Idea Before Layout: How the Design Concept Drives Social Media Interaction

A good post needs more than a good-looking image

Most brand pages on Facebook publish designed posts every day: a campaign visual, a promotion, a short video. Many of them look polished and still get almost no reaction. This paper starts from that gap. It describes the research problem as a lack of interaction with posts designed for social media, and traces it to two habits: not caring enough about the design process (and especially the idea behind a design), and not keeping up with Facebook's updates and algorithms.

The argument is simple. Design is a way of carrying a specific message to a specific audience. Done well, it reassures people, leaves a positive impression and signals care through attention to detail. But a design is first an idea, and that idea still needs a channel to reach people. On social media, that channel is governed by algorithms that decide who sees what.

The questions behind the paper

The paper asks three questions:

• How do users interact with posts?
• How does content, combined with the platform's algorithms, affect decisions?
• How do new algorithms steer user behaviour towards particular topics?

How it was studied

This is a short conference paper, not a controlled experiment. The method has three parts:

• a review of the research literature on design and the design concept;
• a review of how social media algorithms, mainly Facebook's, rank and show posts;
• an analysis of page statistics, using the public analytics tools Fanpage Karma and Socialbakers, comparing the Facebook pages of two Palestinian telecom companies, Jawwal and Ooredoo Palestine.

What the algorithm rewards

Drawing on Facebook's own guidance for page posts, the paper explains that Facebook ranks posts using ranking signals: data about a user's past behaviour and the behaviour of everyone else on the platform. Facebook names three main groups of signals:

• who the user usually interacts with;
• the type of media in the post (video, link, photo);
• how popular the post is.

Two consequences matter for designers. First, if a post gets no interactions, Facebook concludes the content is not interesting to the page's audience and stops showing it. Second, interaction carries over: the more a user interacts with a page's posts, the more of that page's other posts the same user sees. One engaging post helps the whole page.

The paper also notes that the newer algorithms penalise bad, fake, misleading or stolen content. Content therefore has to be original and new and speak to its target groups.

Five practical levers for more interaction

The paper lists five ways to raise interaction with page posts:

• Post more often across the day. A post stays visible on a page only for a short time, so more posts reach more users at different times.
• Focus on peak times. Track when the page's fans are online and publish then.
• Vary the formats. Use video, images, interactive images and 3D images.
• Learn from the most popular posts. Images are the most interactive post type, especially images that inspire people and push them to think and ask questions. Video is an increasingly popular format alongside them.
• Lead with the idea. The more unusual the idea, the more interaction the post gets, provided the design brings the idea forward and shows the page's visual identity.

Together these raise likes, comments, shares and clicks, and that in turn increases how often a post is shown to more users.

What the design concept adds

The second half of the paper turns to the design itself. A design concept is the idea behind a design: how you plan to solve the design problem in front of you, and the logic and reasoning behind your choices. Strong design work always has a strong idea behind it, and that idea is what sets it apart from other designs.

When the idea is applied, every element should work in harmony and "tell the same story" through deliberate choices. The paper describes design as giving something an acceptable form so it performs a function while respecting aesthetic principles, which means a design fails if it either does not do its job or lacks beauty. Function and beauty are the two measures.

Following Frascara, the design process rests on three foundations: the idea (the spirit and essence of the design, built on a clear concept), the technology used to execute it, and the communication channel that carries it.

The paper proposes four tests of design effectiveness:

• Speed: simple, clear work that is understood at a glance, remembered quickly and distinguished from competitors.
• Transfer of meaning: the intended meaning arrives through visual messages without noise.
• Impact on the recipient: the message shapes perceptions and behaviour through signs, symbols and emotional cues.
• Meeting information needs: the design answers the questions the viewer has about the idea.

The case: Jawwal and Ooredoo Palestine

The analysis compares the two telecom pages using page analytics tools. The paper's reading is that publishing on Jawwal's page is far more intensive than on Ooredoo Palestine's.

Looking at individual campaign posts, the paper observes that interaction varied across a campaign according to the ideas presented and the attention given to the design idea, rather than following the campaign as a whole.

What it means for designers and social teams

• Start from the idea, not the layout. The concept is what makes a post worth reacting to; colour, type and imagery should all serve it.
• Keep it simple and consistent. Simple, clean, creative posts with a consistent colour scheme, recognisable images and short text capture attention best.
• Know the audience. Choose ideas that come from the target groups and speak to their cultural background and cognitive biases, with tailored messages for each group.
• Design for the algorithm as well as the eye. Timing, frequency, format and originality decide whether a well-designed post is seen at all.

Limits

This is an early, exploratory conference paper. It relies mainly on a literature and platform review plus a descriptive look at two pages. It does not test causes: the two pages differ in size, posting volume and content, so the difference in engagement cannot be attributed to the design concept alone. The page data come from third-party analytics tools, and Facebook's algorithm has changed since 2020. The paper's points are best read as practical guidance and hypotheses for further study.

About the original study

Wasef J. Qadah, "Effect of Design Concept to Increase Interaction in Social Media", paper presented at the 5th International Marmara Social Sciences Congress (IMASCON 2020 Spring), June 2020. The author was then an MSc student at the Social Sciences Institute, Kocaeli University.