July: a time for pools, slushies, bike-riding and hanging out with friends. What better way to celebrate mid-summer than to look for inspiration in one of the quintessential lighthearted media outlets?

Without further ado, here’s what design – at all levels – can learn from the Buzzfeed approach.

1. Bite-sized content works.  People read listicles and short articles because they are brief snippets they can parse quickly and move on. Often in design, we try to pack too much in, and it gets lost in the process. Bullet points of quick takeaways, illustrative impact quotes or screens, and executive summaries work really well – with an offer to dive deeper for those who genuinely want more.

2. Nothing engages like gossip. Put another, more design-y way, stories anchor everything. We all want that tea spilled and frankly, when details are grounded in a narrative that starts with a bang and sets the stage, tension that builds, and an ending that wraps up that portion of the story (even if the overarching narrative will continue on), we’re listening the whole way through. Along those lines…

3. Juicy headlines draw people in. Is it clickbait or is it cutting through the noise to grab your audience’s attention? (Both?) We can do the same in design when communicating important research insights with leadership or naming design options with stakeholders managing busy schedules. Marketing exists for a reason and oftentimes Design doesn’t do a good job of utilizing it for ourselves. Juicy headlines or naming conventions can help our business stakeholders understand what problem is being solved, or what they or their users will get out of a particular solution from the get-go and bring them along in a productive, collaborative way. 

4. Embrace the whimsy. Buzzfeed always has a silly quiz on things like “what your favorite sandwich says about your future” – and people love those. Sometimes design takes on the personality of business and the thing is, we really can’t take ourselves too seriously for two reasons:
   1. We need to take the work seriously but take ourselves lightly in order to really enable creativity to flow. Putting on formal structured thinking and expression can feel quite confining to many designers. Which leads to… 
   2. We’re the “creatives.” (Yes, everyone is creative but we’re the people who are expected to bring the outside-the-box thinking and artifacts). We’re not only allowed but expected to bring some amount of rule-breaking and whimsy to the table. 

Put another way, if not us then who? ESPECIALLY within your own teams. So have fun. Do a little something silly. Have a team-building activity that’s a little weird (we’ve done Secret Santa lunches sent to each other’s houses and at-home Nailed It challenges). Change your Teams photo to a raccoon meme. Use gifs in communication.

When you embrace the silly you make space for other people to relax, bring themselves and create a more creative and innovative space for work to take place. A place where they can take risks – at first with just themselves but then with the products and ways of working. And smart risk is how you get to great. 

Want help figuring out how to set up and maintain a high-functioning and impactful design team? Drop us a line!