Biases in design and development
As a developer, I’ve often experienced what I call “design bias”: you can create innovative, error-free software with great functionality, but if the design is unattractive or difficult to use, you’ll struggle to gain traction. This highlights the importance of design, especially when offering content that’s typically consumed during moments of leisure and enjoyment.
The importance of design and organisation
A well-organised design is crucial for the effective implementation of strategies and system development. The foundation of this starts with establishing a corporate identity and a design system.
Benefits of corporate identity
Having a strong corporate identity offers several key benefits:
- Brand consistency and authenticity: Your brand remains cohesive across all platforms.
- Proper application: Design elements are applied consistently and correctly, following established guidelines.
- Uniformity: A unified look enhances user perception of your brand’s professionalism.
These elements help generate a perception of quality, which in turn enhances your authority and trustworthiness. Additionally, this consistency makes your content easily recognisable across various platforms, whether it’s your website, social media, or advertisements.
The value of a design system
A design system is a set of reusable components and guidelines that streamline the design process across all content and platforms. In addition to brand consistency, a design system provides the following benefits:
- Reduced design time: Designers don’t need to create assets from scratch every time. Predefined components speed up the process.
- Faster identification of improvement opportunities: With a standardised design, it’s easier to identify areas that need enhancement.
- System-wide implementation of improvements: Updates can be applied across the entire platform efficiently.
Real case: A practical example of design inconsistency
A few years ago, we launched a daily newsletter and a podcast. Both grew significantly, with a marked increase in subscribers, surpassing even our paid subscription numbers. However, since we developed them without a cohesive design system, the newsletter, podcast, and website all look very different from one another, despite being part of the same brand.
Other than the logo, there’s no clear visual connection between them.
As a result, we noticed a disconnect: the majority of newsletter subscribers are unaware of the podcast, and most podcast listeners don’t know about the newsletter. Additionally, very few of these users have become paying subscribers.
How to address design inconsistencies
In this scenario, we need to focus on creating visual consistency across all our content channels. Our goal should be for users to easily recognise the brand, whether they come across the newsletter, podcast, or website.
Here’s how we can approach it:
- Create a unified design system: Ensure that all design elements—colours, fonts, layouts—are aligned across newsletters, podcasts, and the website.
- Maintain recognisability across platforms: For example, if a newsletter subscriber sees our podcast on another platform, they should instantly recognise that it’s from the same source, and vice versa.
- Align with the website’s main design: This helps all users—whether they come from the podcast, newsletter, or another channel—immediately identify our website as part of the same ecosystem.
Once the design strategy is in place, we can iterate on it, measure results, and quickly implement improvements across all content platforms, whether it’s podcasts, newsletters, e-commerce, or the website itself.
Final thoughts
Design plays a critical role in the success of any content-driven platform. It’s not just about making things look good—it’s about creating consistency, recognisability, and trust. By establishing a strong corporate identity and a unified design system, you not only streamline your internal processes but also enhance your audience’s experience, leading to greater engagement across all channels.
Image credits: Freepik