Designing for the Feed

Are We Designing for People, or for Algorithms?

I have been thinking recently about how much design is now shaped by whether something will perform well online. A product, poster, room, outfit or brand identity does not only need to work in the real world anymore. It also needs to look good as a thumbnail, catch attention in the first second, fit into a feed, and be understood quickly by people who are probably scrolling past it. That makes me wonder, are we still designing mainly for people, or are we designing for algorithms?

This feels especially obvious on social media. Platforms like Instagram, TikTok and YouTube do not show people everything in a simple chronological order. Instead, they use recommendation systems that decide what content is most likely to hold attention, create engagement or keep someone watching. The Knight First Amendment Institute describes these recommender systems as the engine behind platforms like Facebook and YouTube, with TikTok showing the power of an almost entirely algorithm-driven feed.   That matters for design because it changes what kind of work gets seen.

This does not only affect influencers or content creators. It affects designers, brands, artists, photographers, fashion labels and product companies. If certain types of images, colours, formats or styles perform better online, then people naturally start designing towards those things. Work becomes sharper, brighter, simpler, more instantly readable and often more visually dramatic. A chair, a logo, a jacket or a café interior is not just designed for use, it is designed to be posted.

In some ways, this is not completely negative. Designing for digital platforms can make work clearer and more accessible. If something needs to communicate quickly, it forces the designer to be direct. A strong product image, a recognisable brand mark or a clean interface can help people understand something almost instantly. Good design has always had to consider context, and social media is now one of the biggest contexts that design lives inside.

But the issue is that algorithms do not really understand design in the way people do. They do not care about material quality, long-term use, emotional subtlety or whether something feels good in your hand. They reward signals. Clicks, likes, comments, shares, watch time and engagement become measures of success. This means design can start to favour what is immediately noticeable over what is genuinely meaningful.

I think this is where a lot of modern design starts to become similar. If everyone is trying to win attention in the same spaces, using the same formats and responding to the same signals, it makes sense that things start to look alike. It is the reason so many cafés seem designed to be photographed before they are designed to be sat in. It is why branding often becomes simplified into something that works neatly as a profile picture. It is why interiors, products and graphics can end up feeling like they were made for Pinterest or Instagram before they were made for real life.

This has been written about in fashion as well. A recent article on social platforms and fashion argued that brands are increasingly designing products based on social media data and algorithmic feedback, with companies able to track trends and respond incredibly quickly.   That is quite a strange shift. Instead of design leading culture, design can become a reaction to whatever the algorithm has already decided people want to see.

There is also an interesting creative tension with AI. It’s Nice That has covered how creatives are already using machine-learning tools, while also questioning what this means for originality and creative practice.   I do not think AI or algorithms automatically ruin design. They can help with research, testing, personalisation and speeding up boring parts of the process. But if the goal becomes purely optimisation, design risks losing the human part that makes it interesting in the first place.

That human part is difficult to measure. It might be the weirdness of an object, the texture of a material, the feeling of a space, or the story behind why something was made. These things do not always perform instantly online. Sometimes good design takes time to understand. Sometimes it is quiet. Sometimes it is not the most clickable version of itself.

I find this especially interesting because design has always been influenced by the systems around it. Shops influenced packaging. Catalogues influenced furniture. Television influenced advertising. Now feeds and algorithms influence almost everything. The difference is that algorithms are less visible. We do not always notice when we are designing around them, because it just feels like responding to what people like.

So, are we designing for people, or for algorithms? I think the honest answer is that we are often doing both. The problem is not designing for digital spaces, because that is now part of real life. The problem is when the algorithm becomes the main client. Design should still work on a screen, but it should not only exist to be scrolled past. The best design should be able to catch attention, but also reward attention once it has it. It should be more than just content. It should still have a reason to exist when the phone is put down.