Guide to Design Assessments
Design contributes to 94 percent of first impressions, and a strong first impression still leads to more contact. So, design significantly impacts the user experience. However, design isn’t static; it evolves with ever-changing UX design trends. Therefore, conducting a “brand and design assessment” becomes essential to ensure the website remains relevant.
Table of Contents:
- What Is a Design Assessment?
- Why Is Design Assessment Important?
- Who Needs a Design Assessment and When?
- How to Conduct a Design Assessment Process?
- What Are the Insights From a Design Assessment?
- How to Find a Good UX Agency to Conduct a Design Assessment?
1. What Is a Design Assessment?
A design assessment ensures that a product or service maintains consistent representation across all mediums. Websites, social media platforms, and physical stores serve as examples of mediums where the brand mark can be applied.
The goal of a design assessment is to standardize the design to ensure consistent messaging regardless of the customer’s interaction point. Inconsistent design can confuse users, and confused users are less likely to become regular customers.
When a brand’s design is consistent, it appears confident and defined, establishing in consumers a sense of reliability and trust.
2. Why Is Design Assessment Important?
The potential of an organisation grows as it grows. In such instances, the previous design can appear out of date or inconsistent. A design analysis can help decide if a website’s design is consistent with the growth of an organisation.
A design assessment will help you develop your product or service in the following ways:
- Make the design consistent to build a unique brand picture between the target group. This not only does involve graphic design, but also the written text and voice tone.
- Define the no longer applicable design elements and improve the design in accordance with the company’s current development.
- Contribute to conducting a comprehensive assessment and identifying areas that require redesign from a bird’s eye perspective across the entire brand.
3. Who Needs Design Audits and When?
When a business has been around for a while, it continues to grow, and as a result, it will have a lot going on in various directions. This can result in variations, which may seem small at first but can add up over time to create a non-uniform brand picture. When a product or service has been in operation for a while, a design assessment is a good idea.
4. How does a Design Audit Process be conducted?
Now that you know what a design audit is and its significance, let’s see how a design audit process is conducted. A step-by-step auditing process is normally practised.
Step 1: Collect All Materials
The first step is a little more challenging, but it is vital. It involves collecting all brand-related elements in one location in order to get a full picture of brand contact across all networks.
The obtained contents include:
- Marketing campaigns
- Business cards and flyers
- Website pages
- Multiple formats of the logo
- Banners, ads and promotions
Also, include any design work in progress or scheduled to be released.
When all of the related elements are collected and presented as a whole, you gain a better perspective and can quickly spot differences.
Step 2: Analysis
All gathered in the first step is examined in this step. The key is consistency. The style, tone, and font parts of the analysis can be separated further.
-Design
The accuracy of the design is thoroughly monitored here. The following fields are analyzed:
- Consistency of the logo on every outlet
- The similarity in context models and styles to offer natural transitions
- Navigation consistency
- Consistent brand color usage through all channels and functions
- Comparison and link between the landing page and the official website
– Tone
The way a brand interacts with its target audience is just as critical as its design. The tone can vary depending on the product or service. The most important thing is to keep the tone consistent in all mediums. Your brand should express a playful theme in the content on your website, on social media, in advertising, and everywhere else the brand communicates with the public.
– Typography
The importance of typography in describing a brand’s image cannot be overstated. It aids in the creation of a brand’s identity. Your brand should have a consistent typeface that is used across all platforms. The use of multiple typographies for mass channels is no common practice and sends the viewer a misleading brand picture.
Step 3: Creating a Report
After you’ve finished your research, you’ll need to write a thorough report detailing your results. The study should include what is correct with the design, what is wrong with it, and what can be done to fix it. It should outline all contradictions and provide recommendations about how to prevent them.
Step 4: Take Actions
It’s time to get to work after the design assessment review. The course of action can be decided based on the study report.
You should fix minor irregularities right away, such as inconsistent logo use or a non-uniform context. Small inconsistencies like these may have happened during creation and are easy to correct.If the variations are major, a design refresh or revamp should be considered. A redesign is a smart idea if you’re using outdated patterns or the design style doesn’t express the brand message. In such situations, it is best to seek professional assistance. To assist you in redesigning your product or services, you can contact trustworthy UI UX design services.
Step 5: Design Standard Manual
The final step is a forward-looking one. In this part, you’ll summarize all of the design improvements and recommendations into a document called the Design Standard Manual.It will have guidance, among other things, about how to use a logo, typography and design style. This will help designers keep track of potential projects, eliminate differences, and develop their overall UX design skills. A standard manual may be used as a reference.
5.What Are the Insights From a Design Audits?
The degree of customer loyalty can be evaluated with a design audit. It will show the preferences, experiences, pain points, and interface bottlenecks of users. The findings of a design audit will assist organisations in analysing the UI vs. UX dimensions of their design and obtaining clarification in the following areas:
1. Significance
You will understand whether your product is relevant for consumers from the design audit result. If all problems are resolved, consumers can gain a certain advantage.
2. Transparency
You will also learn about the transparency of the brand. Are the service’s transparent and consistent with your message? Can the users reach it?
3. Usability
Carrying out a design audit quickly detects usability issues. If the interface involves ambiguous points, evaluators can assess whether there is any uncertainty in the design that influences the conversion rate.
4. Call to actions
The outcome of the audit also reveals how clearly and visibly the call for action is and how it motivates users to take steps.
6.What is the Best Way to Find a Reliable UX Agency to Perform Design Assessments?
You must know that a design assessment is an extremely beneficial process for your business. It can assist you in increasing market conversions, improving service quality, and improving the UI UX design process. So, how do you go about seeking a successful UX agency to perform a design assessment?
Many sites are online, for example Clutch, which lists websites based on a validated and thorough assessment of customers.
Clutch named Krify as one of India’s top creative and design agencies. Our projects are genuinely user-centric, and we aim to have total user satisfaction. If you want to contract with a trustworthy agency to perform a design assessment for your website, contact us.
Conclusion:
At Kriy we have a team of professional designers who are passionate about the designing tasks assigned to them. If you are looking for any Brand and designing assistance for your business, you are on the right page. For more information, contact us.