I think it’s a matter of optics. I’m a content strategist and I agree with much of what you’ve teased out above: it’s thoughtful and reasonable. Exceptionalism of any stripe among our cousin disciplines, however, is unhelpful and dishonest: all of our work is, at best, collaborative and additive. So if some of my fellow CSes don’t find your perspective as refreshing and gentle a corrective–I see nothing wrong with calling out the hype cycle content strategy is currently enjoying for what it is–I think you’d find it’s a matter of that reactionary impulse, and of disciplinary origins.

I come out of an editorial, product development and management consulting background, and to me product strategy, not “CS” per se, is the lens I apply. I think you’d find this may apply methodologically to a number of my colleagues. Likewise, I’m very focused on the operational and organizational dimension of being a capable publisher online. So content is integral to the user experience (and very often to the client offering), but I don’t consider it imbued with some kind of unimpeachable pixie-dust primacy in the work we do. The applicability of CS, like ID, will vary, and I don’t think that’s controversial.

What content is not, however, is an accessory or bolt-on to experience, and I think the pervasiveness of that bit of casual chauvenism in our industry has been precisely what’s given rise to content partisans agitating for content to reclaim a broader focus. Gripes are gripes, nothing more, but the bigger claim on our attention is the state so many of our clients find themselves in today. Which is nontrivial and, I think, the primary reason content strategy has come of age now.

In the client realm, as you note, organizations are a full generation into the web failing to have addressed some of the most basic aspects of managing–let alone understanding, measuring and being effective with–their content, as well as users’ expectations of their (sometimes, comically unwitting) role, ipso facto, as publishers.

There are qualitative and quantitative aspects to the enormity of the shovelwaresque realm content specialists see stretching to the horizon before them. That situation is pivotal to every project I undertake, and I work primarily with clients in media and publishing, the original content-is-king crowd. The work and the need for it has never been more apparent, especially to clients like these who are already, allegedly, adept at content.

In the bigger picture, I think we’re just seeing a pendulum swing w/ CS’s current vogue. There are folks in certain quarters that would like this to augur something more than it might become–the content marketing community, for example, is really banking on it. But in terms of the rationale for our work as content strategists, I think the bell is tolling itself just fine. And the body of knowledge is the important thing, not the volume of the conversation.

Gladly, there’s plenty of thrilling and difficult work to be done out there that doesn’t require us to come to some grand unified Kumbaya as a profession. But love that you stirred some fresh embers here–it’s all good grist for the mill!

What I am saying is that ultimately, designers rely on those who make our designs and those who provide the resources to do so. It’s our job make them feel like what they are: the ultimate deliverers of the product to the users. Almost always, our work gets made thanks to them.

Isn’t it still the case that the designer needs to consider the user experience of the user in order to best choose which buttons the product should have, where they go, and how they get used? Doesn’t the designer want his or her design choices to reflect the interests of the end user?

That said, having someone with time dedicated to keeping the overall user experience would be nice. As it is, our business peeps check so that everything works accordingly but that is simply not enough. Also, with the work load we have we don’t have time to think of all the improvements we can do to the current design and graphic design is simply not in our job description (to my dismay!).

As you clearly describe, many factors and people have a significant impact on the design and eventual creation of a product.

More and more I view user experience design as a competency, and not as a person with a certain title or even a single department. User experience design is more of a team sport that requires leadership and responsibility, not ownership.

I worked for a company that hired ‘offshore’ programmers years before it was cool and the thing I learned is that for all their passion they couldn’t work within the constraints of user-experience. For instance, I think that user flows should start with all of the possible errors and work backwards, not walk through all the possible successes.

anyway, at the end of the relationship the user owns the experience. I for one hate APPLE products with a passion only equal to those who tattoo the logo into their skull. I think that Apple hides shit experience behind fantastic industrial design (physical and software) rather researching quantitative use, but at this point I am sure to be biased, like all users. No designer owns my bias.