User interaction with a brand, service, or product is heavily influenced by design. Not all design is the same; in fact, there is a dramatic difference between bad designs and strategic designs. Understanding the differences between these can directly impact user experience, brand perception, conversion rates, and overall business success.
What Is Bad Design?
Bad design is where appearance is the only focus and when it is created without clearly defined goals, without doing any research and without an understanding of the user. It also does not consider accessibility, usability or functionality.
Some common themes of bad design include the following:
- Bad user experience (UX)
- Confusing layouts and navigation systems
- Color, fonts, and branding inconsistency
- Lack of visual clarity and hierarchy
- Not meeting the user’s needs and/or not responding to their behaviour
- Making design decisions based on personal preference or feeling instead of on data
- Not matching to your business’ goals
Bad design will frustrate your user; they will leave your site sooner than they would if the experience was a good one, and they will lose trust. For your digital product, bad UI/UX often results in low user engagement, no user retention and decreased revenue. As a company with bad branding, you will look less credible as a result of having a bad product because of bad UI/UX.
What Is Strategic Design?
Strategic designing is intended to be purposeful, research-and-evidence-based, and focused on attaining specific objectives. Strategic design entails creating a coherent collection of related designs that work towards an overall end goal while providing a framework for achieving the design goals.
Two primary components of a strategic design approach are as follows:
- The use of a clearly defined set of design objectives and goals, and
- The use of a user-centred approach to the design process.
Additionally, decisions made in relation to strategic design are based on research, data and insights; all design decisions should be made with a clear understanding of how they fit with the overall brand image, good usability, accessibility and clarity of design and how the design supports overall business growth (e.g., increasing customer conversions) and total performance of the business.
Strategic design enhances customer experience, builds brand loyalty and increases product performance for businesses. Strategic design also allows for businesses to develop real solutions to their problems through the development of meaningful user-to-user interactions.
Strategic design provides value to businesses by improving user satisfaction; increasing engagement and conversion rates; developing trust and credibility; differentiating them from competitors; and supporting their scalability and growth. However, poor design often results in redesigns, wasted resources, and missed opportunities.
To summarise the above, the differences between the successful use of strategic design vs. how it can fail are as follows: bad design is often guesses about a specific design implementation (guesswork) based upon decoration (cosmetic appeal) as opposed to having concrete objectives for the Overall Business Goals & Objectives (purposeful) and being rewarded for achieving them through improved customer experiences (successful).
Strategic design is a combination of Creativity, Planning, Research, and User Insight to produce tangible outcomes. Companies that use strategic design will gain a competitive edge and provide their users with the best possible user experience.
