A Marriage Of User Awareness
Like Two Peas In A Pod, This Dynamic Duo Of UX Design & Branding Already Share A Lot In Common
UX Design & Branding have always held a special place in my heart. Both dimensions of design are actually very similar to one another. Both have target audiences, be it personas or target markets. Both are dependent on the user having the best possible experience, and how they feel while using the product or service.
Branding
In many ways branding tries to connect with the user on an emotional level that can go beyond how a user interacts with the product. They’re really trying to reach into the lizard brain1. Branding taps into deep seeded cultural symbolism and aspects of the human condition to affect users on another level. Branding romanticizes and draws attention to certain aspects of life that in turn grabs the attention of specific groups of people. These people relate to the imagery, language, and tone of the message. Branding—done right—is really a rallying cry to the cult of “X”, be it coffee, extreme sports, running, yoga, wine, etc… By finding a niche group and attaching their product to that idea, they are able to establish a strong and meaningful brand. For example, Starbucks knew they had succeeded when they became synonymous with coffee in America. In branding you want to own the mind real estate of users of a particular offering.
Branding is really the management of—touch points—experiences customers have with a product or service offering. The goal it to consistently deliver a very intentional and crafted user experience.
User Experience Design
Although a user’s experience should be considered beyond the realm of interactive digital user interfaces, the term UX Design is used primarily in the realm of screen based interactive experiences. Companies should be concerned with signage, “unboxing”, how staff interact with customers, emails, interior design, you get it, the list goes on. Most of the time these other aspects of a user’s experiences are handled by branding and advertising agencies.
At the end of the day, both branding & UX design are concerned with the experience of their customers, and how they feel about a product, offering or company as a whole. In some ways you could say that branding is more concerned with the impression that people have even while not using the product. The ideas or mythos2 they’ve build around a brand. Branding wants you to think of their product when you have a desire to use an offing in their domain. But then again, you could say that UX design also has that goal in mind.
Footnotes
- A past professor, Eric Crone used to use the term, “lizard brain” any time he’d reference instinctual or what might be considered primordial urges or needs.
- Mythos, the pattern of basic values and attitudes of a people, characteristically transmitted through myths and the arts.
