Content design is fundamental to UX design
The term Content design and UX design are strange. Content is obviously the central part of a “user’s experience”. Whilst a lot of UX design practice tends to focus heavily on the visual side. That is if they are including the “user” at all. “UX designer” is not a helpful job title in any case. It implies that a designer is responsible for the user’s experience. Ask anyone what a UX designer does and you’ll more than likely get a multitude of responses.
What everyone is clear on is “design” as an action. The act of designing for people. We design content, interfaces and services for people. But we don’t necessarily have control of how that design is experienced. As designers, we can only render our intent. Then measure how our design performs, and iterate.
The invisible chair
Human beings place value on things they can see to be real. This comes from early human’s survival instincts. When we saw a lion running towards us, we ran. However, if someone told us there were lions nearby, you’d want to be sure of it before committing to a five-mile sprint. What we see and hear directly wire into our fight or flight response.
Seeing is believing.
Now, imagine a chair made of nothing. It keeps you effortlessly comfortable, no matter how you decide to sit in it. But, you can’t see it – so how do you know where it is? Consequently, it offers no information about how you sit in it. Where do you put your hands to ease yourself down? You’d be hard pressed to believe it actually exists wouldn’t you?
UX design can be a bit like the invisible chair. We place a lot of emphasis on how things look, because the visual form of something inherently communicates its function.
Form follows function
“Form follows function” – is the famous axiom from the 20th century modernist architect Louis Sullivan. It’s a principle that states the shape of a building or object should primarily relate to its intended function or purpose.
This principle absolutely still holds up for interface design. Alas, interface design is only a small segment of what constitutes a user’s “experience”. UX design is a broad spectrum, and is far beyond the physicality of product design and architecture. There are of the user experience that we can’t see, which are just as valuable as the things we can see.
For example, an online bicycle company saw most of their traffic and sales enquiries were around 6pm. This is when people are back home from work, browsing the internet. It’s also when the sales team clocked off too. A simple design decision was made to alter the working hours of the online sales team to work up until 9pm.
Their sales increased ten fold.
This is a design decision for a business’s product that does not manifest itself visually. However, its impact is profound. This sort of design is also referred to as Service design. But the distinction between “user experience design” and “service design” is so fuzzy, that neither become very helpful in describing the activity of designing a digital product. Especially when design is often misconstrued as making things we can see.
Design decisions aren’t always visual
“Good design, is as little design as possible” Dieter Rams said. But we are obsessed with over designing our delightful interactive prototypes to get recognition from our peers. This obsession with interfaces and prototyping focuses too much on the surface of what “user experience” design really is. We are placing the most importance on the things we can see. When in fact, the design decisions we cannot see can matter more.
It’s natural to focus on visual design as it makes for impressive visual portfolios. Moreover, clients and stakeholders are often obsessing with what it’s going to look like. If we can see it, then we believe it is real. Unfortunately, that’s the preconception surrounding UX design.
Understand your user, and think about content first.
At the heart of any digital design is the content. The furniture and aesthetic surrounding that content is secondary. Content is the most important thing when it comes to design. Words and images are how we emotionally connect with people. What, how and when we communicate information (the content) is the heart of what should be driving your design decisions.
Moreover, content design is essential to search engine optimisation; which is good for any online business. However, content design in digital products is often overlooked. As Sarah Richards from Content Design London says:
How do you focus on what really matters?
So before you break out your favourite prototyping tool, or start working up an interface in Sketch. Ask yourself these questions:
- What is the user need is for each step in this service?
- How was it identified?
- How does it help with the end goal?
- What content will help this user journey?
- How could the steps be simpler?
- How could the language be simpler?
- Are we connecting with our target user, emotionally?
Once you start employing this line of questioning, you can start to think about design decisions that matter, before you jump into the visuals. How you communicate the importance of these questions, and justify them as “design” comes down is the next challenge.
Want to learn more about Content design?
For help on getting to grips with content design, read Sarah Richard’s book “Content Design” to learn how you can ask the right questions and get to the heart of your product’s purpose.
Manchester based agency Code Computerlove have a great write up on how to run a content design workshop.
