What is Intentional Design?
Intentional design is considering the impact of the work and how it functions. Designing intentionally means;
- Understanding the needs of the users, the business and merchants
- Focusing on the problem and purpose of the design
- Considering the long-term effects of the design decisions
- Using best practice over the consensus option
- Focusing intentionally on the quality of the product, app or website.
- Understanding perfection is unattainable, but designing better by being more intentional.
When you are designing and developing a website, it is expected that every single part of your design will be meticulously planned and every pixel will be perfect, and although we wish this was possible, as designers we are forever learning.
We know that perfection is unattainable, especially when you are launching a brand new website, but we can design better by being more intentional.
Intentional design can be achieved by choosing elements with a clear purpose. This is more true with the colours, the layout and the visual elements chosen. Looks really are not everything. What we are doing is less about how it looks but it’s more how it works. By doing this, we can uncover the rationale behind design decisions.
How To Be More Intentional in Design?
For the best user experience there are many things you do need to think about and one of the main things, obviously you need to understand your users but, you must have a good design too. This doesn't necessarily mean that the design needs to look good in the usual sense. However, ensuring the user experience and the way the user interacts with the design is more critical. Intentional design is a process where the user's interactions with the product, app or website are considered at each point of the design process.
Intentional design is a process that provides systematic methods that explore a variety of user interactions and touchpoints that move, engage and respond. For example when it comes to designing a website, ask yourself what is the main objective? Where do you want the user to go on your website? Keeping these questions in mind as you are designing will enhance the user experience and the end product.
Simply creating a clear user journey for your audience will help them navigate through your website with ease. Ensuring the user journey is clear will identify the different ways to enable the user to achieve their goal as quickly and easily as possible.
Below are some examples of a clear navigation menu and a feature content block section that helps the user navigate throughout the Shopify store;
Our Outlook on Intentional Design
When it comes to the user experience, you must begin with understanding the users behaviour, through usability in the interaction with the product, app or website. By keeping the audience's feelings in mind, you can create a strong user experience that arranges all the information and interactions in a way that makes it easy and accessible for people. By being intentional in your design for your app or website will make people feel good. When people feel good they are more likely to stick around on your site. This will reduce bounce rates and boost conversions.
If you enjoyed today’s blog why not check out our view on the importance of Consistency in the design process.
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