Or sometimes when you have content models, or we didn’t necessarily start with a knowledge domain model formally, but then we stumble into, “Okay, what is this content data type, actually?” It might help if we regroup and try to do a little bit of domain modeling instead. So it’s not like always we start with domain modeling, and then it’s content model. I think ideally, it should be like that, but as you know, it’s always like you have many running trains already. And sometimes it’s more like, “Okay, how do we help advance the work towards structured content?” So it’s not necessarily about knowledge domain modeling, per se. It’s always there’s the bigger goal. This is for helping them go towards structured content for the product that they’re using. Yeah.
Larry:
So much of what you’re talking about, and we’ve talked about this before, is about people stuff.
Timi::
Yeah.
Larry:
About wrangling people.
Timi::
Oh, yeah.
Larry:
Motivating people, choreographing the changes that need to happen.
Timi::
Yep.
Larry:
Can you talk a little bit about how you approach it? Some of the lessons, I think, are emerging naturally as you talk about how you work, but can you talk a little bit about your approach to the people side of this whole thing?
Timi::
That’s super-interesting. One of my content maxim is “Content starts and ends with people. It rises and falls with relationships.” I put that at the end, every email, everything, because I really believe it. Well, because I think a lot of the work that we want to do in content and content strategy, in the end, it’s about persuading, convincing the people who will be changing the way that they work with content, persuading them that “Hey, get on board,” and getting their confidence higher. So a lot of the creative confidence that we want to cultivate, that’s also one of our mission in our team. How do we cultivate confidence in content? So for us, that really means, hey, we are not working in silos. If we’re really serious about that, then what does it mean in terms of how we plan the projects? How do we make sure that we have a good network map, we have a good RACI model? Who’s going to be involved, who’s going to decide what?
Timi::
And also, how a lot of the work that we do, especially in my team, we adopt a movement mindset. We see the work that we do as a change movement, because it involves a lot of fundamentally different way of looking at content. And as you know, once you structure content, you unearth all the hidden things, or how do I say, all the hacky things underneath. And now if you’re going to model it, then there comes a point in there the hacky things will not cut it anymore. So we need to do some foundational stuff. And that involves teams changing the way they work.
Timi::
So for us, a big part of the work of a content strategist is understanding the people and the teams that will be impacted, and how they should be participating in crafting the strategy. And that’s also how we see modeling. It’s a cross-functional team effort. And same with content modeling, same with knowledge domain modeling. And of course, in IKEA that’s super-important, the value of togetherness, the value of collaboration. But it needs to be guided collaboration, as respect to the time and energy of people. And modeling does that. It helps involve people, but then it also makes sure that that energy is channeled properly, and that you can see a good outcome of it so that you feel you know that you involved and it led to a concrete outcome.
Larry:
Nice. I love that. People being, the phrase you just used, guided collaboration. Still highly collaborative, but you bring your content, subject matter expertise and drive it.
Timi::
Yeah.
Larry:
Timi, I can’t believe that we’re coming up close to time already.
Timi::
I know.
Larry:
I told you this would go way too fast. But before we wrap, is there anything last, anything that you want to revisit from the conversation or that you’d just like to share before we leave?
Timi::
I guess just going back to what I mentioned at the beginning, that when we talk about knowledge domain modeling, we see it as a falling in love with the what, getting passionate about your subject matter. And that’s not just to use some witty words or what. I really mean it, because when we do knowledge domain modeling and we try to see from the start, “What is this world that we’re trying to model? How is content related to this real world objects and their relationships?” That requires a serious commitment to content, not a casual commitment. I think I’ve read this in content science, “A casual commitment to content.” I thought, “I really like that, because that’s very common.”
Timi::
And so falling in love with the what, doing knowledge domain modeling, helps you develop a serious commitment to content. And with a relationship that’s marked by clarity, by alignment, by focus. And that’s real love, I think. That’s what makes a good relationship. And so I’d like to leave the thought to your viewers about modeling. It might sound maybe technical or something only for data folks. Actually, no. Anyone can do it. And we just need to make sure that we have a good set of steps to follow, and a good question to answer, a good problem to solve. And then we can start really falling in love with the what, which has drawn us in the first place as to why we want to do modeling. So I hope-
Larry:
That probably is a lot of the study. You’re-
Timi::
I hope I do that.
Larry:
I’ve got to say, Timi, one of the reasons I’ve been wanting to have you on the show forever, but the LinkedIn post that triggered the conversation we’ve had the last few months, you started a post with, “My dear content soulmates.” And I just loved it. What you just said completely reflects that. It’s not some kumbaya lovey-dovey thing. It’s genuine love and affection, and appreciation of content and the objects that it’s representing, and the relationships and the people relationships around it. I just love your approach.
Timi::
Thank you.
Larry:
Hey, one very last thing, Timi. If folks want to connect, what’s the best way to follow you online or connect?
Timi::
Oh, yeah, I’m on LinkedIn. So Timi:. Yeah, I think that’s the best one. Best way to contact me. I’m thinking now, should I give my email address? But then, it’s Timi.Stoop-Alcala@Ingka.ikea.com. So I think you will see that if you go to LinkedIn. I will do my best to request-
Larry:
Yeah, it’s on LinkedIn. I’ll let LinkedIn handle the spelling. I still get that, it’s Ingka. Anyhow-
Timi::
It’s not a simple email.
Larry:
Yeah, LinkedIn will fix us up. Well, thank you so much, Timi. Always fun to talk with you, and this was a particularly fun conversation.
Timi::
Thank you, Larry. I was looking forward to this. Thank you so much.
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