My background includes not only technology marketing but also a Fine Art degree and some years exhibiting paintings in galleries in San Francisco. You can be sure I care about art and design.
Design matters in more ways than can be counted, but there's nothing wrong with a well written Top 5 Roundup (Thanks, FoundRead.com).
I've always been naturally aware of this one:
4. Design is a powerful business advantage
There’s another adage about building a better mousetrap. Somebody had to design that mousetrap. For you MBAs out there, first-mover advantage is powerful, but great design by a second-mover can nullify it. Do you remember who released the first MP3 player in America? If you do, kudos, and you probably also know that they aren’t around anymore. The Apple iPod was three years late to the game, has less features than competing devices (the Zen, and now the Zune as well), and yet completely dominates the market today. Why? An innovative UI in the clickwheel, and purely emotive and beautifully-designed branding that pioneered music as a necessary component to your lifestyle.
But Airship has taught me the supreme importance of this one:
3. Usability is life and death
In the world of web 2.0 and beyond, a UI is what turns an idea into a usable product. A well-executed, intuitive UI is what turns a usable product into a successful one– especially today when there are so many options available. There have indeed been successful pieces of software over the years that were poorly designed, but in these cases you can point to lack of competition, closed-standards, or sheer market power. Web 2.0 changes this, and is forcing companies to create simple and elegant solutions that create the shortest paths from start to finish for their tasks. This is especially true with free apps, where little is invested. The age of feature bloat and design by engineers, with all due respect, is over.
And as a team of user-advocates, you can be sure we'd feel lonely if we didn't succeed at this one:
5. Connect with your customers emotionally
Design is one of the only ways you can connect with your customers emotionally. Design allows you to deliver visceral experiences that can affect people. Recent advances in neuroscience, specifically FMRI, have shown that people tend to act on emotion, then back it up with reasoning later (if at all). This revelation has spawned a whole new marketing movement, known as emotional branding. The vehicle is pure design. Emotional brands, says Marc Gobé, create “strong…personalities that closely match the aspirations of their customers” through “the strength of their culture and the uniqueness of their brand imagery.” Apple is so successful at this that it spawned a book, The Cult of Mac. Facebook‘s new product pages are an excellent vehicle for emotional branding, too: people become ‘fans’; when they publicly declare support for your product, they are saying your values match up with their own. You’ve connected with them emotionally. You’ve won.
Let us know how you think we're doing!
Abigail
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