How understanding Branding can make you a better UX designer
Our industry has been hit with a large number of layoffs. As an aspiring designer or one who is early in their career, it’s easy to feel uncertain of your future. But where there is uncertainty, there is opportunity. Whilst I can’t guarantee you job security, I can highlight tools and resources that can help you become invaluable as a designer. So today we’re going to look at the relationship between Branding and UX. How understanding their connection aids our job as designers and benefits business strategy.
Having done freelance work for SMEs this year, I noticed that some businesses have a limited understanding of what UX is and what it can do for them. Beyond “UX makes things easier and more delightful for our users”. There’s no recognition of how this helps business strategy long term. Even within well-established UX teams within companies, designers have to prove the importance of what we do. So, this isn’t new to us. But we’re stepping into an era where users/ consumers have an unlimited choice of products and services. This only emphasises why now more than ever, it is fundamental for companies to buy into UX as a tool to engage positively with their consumers and differentiate themselves from their competition.
So what does this have to do with Branding? In Shopify’s Blogpost earlier this year they defined Branding as:
“The process of creating a distinct identity for a business in the mind of your target audience and consumers”
So what does this have to do with Branding? In Shopify’s Blogpost earlier this year, they defined Branding as:
“The process of creating a distinct identity for a business in the mind of your target audience and consumers”
Your brand identity consists of elements like your values, logo, brand colours, and visual design but extends to customer service and the quality of your product or service. Your brand perception is formed in the moments when users interact with these elements and form an opinion. Essentially, brand perception is how people feel about your business. Now, think about UX and what it entails. As designers, our job is to craft simple, functional and innovative solutions for users, but the user experience is determined by how they feel about them. Branding and UX are separate disciplines but the link they share with public perception shows they inform each other. When businesses utilise this link, they excel. Take a look at Apple. Steve Jobs frequently spoke about how Branding should be woven into all aspects of Apple products. But he never forgot to mention the importance of design and user experience (not just digitally) alongside it. Steve Jobs understood the importance of how users felt about Apple.
“we’re not going to get a chance to get people to remember much about us… so we have to be really clear on what we want them to know about us”
And just like Maya Angelou said, people will forget what you said and did, but they will never forget how you made them feel. I remember the first time I unboxed my iPhone 4s. I remember how excited I was to unveil this sleek little mobile from its minimal white packaging. I loved how it fit in my hand and how smooth the silver edges felt. How dynamic my home screen felt as my thumb glided through app icons. I’ve been a loyal Apple customer for ten years. That is the power of eliciting emotion. We can see that UX and Branding inform each other in this way but it goes further. In a UX Matters article on the relationship between Branding and UX, we learn that UX research methods can gather insights into brand and competitor perception. In addition, there are customer experience questionnaires from marketing that UX researchers can use to gain valuable insights. This is because the UX of a product makes up part of the touch points of the overall brand experience. The quality of UX directly impacts the brand experience.
Another company that understands the powerful relationship between Branding and UX is Spotify. They have famously said they are a music brand, not a tech company. Spotify understands how music makes people feel and this is something they strive to emulate in their user experience. They became more than a music brand and became recognised in the design community for their creative and thoughtful design in 2018. In doing so, they found their old brand was limiting their designers. They wanted their design guidelines to allow for more creativity and more storytelling that would inspire their community. They started as all designers do, trying to figure out the problem they wanted to solve. After a tonne of research, they found their goal was to unify the Spotify Design with the Spotify brand. They decided they didn’t want a complete framework as they needed to leave room for designers to be flexible. But like any business, it was vital for them to measure the success of their rebrand. What was their chosen metric? They called it internal pride. If their designers were showcasing the new website and writing articles for it themselves, that would show a good sense of internal pride. Understanding Branding helped them become even more recognised within the design space. They are now seen as pioneers in innovative and delightful design.
Branding and UX are both complex and separate disciplines. Whilst your main focus as a designer should be sharpening your soft and hard UX skills. The best designers have great knowledge of their field but know how it feeds in and works with other staple disciplines. Knowing this helps you become an even stronger advocate for UX. That’s how you make yourself indispensable as a designer.
If you have any other questions or just want to chat, feel free to send me a message here or on Linkedin!
www.linkedin.com/in/khumbirakasambala ♡
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