A 4-step framework for crafting meaningful designs | by Bora

A 4-step framework for crafting meaningful designs | by Bora | Feb, 2024

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4 icon-graphics displaying the framework.

Creating a successful design doesn’t have to feel like wandering through a maze. There’s a proven design process that keeps things smooth and helps you nail it every time. It’s like a recipe with four steps to make your work better.

Content — What information and messages need to be conveyed? This step involves content strategy and planning.
Structure — How will the content be organized and grouped? We focus on information architecture and navigation design.
Layout — Where will each piece of content be placed? We explore the page layout and composition.
Style — Which visual design elements like colors, typography, and images will be used? We refine the look and feel.

Each completed step is already a success and a result. You won’t have to jump straight to choosing colors and understanding how to make the text on cards to what the main visualization of the app should be. You move right on to completion.

We have to start somewhere. Something has to come first.

Start by understanding what you’re working with and the type of content: the words, the pictures, and all the other bits. This helps you build a solid foundation for your design. It’s like figuring out the puzzle pieces before creating the picture.

Putting content thinking ahead of figuring out design elements and aesthetics helps you create designs with content that is easy to find, read, and understand.

This doesn’t necessarily mean we need to put design aside. On the contrary, the content-first strategy recognizes that design and content must work together seamlessly to create compelling designs for a magazine, website, or app. It aims to ensure that your design approach aligns with the content and maximizes the impact of both.

Further reading

↗ What is content-first?

↗ A guide to content design

↗ Let the content determine the design

↗ Steps to content-first design

Once the content is defined, the next step is to establish the overall structure of the design, including the arrangement of different sections and elements. Focus on what’s important and see how they fit together. This step is like creating a blueprint for your design. You know where everything goes, making things way easier.

A significant aspect of design revolves around the organization and handling of information. However, at its core, structuring design is one crucial element: understanding your user’s perspective. Whether you’re arranging a single page, a section, or an entire website, the structure should consistently align with your users’ mental models.

In addition to the skill of thinking in user flows, information architecture stands out as a fundamental element in creating impactful human-centered interaction design.

Information architecture (IA) focuses on organizing, structuring, and labeling content effectively and sustainably. The goal is to help users find information and complete tasks. To do this, you need to understand how the pieces fit together to create the larger picture and how items relate to each other within the system.

You can create good experiences without knowing the content. What you can’t do is create good experiences without knowing your content structure. What is your content made from, not what your content is. An important distinction.

So you have to start with the structure not the words. What exactly is an opinion piece. What are the variables? Can we even define them? Images? How many? (to which, the response is always: ‘I don’t know, it depends!’). We can design around fluidity, but it means letting go of control. Again. How do we do that, then? How do we design around the fluidity?

Well, we define structure; of our content, and the templates that content inhabits. We define the rules of the system to display the content in different ways (if we can) to help the reader understand the content better.

— Mark Boulton, Structure First. Content Always.

Suppose you structure your design thoughtfully for a user. In that case, you overlook the user’s context and the potential value the user can get from your designed product or service interaction.

There is a symbiotic relationship between content and design. One cannot thrive without the other. Determining how content is organized and presented to users during interactions plays a pivotal role in your design.

Now, it’s time to set the stage. Think about how your design will work — where things should go for the best user experience. It’s the way your content is arranged. It doesn’t matter if you’re working with text, images, or elements in a graphic; without a thoughtful, well-composed layout, your work would fall apart.

A design’s layout is about arranging elements to guide the reader’s attention and understanding. Like how directors direct your focus in movies or editors organize content in newspapers, a good layout helps highlight what’s essential and makes it easier to grasp information.

This involves principles like visual hierarchy, flow, and alignment, which are logical and systematic approaches to design. Visual hierarchy is the principle of arranging elements so users can understand information quickly. By laying out elements logically and strategically, you will influence users’ perceptions and guide them to desired actions.

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