 Hello everyone. I have a crazy idea. Let's remove color from design. Now I'm not talking about designing in black and white. What I'm talking about is taking color out of the equation completely because it's actually quite irrelevant. But hear me out. I'm talking about the early stages of a project and everything that comes before visual design. That is when we need to forget color exists because that will allow us to focus on what's really important. Crafting an engaging experience while solving problems for people. So that means that first and foremost we need to focus on the user and the content not on the design. Visual design is important. Yes, but it's only one piece of the puzzle. What we truly and ultimately want to achieve is impact. So I argue that a visually beautiful website isn't really worth the pixel it occupies on the web if it isn't usable, useful and speaks to its audience. So let's explore the most important fundamentals of creating an engaging experience that creates impact. We as designers we often just dive right into visual design, right? And without even understanding the full project or doing any research. Raise your hand if you've been guilty of that in the past. I certainly have. That looks like a lot of you have too. And that's totally normal because we are visual creatures. We get excited about design. But what we want to do is we want to create a solid foundation. But we can't do that if there are too many unknowns. So what do we do? We ask a million questions and don't hesitate to question the obvious answers. Who are we designing for? What problems are we trying to solve? And I'm using the word we and our a lot today because we as designers we need to put ourselves into our client's shoes. Their goals become our goals. Their audience becomes our audience. While we still keep a bird's-eye view and see all the pieces of the puzzle come together and form the full picture. Let's think of this as a first date. What do we do on a first date? We meet the person for the first time and we get to know each other, right? So we have a conversation. We ask a lot of questions and at equally important we listen. That's basically your discovery phase, the early stages of your project. We get to know the project and the client. But by removing design from the equation, we foster better conversations without distracting. Because in my experience clients often focus on what a finished website looks like and we need to refocus them because in the early stages of a project that is not important. And if we don't we don't allow ourselves to truly define the goals and audience of a project what sometimes could happen is that we're trying to cater to too many audiences and we're going to water down our message and we're actually not reaching anyone at all. We're just going to confuse people and we're going to turn them away. So we want to not over complicate things. We want to keep it simple. So we're still on our first date and we kind of get to know the person better and we like them and if we want the day to end well or we're hoping for a second date, what do we do? We want to try and keep the conversation flowing. Equally when somebody, equally with your website, you want to bring the right people in and once they're there you want to keep them interested and engaged. To do so we need to guide them. We need to guide their attention and make sure that they find what they're looking for and I use the word guide a bit loose here. What I actually mean is we want to create an intuitive experience by creating clear and helpful user paths. But what we need to do here is listen to our audience and observe them because if we design something that people use in a very different way we might need to adjust it. We create truly natural user paths when we allow people to discover and explore content and then allow them to dive deeper into it contextually. So I'm talking about a teaser content for example and then learn more so they can dive deeper into it. But we want to make sure that we do that on every single page of our website because not everybody comes in through the front door or our home page. So we want to link and guide people to related content or more content from every single page. One thing I kind of want to touch on that we might sometimes forget, but it's very important. If our design is complicated and hard to navigate, it's not the user's fault. It's actually our fault. We need to do our research. We need to understand what people are trying to do on our website and we need to adjust it and guide them well because what we want to design is something that's logical and that's easy to inject with. To be truly impactful, give your audience the feeling that you know them well and that you care, that you feel their pain and that you can solve their problems. We want to relate to them, empathize. That's where the true magic of connecting to people is at. There's a simple tool that we can use to achieve that. It's the power of storytelling. Storytelling has been used throughout the beginning of mankind to entertain, educate and to share information. Stories evoke emotion. People tend to relate to the characters and they cheer them on. They want them to succeed. So we can use storytelling to connect to our audience. Let's go back to dating real quick. How do we get to know people? We share stories about ourselves and by doing that we build trust. So on our website we should use storytelling to tell our story and we want to do that in a human way. We want to be approachable. But what tone language and mood is appropriate is always a good question to ask. Let's just think about a law firm who creates a website targeting people that seek legal help. They can't use legal speak because nobody understands that, right? So they want to communicate trust. They want to take people's fears away. They want to make sure people understand that they can help them in their most impossible situation. So that will guide the way that they communicate on the website. And it's different for every single project, the mood and language that we use. When we're able to truly relate to our audience, we create a connection. We build trust and we develop a lasting relationship with our audience. And that's ultimately what we want to do. So visual design is important, yes. And by implementing the fundamentals that Hugo and Beth were talking about earlier, you can truly create and complement a well-crafted experience. But you can only do that if you have a solid foundation. So if you raised your hand earlier, for the beginning of your next project, I want you to forget color exists, period. Because I want you to understand your audience. And I want you to guide them intuitively. And most of all, I want you to relate to them. Because if you do that, you can truly leave a mark and make an impact in people's lives. Thank you.