11 principios fundamentales del UX Design

I recently read » Confessions of an Advertising Man, » by David Ogilvy. It is a classic text by a legendary teacher. The book was written in 1963, in an era where paper and television were the most used media. Ogilvy began his career as a salesman in Scotland, his native country. After working as a chef and trying his luck in the field, he founded an advertising agency, which became one of the most important and respected in the world. The author died in 1999, at the beginning of the digital age, and did not see the transition in which we find ourselves.

Despite this, Ogilvy’s text is of great relevance to the digital world of today. In particular, his vision on the quality of campaigns teaches us to design better experiences, products, brands and services. In his book, Ogilvy describes 11 principles to create effective campaigns. This was the basis of the success of his advertising agency.

When reading the principles I realized its relevance for the creation of products, experiences and digital services. By changing some words of place and modifying the context, Ogilvy’s principles can compete with the UX notions of the current leaders. In my opinion, these are the principles that we must follow to adapt to the new reality of design.

1. What you say to provide is more important than how you say to provide it

Ogilvy considered advertising as the way to help consumers make purchasing decisions. In the end, it’s about facilitating sales. The central thing to help people buy is to show them the product in the most effective way possible.

«Your most important job is to decide what you’re going to say about your product, the benefit you’re going to promise.» In the same sense, the most important work for digital products and services involves deciding what they are going to do. People do not use a product of this type because it has incredible animations or is visually appealing. They use it because it provides a tangible value, it has a real usefulness, and a good content. If people do not receive this, the experience fails.

A good example of this situation is Dropbox, which uses a clear metaphor to explain how it works. Dropbox is a box in which users put and take files remotely. It manifests as a simple folder in which we move information on the PC. In this way, the central value is expressed through the entire product experience.

2. The campaign will be a success only if it is built around a great idea

Ogilvy was not interested in creating basic campaigns, which adhered to the standards or conventions of his time. He was convinced that avant-garde ideas can bring tremendous results for clients.

In many cases, digital designers do not have this great ambition. Creating a new experience becomes a task of organizing the content and the interface. The ordered and simple categories are prioritized, that even if they work, they do not have a deeper meaning, or they fail in the connection with the brand. Creating something usable is not a virtue, but a basic requirement. The design of experience must be nourished by great innovative ideas.

3. Prioritize the data

«Most modern advertisers prefer to write short and lazy ads, collecting data is hard work.»

Ogilvy was interested in discovering the largest amount of data about the product to communicate to the consumer. It doesn’t matter if the competitors had a similar product or if they could say the same things. The important thing was to deliver the data about the product. For Ogilvy, «short and fast» ads betray the consumer and are an easy way out for the advertiser.

A similar dynamic can be seen with digital products and services. People are interested in the benefits, in what the product allows them to do. As designers, it is our responsibility to understand the needs of consumers, and then create experiences that can satisfy them. Easy to say, hard to do.

4. You can not bore people if you want them to buy

Ogilvy thought that competition for people’s attention was becoming fiercer than ever, and it was only 1963. The world became more fierce, more fragmented and varied. And yet, the work remains the same: «It is our goal to make the voices of customers heard.» The same goes for digital experiences.

The product experience should stand out from the crowd. It should be something that people enjoy using regularly, that they recommend, promote and share. For design teams, it’s a matter of art and skill. They must generate experiences with details that make the difference in front of the competition.

Take the example of Instagram. While Hipstamatic was the first photography application, Instagram integrated social networks with a superior mobile experience. Nowadays it is the most important photographic social network: every day more than 40 million images are uploaded and there are at least 90 million active users in the month.

5. Cultivate good manners

«People do not buy from sellers with bad manners, and studies indicate that they do not buy from malicious ads»

Ogilvy worked as a door-to-door salesman. He had experience introducing himself, gaining the trust of the client, and finally specifying the purchase. He knew the value of charm and knew how to take advantage of it.

The charm of a digital experience is important, and involves tone, character, personality. The charm comes through the small details: from the visual design, the text, the way in which errors are handled and so on. What is sought is a coherent experience that is attractive to human sensibility. The important thing is to let consumers make their own use of the product. Do not obstruct the user experience. This happens when a product assumes that the user is more interested in using the interface than in extracting a value from it. The history of interface design is full of failed experiments around charm and experience. The Microsoft Clippy Wizard is a classic example of how things can go wrong.

6. The experience must be contemporary

Ogilvy was very concerned about connecting with younger consumers. He therefore hired young writers, stating that «they understand the psychology of youth much better than I do.»

Being contemporary requires much more than just keeping up with change. It requires thinking long-term with an iterative development process, anticipating change before it happens. It means continually improving and reinventing the product experience. Contemporary digital experiences must live up to consumer expectations. We live in a world with an ever-increasing range of audiences and a variety of expectations. It is a globalized, multi-platform, micro-demographic planet.

