The Psychological Power of Design
A short essay on design
Prologue
Here at GoReact functional, simple, and beautiful design is a corporate value. But in a previous life, I had a different experience.
Speaking with a colleague about a key project we were working on together. He made the comment, “Nobody gives a [expletive] about the design.”
This statement without context could mean any number of things, but it got me thinking. What if they didn’t? Why should they?
I was forced to consider that perhaps every specialization in the company includes domain knowledge that is invisible and/or unintelligible to others. Where was the responsibility to communicate domain expertise in a way that allowed the company to benefit from it?
Enigma of the Creative
Like it or not, Design is a powerful manipulation of human beings.
What we call a first impression happens in less than 50 milliseconds, is unconscious, and occurs primarily in the reptilian or limbic brain—so called because it is considered evolutionarily primitive, preverbal and instinctual (see Thinking Fast, Thinking Slow by Daniel Kahneman). These first impressions are not interdicted by the higher, more evolved mammalian brain.
In other words, our higher brain functions may dictate what we choose to do about our first impressions, but they cannot prevent the impression from occurring!
What gets communicated in that 50ms window? A gestalt including professionalism, confidence, esteem, comfort and polish, all of which directly impact subsequent conversion goals.
At its heart, design is about channeling the uncontrollable responses in the human brain in favor of the company. These impressions are driven by nuance. You may ask, what is the difference between so-so design and great design? If customers’s (i.e., website viewers’s) responses to a website fall into a normal distribution (bell curve), the game is often won or lost in the margins, the tails, the extra sigma (standard deviation from the mean). Think Moneyball.
B2B content marketers know this. They build infographics, write whitepapers, generate educational nurturing content all because of the incremental uptick these brand impressions ultimately have on Sales. In Lavidge–Steiner Hierarchy of Effects terms, these mini impressions boil down to simply esteem—the “liking” that occurs between awareness and purchase.
Designers Carry Power
How do they do it? What lies in the armories of designers?
The most relevant tool a designer has is his or her brain. Making something feel good requires the designer to employ expertise in color theory (check out Interaction of Color by Bauhaus alumnus and Yale fellow Josef Albers), typography, hierarchy, context, proportion, balance, rhythm, C.R.A.P. (contrast, repetition, alignment, proximity), line, value, shape, forms, space, texture, movement, emphasis, pattern, proportion, unity, theme, brand and communication for starters.
Designers are typically people who naturally perceive and effectively replicate the aspects of a visual image that tug on the reptilian brain. It’s taste in everyday parlance; and taste-level is almost impossible to teach if God didn’t give you a portion at birth. Among designers, the competition for those margins is fierce and science takes over beyond gut feel.
Enter the A/B test. These tests reveal statistically when a designer’s gut is on point or not. Now, anyone can do an A/B test, the real trick is coming up with what to test. Again, you need a creative thinker to push the margins. Check out Which Test Won for some great examples.
In the end, Design is a powerful psychological tool in the arsenal of any company. Your company ignores or misuses that power at its peril. You are either wielding it to create competitive advantage, or you are having it wielded against you.
