S07.EP06 - UX & UI — The Brand Experience Gap w/ Alexander Lofthouse

0:00A lot of people in user experience design think that everything has to be really easy, but sometimes introducing a point of intentional friction, especially when it's a high risk, high cost decision to make, is really good.

0:16Hello and welcome to Just Branding, the only podcast dedicated to helping designers and entrepreneurs grow brands. Here are your hosts, Jacob Cass and Matt Davies.

0:56are ready to scale with structure, support, and serious momentum, head over to joinbba.com and get on the wait list. That's joinbba.com. Hello, folks, and welcome to another edition of Just Branding. What are we talking about this time? Well, funnily enough, we've had so many episodes, we've never talked about branding and user experience. We love, as brand builders, to talk about positioning and storytelling and identity. But if a brand's experience, as in their user experience, is dead, their brand is going to be broken and dead also. So we want to talk about that. Quick intro to our guest. Her long official name is Alexander Lofthouse, but she's also known as Lex Lofthouse.

1:44I know her from almost 10 years ago as Lofty. So if you hear me talking about Lofty, it's not some other random invisible friend I have. It is our guest Lex Lofthouse who's with us today. Who is she? Well as I say she is a very very talented senior designer at an agency in the UK called Enzyme. I actually worked with you Lofty, was it about 10 years ago now which makes me feel very old. Yeah I think it was close to then. I think I promoted you in the team to senior designer if I remember correctly so I'm just going to take that accolade for anyone that knows Lofty but But very, very talented, very, very switched on, very creative, but also technically brilliant.

2:24And what Lofty is super at, at least from my experience, is kind of creating stuff that users can use, not just kind of that looks pretty, but is actually really, really helpful for them. And we'll tuck into that as we get through this process. So the reason I invited Lofty on was because, Lofty, you've been doing a lot of public speaking over the last few years and really getting out there, which is like kudos to you for that. And I saw a talk that you did at NDC London on thinking like a user. And you made this point that, you know, you can design something that looks almost perfect. It's super polished and beautiful.

3:01But if users still, at least in a digital sense, like click on the wrong thing or ignore bits of it, then basically it's not actually that great as a design. So that's why this conversation matters. And that's what I'm excited to get into with you today. So welcome to the show. Me too. Thank you for having me on. I'm excited to talk all things UX. Let's go. Let's go. Jacob, do you want to open with the first question? Because I know you like to get involved early. Yes, we'd like to start with definitions. Let's start from the top. What is UX? And not just like user experience, but like, what is it?

3:36Yes. Okay. So I guess I'll probably be talking about UX, user experience design, in the context of kind of the digital world. So kind of websites and apps and any kind of digital platform that people interact with. But as a term, kind of user experience can feel a bit narrowed to that. But ultimately, and I spoke about this in my talk, I guess, I use the definition from people much wiser than me. Legends in the design sphere, Don Norman, Jacob Nielsen, that I'm sure you're probably familiar with. They had an article from 1998, still stands true to me, that they say user experience encompasses all aspects of the end user's interaction with the company, its services and its products.

4:22So ultimately, it's the experience that a user has across your brand, across all touch points of it, which I think is why this is such an important conversation to have, because user experience and kind of brand and brand strategy have this major overlap that I think can sometimes get overlooked. Yeah, it's so true because, you know, even if you've got a great brand strategy, how you actually implement that and go to market with that and how it shows up in the real life has everything to do with the experiences that you create for potential customers and customers. So 100%. Now, what a great definition.

4:57Awesome. I can't take credit for it, but I live by it. You dug it out from 1998, so I give you kudos for that. But in terms of yourself, just so that people get a bit of a sense of you, what kind of brought you into this sphere? because I know you don't just specialize in user experience. Yeah. So just give us a sense of your sort of background and how you have come to sit before us today. Okay. Yeah. My background was just originally kind of graphic design as a whole. That's what I studied at university. And back then when I kind of graduated and got into agency life, as I would call it. Agency life.

5:37Love agency life. Still in it. So back then the landscape was a lot different. It was a lot less digital, a lot more kind of brand and print, packaging, exhibition stands, you know, lots of different touch points that I was creating designs for. And then obviously that's kind of shifted since then. I'm still an all-around designer. I can still do all those things, but I, my preference really, and where I get a lot of joy out of is designing for the web and specifically not just the kind of UI side of it, but the user experience as well. And then the reason that I like doing that is because UX has this fantastic focus directly on the customer or the end user.

