How to Use Design Thinking for Your Blog

Writing a blog is a challenge. No matter what niche you’re in, you’ll have a demanding audience that expects a lot from you and a killer competition waiting for you to make a mistake. You need to fight for your place under the spotlight and hold on to it as tight as you can once you reach it. All of this leads to one conclusion- you need to constantly improve your blog.

One of the strategies you should try is implementing design thinking into your blogging. Design thinking is a strategic process used by graphic designers, product designers, musicians, artists, scientists, engineers, and other professionals. It helps you look at the bigger picture and turn things around to reach your goals. And, it can help you make your blog far more successful.

If you’re interested in learning more about design thinking and how you could use it for your blog, just keep reading.

What is Design Thinking?

Let’s start by defining the concept of design thinking and understanding what it implies. We can define design thinking as:

• an innovative, creative, and continuous process in which we try to understand our users, make assumptions and challenge them, define and redefine problems, and come up with innovative solutions to test and analyze.

It may sound confusing at first but it’s actually rather simple.

Using design thinking means focusing on the needs of your users and trying to think like them. This allows you to make better decisions and offer better solutions than your competitors.

This is why design thinking can be applied to processes in all industries and niches, not just design. And, if you start using it in your blog, you could make significant improvements that your audience will feel and appreciate.

Design Thinking in Blogging

Now that we’ve covered the basics, let’s dig a little deeper. We’ve put together a list of applicable tips to help you understand how to start using design thinking in your blog.

Here’s how to do it like a pro.

1. Start With a Problem

As we’ve already mentioned, design thinking is about understanding the needs of your target users. That means that bloggers need to take a step back and picture themselves wearing their users’ shoes.

This way, they’ll be able to answer questions such as:

• What is their main problem?
• What do they want to read about?
• What do they need our help with?

These questions are essential for making your blog informative and valuable.

By understanding the problems you need to focus on, you’ll be able to find and cover topics that will truly speak to your readers. This will also help you find the right keywords, work on your SEO, and boost your rankings.

So, make sure to empathize with your audience and understand what they need you to do. This will make your blog relatable and unique.

2. Define “Why?”

So, you’ve done your research and you’ve come to insights about your target audience. Now, you need to define what each of your blog posts is going to give to your audience.

You need to ask yourself: Why am I writing this?

Design thinking is all about problem-solving. And, since you’ve defined the problem now you need to define the solutions as well.

The “why” is going to give your blog a deeper purpose and a clear goal for each step that you take. Here’s an example:

• you’re writing a blog post about launching your new product because you want to increase your sales
• you’re covering a buzzing topic because you want to increase your audience list

There needs to be a clear goal behind all your moves. It will provide a proper foundation for writing better content and pleasing your readers.

3. Brainstorm & Explore

The next principle of design thinking that you should start using in your blog is exploration. The main premise is that it’s hard to come up with the best solution on the first go.

It takes time and experimenting.

This is why design thinking lies in this principle:

• brainstorm several ideas
• choose the one you like the most
• do some more thinking, adjusting, and questioning on it
• use whatever comes out as the final solution

So, before you run off and start writing your new blog top, try approaching the same idea from different angles. Maybe this blog post could be written as a tutorial? Or a “top 10 list”?

Your content quality is the base of your content marketing strategy so allow yourself to be creative and explore before you reach the final decision.

4. Rely on Aesthetics

The visual aspect of your blog will make a huge difference for your readers. You need to face the truth- they love seeing beautifully designed and organized blog.

This doesn’t mean you should disregard your written content. It just means you should pay special attention to your visuals:

• organize your blog logically to help find information easily
• divide it using subheadings, short paragraphs, or lists
• add CTAs and make them stand out
• use pleasant-to-read fonts
• add beautiful pictures that match the content purpose
• use color psychology to further enhance the purpose of the blog post

Your blog needs to speak to your readers before they start reading the first words. They need to like what it looks like and how it feels to them.

If you manage to nail this aspect, you’ll get them to continue reading and memorize the whole experience as pleasant and valuable.

5. Critique and Reexamine

If you want to think and act like a designer, you need to self-evaluate your work and look at it objectively. Before calling it a day, designers will try to look at their finalized product like seeing it for the first time.

This helps them:

• consider different aspects of their work
• think like their audience
• see if they’ve managed to reach their goal

You should do the same thing with your blog posts. Once you’re done writing, let it rest and come back to it the next day. Try reading it objectively, like you’re seeing it for the first time.

Consider all aspects, including readability and accuracy. In case you need help with this aspect of writing, you can get it from writing services that give paper writing help.

This will tell you so much about your content and help you make the right adjustments before publishing.

6. Test Different Solutions

Sometimes, the best way to learn is from your own experience. Designers often provide two solutions to the same design and test it out to see the response.

You should try this design thinking principle in your blogging, to see what type of content your audience prefers reading.

Do it by writing different types of content and measuring the response:

• social shares
• think like their audience
• see if they’ve managed to reach their goal

• –
• –        comments
• –        conversions
• –        overall reactions

Blogging is one of your most important marketing channels. Don’t just stick to one style and believe it’s the best you can do. Mix it up and try different approaches until you conclude what’s the best you can offer to your readers.

Final Thoughts

Design thinking is all about looking at a problem from different angles and thinking outside of the box. This principle will help you understand the needs of your audience better, but also learn about your abilities and improve your writing.

If you like the idea of using design thinking in your blog, go ahead and use the advice we’ve shared above. It will help you look at your blogging from a different perspective and give your readers great content to enjoy.