#F4T UX/UI Design should come with Branding & Storytelling as a Bundle

#F4T - Food for Thoughts

☝🏼As I put my explanation above, #F4T is series of thoughts that I observe and contemplate through time not as an expert but as an observer and "tasker". Any thoughts and ideas are welcomed 🌸

I started my career as a freshly-hatched 🐣 in a local branding agency. Look! be brutally honest with you, I had no clues what is branding, let alone talking about storytelling or UX/UI design. But yeah it was where it all started.

Now, ironically, here I am writing this #F4T 🌟

🍀 Here's my story several years ago

First day at work in a studio, I got asked to make a proposal (I never knew this term before either). I said what's this? A producer casted some "word spells" with ~ it's TA, then maybe a short CI, and some POD/POP. Ah, also few brand characters; remember to choose 1 architecture. And I was petrified.

It ain't stop there. It was like you cannot birth a brand without knowing what's this, what you trying to give, what do you expect them to remember?

At this point, no sorry, my brain ain't braining, I was like girl ~ please I was born yesterday!!

I still remember it, not sure whether it's context itself or I was terrified. But well yeah, I learned from that.

I will start from my aspects of branding and storytelling first, then to UX/UI Design to show how interconnected it is. But we know the name said it all, right? User experience and User interface, it's literally a design that address users who are going to use it. Obviously, not you but users (the mantra)

And from that come my hypotheses:

(a) What make users /buy/ your design?

(b) What story will your users subscribe to?

If responses are on the surface level, they will be like these:

(a) I buy your design because it's beautiful, me gusta.

(b) Yours just happen to be cheap.

We are all a customer or a user of every service or product out there. I'm pretty sure many time you also bought something without even blink twice, it just happened. [👈🏻 Can anyone confirm this?]

Then hypotheses become statement because users are just users, they aren't always logical. It's just momentum. They don't even know. Them be like "You have to think outside the box, but inside my box".

So what's inside their box? As human being, we are hardwired to find patterns – it forms the basis of our curiosity. That's why we find ourselves connected with story to form a circle of meaning. Every story has a beginning, a middle, and an end. If it's a website, a landing page is the beginning, an about page or offer is the middle and a contact is the end. Our daily communication goes that way too, hello - a beginning, content of the convo - a middle, adios - an end (I assumed this is why we'd prefer a precise ending rather than an open ending. It's just our mind can't cope with incompletion)

Sincerely, we give meaning to story, we insert emotional bias and experience into a narrative. Emotions transcend logic and culture, no matter where we are from that's why we feel joy, sad, love, hate, etc.

🍀 Straightforwardly, inside the box is the story, and the story is made by us, then we should ask ourselves these:

What struggles am I trying to overcome here?
Who am I, not facts, but motivations, or needs?
How will I differ from others to make people confident in me?
Which tone of voice am I talking to people?
Will my overall outlook appear to stir others emotionally?
What does the physical environment, setting, and decor in which I perform my activities look like?
How can I make my image outstanding so others will remember me?

Those questions aren't out of thin air, practically speaking, I'm just trying to tell a story in a context. From 1-7, if you can answer it on behalf of their box, this is storytelling + UX.

By the way, those numbers are from Aristotle's 7 elements of good story telling on interactive design (1) Plot (2) Character (3) Theme (4) Dialogue (5) Melody (6) Décor (7) Spectacle

🍀 Last before the end, do you all know Spotify, Coca Cola, Nike? what comes to your mind? I bet you just know, right?

Well, our mind resonates what we believe it brings meaning, meaning makes us remember; and when you remember, you will see why storytelling makes sense.

Don't you think these brands did a good job to make us memorised until death?

You see, because you just know, it's a success of branding, brand awareness. Because it just appears in your mind the color of each brand, the logo and other associated elements, it's a success of UI. And this is branding + UI

✨Happy reading!

Let me know your thoughts, probably if this makes 🔥, I might start with another #F4T ~ like some GenZ phrases that could pique interest in writing and design.

Still working on #fynstr