6:21I find that really important in creating something that works, you know, getting that insight and applying that to whether it's a website or an app. I love talking to end users. Before we keep going, can I just ask, we talk about UI and UX, just so our listeners know the difference between them both. How would you define each of these and where do they overlap? So UI, user interface, if I'm talking UI design, that is very much how it looks. Typically, that's what you would apply the brand identity, visual identity to. The user experience is broader than that. UI forms part of the user experience, but the user experience also takes into account usability, takes into account how people interact with things, how they feel when they interact with these elements as well.

7:10So they very much work hand in hand, but they are different sort of practices. But because they work hand in hand, there's always people that bridge those two things. So I am very much UX, UI designer when it comes to designing for the web. In larger kind of businesses, you may have more specific roles. So just UX designer who works alongside UI design and those two work in tandem. Yeah. So I was going through your presentation you did recently. In one of the slides, you have like the classic Venn diagram of UX and UI. So just, I'm just going to read out some of those words of how it's kind of split up.

7:49So like on the UX side, it says user research, usability testing, research analysis, personas, information architecture, workflows, wireframes, prototypes. That's on the UX side. And then on the UI, which is more like the visual side of things, it's visual design, colors, type, branding, graphics, imagery, style guides, animation. And it's more high fidelity versus UX, which is lower fidelity. yeah that's definitely not the be all and end all but that was uh trying to demonstrate i guess what those different roles might cover you know what are the activities that you would do under each of those umbrellas i guess so yeah that kind of gives a bit of a picture of the ui is a lot more kind of visual and the ux is a lot more in that kind of strategy thinking of the user applying that structure, I guess, to a site and flow to a site that can be complemented then by that design.

8:45So helpful, isn't it? And it almost is like that UX piece is kind of like an evolution of what I would call like the brand strategy. So you've got like the brand strategy, which is like the positioning, the look and feel, how you want to show up, how we want to really win in the market. Then that usually goes through into like a visual identity and a verbal identity piece, which I guess then translates from what you're saying into a for a particular touch point say a website or an app or something and then what you've said is yeah we also then need to apply that thinking almost like that started at the brand strategy level but now comes down into a much more pragmatic usability and user experience kind of angle which is more about behavior making sure that the thing that is built is fit for purpose and is constantly is would you agree with that is that like a helpful kind of way of thinking about it yeah yeah definitely I think if I'm going to use a Venn diagram again as another example on the show get another one in we love it but you often see user experience defined by a Venn diagram that is kind of the business needs and the user needs and this sort of overlap in the middle which is should be quite large is where you would take the UX design and I think things that come out of the brand strategy Obviously, that's more along the business needs.

10:05So yeah, there's definitely this, we're going to visualize it with a Venn diagram. There's definitely that overlap between the two. So I think it's very important to consider the user experience as part of that brand strategy as well. 100%. So here's a question. Like you sort of mentioned if the brand strategy and how that kind of, we've just sort of hinted at how it might bridge into UX. But what happens if there's a misalignment there? What if the brand strategy is like, hey, we're going to show up for single mums, you know, struggling to make ends meet or whatever. And we want to kind of show up in a really happy, fun way.

10:39But then within the UX, we discover that actually that type of audience might be wrong or fun isn't really what they're after. How does that kind of work, if you like, if there's any kind of conflicts between the two in your view? That's a really interesting point, because there's definitely times where I've worked with a brand where they have this kind of vision and understanding of how they want to communicate. but ultimately the audience might not be 100 % receptive to that. And that's kind of come out through, you know, as part of the UX design, you're very much kind of speaking to end users and understanding what their needs.

11:13And sometimes that comes down to the part of the journey they're on as well. So a kind of top level, then maybe that kind of communication works. But once they come down to the point where they need to use the product, it might be a bit more serious for them, for example, than it is a brand awareness kind of stage. So there's definitely difficulties and challenges sometimes. And I think generally teams need to just need to communicate about that as well. I've been in that position where I've had to have that conversation and say, look, this might feel a little detached from your brand strategy at this point, but how can we find ways where we can still stay true to that kind of vision and that direction?

