“Brand=UX or UX=Brand? That is here the question…”

In my opinion, Brand = UX. Why? Because, it’s the User Experience that defines the Brand. The UX symbolizes the quality and communicates the value of the Brand. Whether it is the products we use, the messages we consume or the service we receive, we see a Brand through the way in which we experience it.

Paul Rand wrote,

“A logo derives its meaning from the quality of the thing it symbolizes, not the other way around.”

“… [A logo] derives its meaning and usefulness from the quality of that which it symbolizes.”

The same can be said for Brand and User Experience. I love my iPhone. I love how it changed the way in which I thought about a mobile device. I love the interface, the interactions and all the apps I’ve installed. It looks, feels and works like a quality product.  I can feel the countless hours of development and craft of the experience… it defines how I feel about Apple and how I see them in the world.

I know very little about Spotify, but I feel good about their Brand because I enjoy using their product. On the other hand, I hate Ryanair. Outside the plane, the biggest point of interaction with them is their cheap and nasty website. Everything from its UI, to the booking process, to its colours and animated gifs make me feel dirty inside… and that’s exactly how I feel about them. I judge Ryanair through the experiences I’ve had with them.

It’s the doors to the shop, the online booking process, the product aftercare, the service in the restaurant, the boarding process, the letter and the seat in the car that define the Brand. The User Experience is the Brand.

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It’s now commonplace to find websites that use some form of behavioural targeting. At STV we’re actively looking at options available to us; we want to make our sites more intelligent.

Taking a typical example of a user interested in football, we would serve up more football related articles to that user. We would be able to listen to the meta data on each article and page viewed in the user’s journey, apply weightings and serve up a more customised version of the category and article display page. As the user goes deeper into the site, we would narrow the focus of articles and categories. As the user goes ‘back up’, we would widen the focus of articles and categories.

The primary aim of silent intelligence is to create a continually evolving and richer user experience through increasingly contextual content. In doing so, we would expect to see longer session times, increased page views and increased ad revenue.

Iteration should take place at various stages in your design process. This can be in your pen and paper sketches through to your comps and indeed at various points in a live product.

At STV where I work, we are about to launch an iteration of the Article Display Page. This is the first of many iterations over the coming month we are going to A-B test. We expect to see our small changes improve Click-Through Rates and subsequently, Session Times and Page Views.

It’s very important that you can measure the effectiveness or otherwise of your iterations. This is because iteration is fundamentally a learning process. As I said at the outset, you’re not expected to get everything right first time. A successful iteration process should give you a deeper understanding of your design and your audience – a deeper understanding that provides answers, more questions and more intelligent designs… and so the cycle continues.

I’ll write a follow up post illustrating the changes we made and the outcomes of our iterations. In the meantime, you should read what Jared Spool had to say on Iteration.