There’s a lot of hubris hidden in the term "user experience design." We can’t design experiences. Experiences are reactions to the things we design. Data lies to us. It makes us believe we know what a person is going through when they use our products. The truth is that it has no insight into physical mental or physical ability, emotional state, environmental conditions, socioeconomic status, or any other human factor outside of their ability to click on the right coloured box in the right order. Even if our machines can assume demographic traits, they will never be able to identify with each person’s unique combination of those traits. We can’t trust the data. And those who do will always be stuck chasing a robotic approach to human connection.

This is where our power lies. When we stop chasing our tails and acknowledge that we’ll never truly understand what’s going on in everyone else’s minds, we can begin to look at the web and human connection from a fresh lens. Instead of fruitlessly trying to engineer happy experiences for the everyman, we can fold ourselves into our content and listen to its heartbeat. We can let the content give design her voice.

Designing from the heart of our messages out means we fully acknowledge that they will not speak the same way to every person. We’re no longer chasing numbers. Instead, we’re thinking about how we should treat each piece of content, designing to reflect its subtle personality. The content should speak to the few people who can identify with this personality because this is the only audience that matters. No machine will ever A/B test its way to a more meaningful relationship.

Ask yourself, who would you rather connect with: People who try to please you? Or people who stand by their own unique personality? Who do you respect more? Our content and our products deserve the same respect.

We need to be better than the machines. It’s time to step up and design with heart.

So how do we do it? Where can we look for inspiration and guidance? The history of graphic design is full of emotion and it’s got a mighty heart… but we’ve rarely captured it online. I believe we can find the answers in something dear to my heart: editorial design.