11:57but ultimately make sure that the user is getting what they need. It's a balancing act sometimes. That's such a great point. I love the way you framed that. Whenever I look at visual identity systems and stuff when I'm working with teams, I think that point that you've just made there is so important around, look, there's the awareness in market and then as somebody like a user or a potential customer or a customer becomes familiar with the brand, starts coming into our ecosystem, starts navigating our tools or our product, that is a journey right and people don't we don't tend to think of it like a journey and what i find is a lot of designers funnily enough i just come off a call earlier today working with a designer as part of a big project and they had started to explore the color palette and they were pushing for a wider color palette as a lot of designers they can't help it we want more colors and that's that's fine you know i i mean i'm all for colors i love color but the strategist in my mind is like hold on right where are we going to apply these colors because i know from a strategy level that we need a brand code that makes us super recognizable at the top the very top of the funnel like we need awareness and if we have 50 different colors that's going to confuse the heck out of our audience coca-cola is always red right but when you get into say some of their digital products they might introduce some other colors and some other sort of tones to kind of freshen things up that's fine because we're in their ecosystem now we know who they are we don't need to deviate from that but at the awareness level like you were saying the red the brand code has to be strong we cannot break that and i just found myself making that point uh today and so i'll bring it in here because it's so it's so important and the same is in relation to the way that we speak the tone the design of whatever it is if we are really flamboyant at the awareness level that doesn't mean consumers want to have loads of fluff and flamboyance when they want to order that product or or proceed with the whatever the procedure is that they want so i think that's such a super point you know well played well played lofty yeah there's a brand i i really like uh their clothing brand really like ethical sustainable clothing brand called lucy and yak and their sort of top level awareness brand comes it's very values-led and it's it's fun and they've got great color patterns on their clothes and and it's a vibe it's cool but ultimately when I'm going through to purchase a product I don't really care about that when I'm getting to the basket and check out I just want to give you my money make that as easy as possible for me so yeah that's a really kind of top level way of explaining it but yeah there's appropriate points in a journey where you can dial up or dial down I guess some of that communication style great so who won't who in your of you should own the the ux side of things because you've mentioned sometimes having tricky conversations and almost having to navigate different kind of stakeholders and teams but ultimately where do you think the responsibility sits in relation to user experience is at the product team level or is it is it more of the brand team or even leadership like where do you sort of see that in your view for the best projects to work where do you see that responsibility like that's a really interesting one i feel like there's some sort of combination like ultimately the digital user experience yes has to be led by that product team and designers but I think it has to be fed by that brand strategy as well so again to me it all comes down to that communication and collaboration of teams I think everyone has to be singing from the same hymn sheet or on the same page however you want to say it because I work in agency I'm probably not even the best person to to say because sometimes I'm working on both as that kind of all-arounder designer sometimes I'm working on a bit of brand strategy but also some UX design so I'm kind of you know it's like that spider-man picture where they're all pointing at each other I've been there because I've worked at big kind of corporates and I recall like I I was overseeing like a team I don't know how many there was about 20 years I don't know there was loads of UX designers in there as well as sort of creative designers and there was a brand team and a marketing team and it gets really complicated so I guess it is and to my mind it's kind of like a leadership question as well It's like, what are we prioritizing here?

16:10The overarching vision of where we're going or the data that's going to ultimately lead to getting users where they need to go? And that's a kind of a senior question, I guess. It was a bit of a trick question for you, Lofty, but I think it helps to have that tension within teams because what you need is different people focused on different things. But then you need a strong leader to say, I've heard all these different perspectives around how we place buttons and messaging and pop-ups or whatever. I've heard the need of all the different parts of the business, but I think this is the priority right now.

16:41So I'm going to choose that. And that's the difficult bit sometimes. I worked in New York about five years as an interactive designer doing UX UI. And I worked in-house and also agency. And as the lead designer there, it was my responsibility for the UX. But ultimately, the creative director would come in and have this final say of like if that fits the goals of the brand. and then I'll be responsible of like the goals of the actual website. So there was the kind of how we approached it. There was like the creative director and then like a UX designer. And that's how it worked both in both agency and in-house.

