Disruptive Design on a digital platform
When we talk about a disruptive design, we are talking about something that is intensely misunderstood; it is something capable of creating an interruption in maintaining the status quo that can help you to agile your business, in a new smart and young way that can attract customers and clicks to a digital platform.
When you are trying to create something disruptive we are talking about something that can disturb or intervene in the way people see the digital platform, products, or services that you are offering in it. This can challenge you to create new and amazing designs and products that can change the elements of the economy.
Disruptive design, what can we get from it?
Designing is the art of creating something that sometimes can be iterative, or innovative, but you can also create things that are revolutionary and can change the life of people. Disruptive design is an intentional act of creating products or services that can lead to a change.
The main thing that designers must have in mind is that a design needs to do the thing for what it was created, that means to achieve the function because an aesthetic creative production is nothing if you cannot use it. When we talk about disruptive design, we talk about things that are creative and functional, made with the objective of challenging society and its status quo to make a difference.
As both of the words say, the design is about creating things and disruption about making a change in the system. When you combine these two objectives toy are willing to make some interventions on a pre-existing product or service that you can change to make a real difference in the way that object can help people, achieving a different outcome that can create a positive change in their lives.
This approach tries to activate the sustainability principles in a different way, using creativity to achieve what they intend. For this, designers employ many thinking and tools through the elements of disruptive design, which are mining, landscaping, and building. These symbolic names are used to define the parts of this process that is developed in a tridimensional perspective where they can explore, understand, and intervene to solve every problem.
With the disruptive design, the gap between knowledge and action has vanished because people who have the idea can make it real, which will drive people to a solution. Living in a world charged with a lot of negativity seeing life from this perspective is a new start because designers are not in a restrictive mental model and are an option to see what the world has to offer for us in the future.
Creating a disruptive design on a digital platform
What the world needs now is more pioneers of change, people who want to innovate and make a solution to problems acting like change makers. For this, the designer needs to go deep into the problem, mining its foundations to understand what is going on in the system they are trying to change. After this, they can identify intervention points and see what they can create to change it.
On a digital platform designers need to identify, the problems and what are the requirements of their users to see how they can improve and make them happy, but also try to attract more traffic to it. There are many ways of doing this, but the most fundamental thing is to make publicity to the digital platform using social media, emails, and other methods.
The designers after mining and seeing the chaos they are trying to solve must start to figure out what they are going to do, some theories on disruptive design call this phase the landscaping and it makes sense because they can watch problems from a different perspective. Any insights can lead to locating exactly where to intervene in the digital platform to make it more usable for their clients.
After this, comes the part of the building where they will build the potential intervention that can make the digital platform the one that people would love to have, so designers can evolve the original design and make it more workable and likable for people.
Things that you need to do to succeed with a disruptive design on a digital platform
There are things that you must take into consideration when designing a digital platform, thousand or even millions of people will use it, here are the main things that you must do.
There can be many friction points on the users’ experience when it comes to a digital platform, the interface, how intuitive it is, do they offer quality content, among others. These features can cause some problems to their users or cannot satisfy them at all. You must pay attention to what is going wrong and fix it as soon as possible.
In a world where people like to do everything on a time and do not like to waste it, solving these issues is crucial, for example, there are many marketplaces websites that not offer a personal and welcoming sales system to their customers and do not even count with a rating system. With a disruptive design, you can see these failures and implement a solution to all what the digital platform is lacking to make the consumers happy.
Make an intuitive system for your digital platform
There can be many digital platforms in the world right now, but people will always prefer the one, which is more intuitive and easy to use. The designer must put all his or her focus to make an obvious digital platform that everyone can use without preparation.
For this, they can base the digital platform in one, which is already known by everyone, and making it work similarly but not exactly you can make that people gain interest in your new creation. One example of this could be when you see Amazon and how easy is to use it because everyone is intuitive about the prices, features of their products, and reviews.
So if you want a disruptive design you will need to add all these referential elements to gather people’s attention, but also making it your own way.
Think about the digital platform, as a user would do
Designing a digital platform is not only about how people would use it, you must also see how this platform will fit in people’s lives. You must think from a holistic view and consider if you will use it on your daily basis, and it resonates with what you are looking for on a digital platform.
People want one that makes them do the things that they want in the less time possible and do not want to feel that they must pass a test to accomplish their goal. This is in any scenario like buying something or getting some service from it.
You need to feel empathy for your future users
When you create a digital platform, you must be aware that many people will be able to use it, but those persons are nothing like you, all of them are different and has diverse lifestyles. Designers must think to get in the head of all the users to create properly the right product that can satisfy them.
You need to do the best work to fit all their necessities paying attention to every detail you can, for example when you are creating these platforms, you must know that not everyone enjoys a fast internet connection so you must try to make it accessible for everyone, no matter where they are.
Remember that you are not creating it for yourself; you are in a creative process for them to use it. If you cannot understand their lifestyles, context, and perceptions and how they will feel using your digital platform, why will you design it for the first time?
You will need to keep learning and iterating
Digital design is not static like other forms of design, so you need to be in the vanguard of the most recent changes and tendencies that overcome the past of the time. Disruptive design is no trying to make things perfect the first time, it is about creating a digital platform that can change when the environments do, and for this, the designer must learn continuously to make the platform better and better.
When you are creating a digital platform, it is a continuous process that will adapt to the necessities, users’ reactions, and the feedback that designers can get instantaneously. That is the amazing thing from this digital era that not only your teamwork can correct you even the users will let you know if something is not working as they aspire.
As you can see, the disruptive design is an interesting way to go when creating a digital platform because you will be able to see the necessities of people and giving them solutions to enhance their experience every time.
