How to encourage the use of actual content (instead of lorem ipsum) in design?
Without getting into the debate about whether lorem ipsum is useful for not in design, this question is about how to discourage people from using irrelevant text in design because when actual and relevant content is placed in the user interface often that's the time when people realize that they should have tested it against more relevant content.
I can think of a couple of options, but I would like to know if there's more strategies out there:
People are not aware of its importance:
- develop requirements that incorporate content and not just features
People find it too hard to come up with their own:
- provide actual data from your existing users
- provide fictional data based on actual data types/formats
- go to website or services that provide such data
People find it too hard to use the data:
- incorporate it into existing design patterns (i.e. a list of labels or inputs along with the components and styling)