17:15So that's how they controlled it. Sounds like a good approach. If you're serious about mastering branding and building a thriving creative business, the Brand Builders Alliance is for you. Inside, you'll get live masterclasses, mentorship from our eight resident coaches, a stacked resource vault and a global network of brand builders who actually get it if you're done winging it alone and are ready to scale with structure support and serious momentum head over to join bba.com and get on the wait list that's join bba.com okay so let's we love talking about mistakes on the show we love a good mistake so i was just going to ask you about ux mistakes that you've sort of seen out there in the wild and what learnings like we could sort of give our listeners from anything that you've you kind of highlight oh that's a good one mistakes there's always ux mistakes but i think if we're talking about that in the context of brand as well i guess we've kind of covered a little bit of it around communicating in the wrong ways at the wrong time but ultimately what that comes down to me is the biggest kind of ux mistakes is not listening to like end users that's it's in the title user experience we can make a lot of assumptions and there there is a lot of best practice within ux that's what a lot of my talk kind of covered was best practice i guess if you want to call it that because it's learnings i could teach within an hours talk but there's a lot of things that are very specific to a user's kind of need and I think not leaning into that is a big mistake I mean sometimes they're wrong as well you know users could sometimes have very strong opinions and when you say listen when are you recording the screen are you having conversations or like how are you getting that feedback it depends on on the project There's lots of tried and tested techniques into doing that.

19:19And I quite like focus groups. So working with clients to gather a bit of a steering group of their kind of end users, if that's possible. I've worked with a big student accommodation company who have sites all over the UK. And, you know, their audience lives there. You know, they are residents. So that was a real advantage that they had, that they could speak very directly with their users. So that was great creating little focus groups there when I was doing a redesign of their site, not just at the start of the project, but, you know, throughout designing that, getting them to test some of the theories and hypotheses that we'd done and asking them whether that worked.

20:00You know, we created like some filters on the site to filter the properties. And we said to them, you know, is that right? Do you even care about this? Stakeholders of the business might say one thing, but the users might say another. So we wanted to, I guess, have that middle ground with them. But there's also user testing, like anonymous user testing online. You know, we've sent surveys out in the past as well for some. that doesn't breed quite as much nuanced kind of detail but it it can help with some more kind of general feedback i guess but there's lots of other ones like say kind of observing users using your product you know you get eye tracking things there's probably some ai tools now that do a lot of this as well i won't get into that but i've not tried any let's have one episode where that that isn't dropped no to my mind there's like two two parts i think i think you're touching on that but it might be helpful to just sort of categorize them.

20:52So there's kind of like qualitative research, right, which is where you're asking attitudes, asking perspectives, asking views, seeing if it would be helpful. But then there is also quantitative, which is more observable based on data, based on the actual use. So those two things are super interesting. Sometimes you can only do qualitative, right, because you can't always build something that actually creates real data, you know, usable data. But those two things are really helpful. And then I think I like the way you said you start with a hypothesis. I worked as a big corporate and we were building all sorts of things.

21:30And I was in there at a senior level and all of the UX team, they had this discipline. They always started with a hypothesis. Right. And their aim was to prove or disprove that. So it was very scientific. You know, it was really scientific in the way that at least big companies are building apps and building out user experiences. And we used to have regular kind of project meetings where the first slide of any designer that presented to the senior group was the hypothesis. Like our hypothesis, if we change this button from blue to red, it's going to improve click through rates. OK, great. Now, that isn't my vibe, but I was on the senior team.

22:09So I get to sit into those meetings. After a while, I got really bored, but I could see the need and I could see why it was helpful to the business. And it allowed the justification of design decisions to be made. So I think that qualitative one is great when you're sort of starting out. And then once you've built something, quantitative really helps to reinforce and improve and iterate on where you're at. Would you agree with that? Yeah, I find that the number stuff is very much aligned with KPIs and conversion rate. And, you know, what you're talking about there with the, if we change this button, it might improve stuff.

22:43That's very much the like conversion rate optimization end of the spectrum, which can be very granular as well. I do find that very, very interesting. Better than you than me. I can see why it qualifies, but I just, I just find it like, I mean, I guess it's a great kind of thing. like if you pull something off and then you can literally see the result of what you're doing. And another kind of angle on that one was, and I think we used this back in the day, Lofty, do you remember Hotjar? Like I think they're still out there. Some of my clients use them. And that's a really cool thing because that gives you like a heat map over, you know, at least on a website design, you can see where users are spending the most time, what they're clicking on, what they're hovering over, you know, and usually where your mouse goes is where you are looking.

