What is ‘Kind Design’?
For those who aren’t familiar, International Design Day is April 27th! Starting in 1963, it was meant as an opportunity to recognize the value of design and its capacity to effect change. This day challenges designers to reflect on the well-being of people within their local environments, and to find innovative solutions to local needs by using design as a vehicle to honor diversity and transcend borders.
This year’s theme: Is it kind? A question for designers to define what kindness is in design, as well as, how we build kindness into our design practice. Below is our take from a few of our BentoBox web designers.
Empowering Customers
Restaurants can bring family and friends together to celebrate, can spark romance on a first date, and can even provide us with comfort food after a long day. Restaurants are kind to us, so what can we do to be kind to them? This is a question we tackle every day here at BentoBox. One of the many ways we deliver kind design is through our wide-ranging suite of products. They all allow us to empower restaurant owners.
Running a business is hard enough, in today’s digital world you have to establish an online presence too, which for some restaurateurs can feel overwhelming. BentoBox has designed products to help ease the burden and keep the money in the hands of restaurant owners. We are able to do this through our online ordering system that skips unkind third-party fees on takeout, delivery, and catering. You can take advantage of our other products for in-house dining like kiosks and reservations to turn tables over faster. We also boast the ability to sell gift cards, merchandise, and tickets for events as a way to make money even after closing time. To top it off, our multi-channel outreach of emails and SMS texts will keep diners coming back for more. More ways to earn money means more money for your business. How kind!
Written by James Coviello
User Experience
Crafting a website with user experience (UX) and usability in mind is not just about aesthetics; it’s also about fostering kindness in design. Think of UX as an extension of hospitality — a well-designed website and platform anticipates users’ goals and guides them through their journey.
At BentoBox, we achieve this by seamlessly integrating user experience and usability into the website platform, which benefits both the businesses that utilize BentoBox and the end-users navigating their sites. As mentioned, BentoBox offers intuitive tools and customizable features that empower our customer base to showcase their unique brand identities while providing a smooth and efficient management experience. Meanwhile, for website visitors, BentoBox websites are easy to navigate, with clear menus, quick loading times, and accessible reservation systems, ensuring that every online interaction feels as welcoming as stepping through a restaurant’s front door. The design of the website adds the cherry on top, where we create consistent rules with color, typography, and pattern applications to ensure the user’s journey is supported and reinforced by the brand’s identity.
Ultimately, we know every element on the site and platform should serve a purpose and enhance the user’s experience. We reinforce this with purposeful narratives, ease of navigation, clear communication, and inclusive accessibility, ensuring that everyone, regardless of ability or background, can engage with the content effortlessly.
Written by Kayla Scheidel
ADA
What could be more in line with kindness than being inclusive? Setting up your website to be accessible to all people, regardless of nationality, age or disabilities is one the best ways to be kind in your design. That’s where ADA comes in.
ADA is the Americans with Disabilities Act. ADA prohibits discrimination against people with disabilities in several areas, including employment, transportation, public accommodations, communications, and access to state and local government programs and services. ADA comes into play when designing a website in several ways, namely color contrast, content labeling and organization, and screen reader compatibility.
At BentoBox our web designers focus on these aspects of every site we design. We have numerous tools to check and make sure the color of text and links have enough contrast (4.5:1 ratio) to be visible and legible by all who visit the site. On the content side of things, one of the most important features we have built into our platform is alt text, which serves to label links, images, and other elements that a user can interact with, so these elements are still usable and understandable if the page doesn’t load, and so users who employ screen readers or other Assistive Devices can understand the content just as well as people who do not require such tools. Another vital feature of a BentoBox website is the content organization, having your website’s content organized in a logical and easy-to-understand way can make all the difference. Content organization is also extremely important when it comes to making sure your site is compatible with screen readers.
At the end of the day, one of the best parts about the internet and websites is that anyone can access them from almost anywhere in the world at any time. Building websites to be inclusive and ADA-compliant ensures that your website is easy to use, easy to understand, and never makes anyone feel excluded or left out, and what could be kinder than that?
Written by Kai Malowany
From empowering our customers to do what they love, to enabling accessibility for anyone on our websites, the design team at BentoBox is doing our part to ensure our work is kind to all. What starts with a website could even continue into daily life and beyond. From all of us here on the Bento Design Team: Happy International Design Day!!
