12.6. Content Models

Content models are “micro” information architectures made up of small chunks of interconnected content. Content models support the critical missing piece in so many sites: contextual navigation that works deep within the site. Why a missing piece? Because it’s easy—maybe too easy—for an organization to accumulate blobs of content, but extremely difficult to link those blobs together in a useful way.

12.6.1. Why Do They Matter?

We encounter content models all the time on the Web and in more traditional media. A recipe is a great example. Its objects are a list of ingredients, directions, a title, and so on. If you “greek up” a recipe, it’ll still be recognizable. But change the logic—by putting the steps before the ingredients or leaving out an important object—and the model collapses. Content models rely on consistent sets of objects and logical connections between them to work.