23:25So that's super interesting as well. That's really helpful from a strategic level and from an optimization level. Yeah, I think heat mapping software like Hotjar and Microsoft have got one now, Microsoft Clarity, I think it's called. Other heat mapping software is also available. Hotjar are not sponsoring this podcast, but if they'd like to, can they call me? Carry on. But they, yeah, no, they are really, really useful. And I think for like content teams as well, if your page is super long and nobody's scrolling to the bottom. And that's where some content is. That's my very simple explanation of that.

23:59But even that's really useful. And you can do like user recordings. So, you know, it records their screen and all the interactions they're taking. You can see these real... What's funny to me is watching these back and just really seeing how frustrated users are, which you wouldn't think you'd be able to visually see from how they're moving their mouse around. but hot job also has this like anger button so it's like if they've rage clicked it'll tell you identify when they've rage clicked rage click is my favorite term in all of them i didn't even know that was a thing until yeah this is exciting i use i use hot job for the brand builder summit when we first launched just to to see how users like use the site how far they scroll down and like the whole sequence of things and like it's crazy how different people use sites.

24:49Like some people will click straight away, put their email, other people read for 10 minutes. Other people won't even get halfway, but there's like this, the zone mapping was super interesting just to see like, like where people stopped. So you could identify that and change things and update it. So you could convert better. It's like, do I move the forms higher on the page or if they're not converting there, do you move it further down the page? They get a little bit more information and trust the site more. So those sorts of decisions can come based on looking at data and like the scanned zones and the ragequakes brilliant all right so we've talked about mistakes just going circling back on that one i just before we move off of that i just thought there's a famous ux like meme isn't there of like a picture of a path right and really beautifully laid out have you seen this one a beautifully laid out path right it's in a park somewhere right and um the label on the path is design right because the path looks just so beautiful all the slabs are perfect and then to the side of the path there's like some grass and basically the path turns a left angle and basically what has actually happened is people have cut the corner on the path okay so through the grass there's like a clear other path made of dirt which has been worn out by people actually using that and on that path it says user right yes like designer on one side having this beautiful polished path user just doing whatever the heck the user wants because they want to get to their destination as fast as possible.

26:14I just think that's just like such a classic example of what you were saying there of not listening or not understanding what a user really wants. And in that context, they want to cut the corner because they want to get across. They don't want to spend ages on this lovely path, but they don't care about that. So it's about thinking that through. It's the best visual metaphor. I use that in my talk as well, actually. Maybe it's real as what I saw and I've just like, this just popped into my mind again, but it's such a cool graphic to illustrate it. I mostly, I used it to explain that there is best practice that you can do essentially, because it's just really common behaviors.

26:51And that example that you've just talked about there, where people cut that corner, is such a common thing across the globe, that it's called a desire path, like it has its own name. and that's kind of my segue into you know there are some very common behaviors that that we can still use in ux design without if you like if you can't do that real really deep user research piece at least there is some psychology that we just know about people in general and human beings we can apply and yeah the path one is the visual way of explaining that a venn diagram and a desire psychopath we love those visuals we're packing them all in today let me ask you other questions so in relation to sort of brand strategy which usually sticks at the sort of very start of at least in my my kind of experience at the start it should anyway at the start you know set the tone set the positioning set the growth you know how the brand's going to win in market how it's going to offer things that nobody else can can access from anywhere else and all that stuff sort of strategic level and then as I say usually that's pulled down into typically some verbal and visual principles and then eventually we get into actually building products and then the UI UX comes in but in relation to that like what do you think might be helpful for folks who are at the strategy level to know or think through that could help your life become easier when you come to UX design have you got any kind of principles or thoughts that brand builders should be bearing in mind in relation to UX yeah I guess in brand strategy you look a lot at kind of what the channels are that you have to communicate across right to me like the web and product is is an it's another channel it's another opportunity for you to be able to communicate your brand so it has to come into play in those kind of conversations and I think what we spoke about earlier with with that being a journey it's maybe just considerations of okay at a UX level where is that in our journey is is this a very early piece you know is this a brand awareness piece where people are coming to our website for the specific goal of just trying to find out who we are?