7. Committees can criticize advertisements, but not write them

Design by committee led to bad results in Ogilvy’s epic, and the same is true today. Some things just never work. «Advertising seems to sell best when it is written by a single individual.»

The same principle can be applied to the design of digital products and services. Many experiences feel like a collection of features, largely because they are the result of requirements created by committee. They lack the coherence that comes from conviction and vision. There is a reason why successful digital startups come from small, well-oiled teams. The growing popularity of Lean and Agile methodologies has to do with the recognition of what an effective development process requires. It’s about getting in sync with the pace of creation. Creating great products and experiences requires vision, focus, and dedication. This fact will never change.

8. If you are lucky enough to write good advertising experiences, keep doing it

Ogilvy recognized the market as a fluid, ever-changing material. People are born and die every day. In any market, new people arrive, and others leave. The point is to achieve constant engagement, to «have a good radar» to adapt to change.

It takes time to build good experiences, and even more so long-lasting ones. It requires constant improvement through updates and releases. In the digital space, our radars have become very strong. We can monitor how people use products, and adapt based on that information. Any good team knows that this insight is indispensable for designing digital experiences.

But there is also a dark side to the scale and flexibility of the digital environment. Designers must recognize the moment when new features no longer add to the product. The challenge is to balance ongoing change and evolution while maintaining a consistency of what works well in the experience.

We can take Google’s homepage as an example. The simplicity and focus of that site has not changed. The quality of the results is constantly improving, based on constant monitoring and engineering efforts. More recently, the results have evolved to have a more app-like experience.

9. Never write an ad, create an experience

For Ogilvy, the whole point of advertising is to talk about a product in a way that encourages purchases. Lying about a product or misleading with false information will be detected either by governments or, more significantly, by consumers.

If your products are bad, people will know about it quickly. These days, this is amplified by the Internet and social media. Word of mouth is stronger than ever. If your product provides a great experience, people will repeat it, tell their friends, and invite them to experience it. A bad experience damages your reputation, and wastes time, money, and patience.

10. Image and brand

Ogilvy proposed a consistent style for brand advertising over time. This is essential to build a coherent personality, a lasting brand image, and to achieve success in the market.

Every product and service experience must be recognized as a contribution to the brand image. Therefore, it must be designed, maintained and organized with this central truth in mind. A pattern must be generated from successive successful experiences. And this pattern must be rooted in the core values ​​of the brand.

Maintaining consistent patterns takes courage and dedication, especially when talking about different platforms, versions and devices. There are many forces working against our goal: the temptation to do something new is tremendous, the voices of “best practices” and “industry standards” can speak very loudly. And yet, rewards await those who invest in a consistent pattern, and especially those who manage to sustain it over time. It is the sum total of the experiences people have with your brand that defines value and determines your position in the market.

Microsoft’s Metro design is a good example. With roots in the interface design of Xbox and Zune, the Metro language blossomed with the launch of Windows Phone 7, and expanded into Windows 8 as the new brand identity.

11. Don’t be an imitator

«If you are ever fortunate enough to create a successful campaign, you will soon find that another agency steals it. This is irritating, but don’t let it worry you. No one has ever built a brand image by imitating another.

Ogilvy’s point in all this is to focus on the product, do the hard work, find that great idea, and ultimately build a lasting brand. This principle centralizes all the others.

The world of digital experiences is rife with imitation. Whether it’s intellectual property piracy, copying a market leader, borrowing concepts, and more. The key is to create a brand value and style, define an attractive personality, and create a unique experience. No one has built a brand by copying the experiences of others. Friendster and MySpace, for example, offered a service very similar to Facebook’s. They all had similar features, but Facebook had a unique style, an interesting tone, and an innovative implementation. As a result, MySpace had to redefine its experience and adapt to its new market reality.

Apple sued Samsung for copying the iOS experience. In its complaint, Apple cited the Metro design language to illustrate that not all smartphones should be designed the same.

Following «best practices» and lazy design are two sides of the same coin. Ultimately, what matters is focusing on defining unique patterns and building a strong brand image over time.

Working together

Well-established marketers may already be familiar with Ogilvy’s principles, but it’s equally important to consider them in the context of digital product design. Looking at marketing through the lens of digital experiences will allow us to bridge the gap between communication and brand value.

Ogilvy’s principles are also important for those digital designers who previously believed that marketing had nothing to do with their work. It is about ensuring that the experience communicates the history and vision of the brand.

To be successful and create good digital experiences, I ask the worlds of marketing and product design to start working together and working together. They must create brands, products and services with a deep meaning, that are relevant and can connect with their consumers.

By Ted Booth