28:58Or is the purpose of our website very functional? Are people coming to do just one thing, trying to achieve one thing as part of our brand and product experience? So I think it's trying to define where that digital product is within the scope of a brand. And then as part of the brand strategy, you don't have to figure out how that works, but just having that kind of understanding of okay where does it sit within our wider kind of customer journey and what does that mean from a brand perspective in terms of how much we have to pull it back or or make it very kind of functional I don't know if that answers the question I think so I think you're right just being aware and that's part of the reason why we're having this conversation because you know if you're into UX you're really into it right but if you've not come across it as a discipline it's not in your mind right and you're not bearing that in mind and I definitely agree with you like when you come down to think about actually execution.

29:52And I guess when the brand strategy gets out there in the wild, it's not, I would say, folks, don't get too hung up on the kind of the awareness stage principles that you've set up because now we're into the practical stage of what's being used. And if the customer can't use it, what a waste of time. All that extra, all that effort prior to that has actually been to get the customer to that point. So I think that's probably the balance maybe. but yeah I think um I actually think user experience is a good term because ultimately with brand as well it's you know the cardinal sin of people thinking of brand is just kind of the visual identity but it's not it's it's the whole experience that that that person has with you you know it's what they think about when they see your brand anywhere it's it's it's how they feel and the user experience is kind of the same principle to be honest so when we're thinking of that, I guess, user experience is very much tied to the digital part, but maybe UX designers could think a bit more broadly as well.

30:51But it spans more than... Stop being so... This is not the Lofty I knew 10 years ago. She was certainly not. This is diplomatic. What is going on?

31:08Jacob, before we go into a bit of a quick fire, have you got any other kind of follow-up questions for lofty before we get into we're going to do a quick fire lofty i hope you're ready for that but you know we'll get there yeah i was going to touch on like the storytelling aspect because that's like the layer over all of this right you have the brand strategy and then ux and ui but it all has to work together so how do you see storyteller fitting into all of this good question again if we're talking about the digital kind of product i feel like that should be part of of the story that's being told but it depends where that sits in that specific brands kind of kind of journey if I go back to the example where I've been working for the student accommodation company I've worked on a very top level kind of brand awareness video with them which tells this is a really emotional experience you know moving away from home for the first time all sorts of emotions but it also you know develops into this amazing experience where they meet new people and and so I've worked on that kind of level of video for them where it's very sort of aspirational but but also a little bit scary and that's okay.

32:14But when it comes down to the website, how does that work alongside that? And there are key elements of the website that are quite functional and very much are just, here's the properties and here's the rooms and that's fine. But we've worked with them to integrate some of this more, I guess, social aspect into some of the imagery, for example. So, you know, it's not just empty rooms that we're showing, it's lived in spaces And that helps to have that kind of thread with some of the more brand awareness videos and their social media as well. So we're still telling that story, but obviously the priorities are slightly different on the website.

32:52We want them to be able to find details about the rooms and how much they are and what they're close to very quickly. But we don't want to lose that brand element. They're very nurturing and they have a big kind of well-being initiative as well. So those things can't be lost, but it's, again, how do we dial that up? How do we dial it down? What are the priorities here? And there's that hierarchy piece of the information that you're showing, essentially. I always remember when I was working in web, like content was always the thing that held up websites and like the copy. And that is so much of the storytelling and like the messaging.

33:30And it was always the missing piece. It was always so frustrating because if that changed, it could change the whole story and layout of a site. So how do you deal with the lack of content, lack of story in those scenarios? It's still a problem. I think sometimes people and brands I've worked with sometimes just see the website as maybe just a brochure or a sales tool and not as part of that full kind of journey and connecting up with some of the other elements. Working where I do at the agency that I do, we do try and very much encourage our clients to, we usually do actually a discovery workshop, which isn't necessarily just kind of digitally focused, but also focused around their kind of messaging.

34:16And that usually stirs up some interesting conversations around, okay, what do we actually want to communicate on the website? What is important? What's going to drive the information architecture of the site as well? So I kind of like to go on this journey with clients because ultimately they might have, in the previous project they've worked on, supply all the copy at the end. And to me, if you're designing with dummy copy and Laura Mipsum, you're not really getting the full picture and you're not really able to create the best sort of product. You can advise on potentially this is where I would expect content around this to sit.