Design Belonging: Why Digital Products Must Reflect Culture

Culture as Lived Experience: How Digital Product Design Becomes Belonging

When we talk about culture, we often think of mission statements or trendy office perks. But what really matters is how culture feels, and that the feeling lives in every digital interaction your audience has with your brand.

You don’t just want a product that works, or one that looks nice. Those are basic expectations. What truly matters is whether every click, screen, and message conveys the character of your organisation. When culture is embedded into design, people don’t just engage, they develop a sense belonging, a culture, a movement they can become part of.

Culture is Experience

Jakob Nielsen puts it clearly: brand is the sum of a person’s experiences, not just a logo or tagline ^[1]. Every interaction, from scrolling a homepage to completing a sign-up flow, shapes how people feel about your brand.

This is why brand experience design is more than decoration, it’s the basis of loyalty and emotional connection, built through coherent and culture-aligned touch points ^[2]. Sometimes I think that websites look the way they do, rigid, following the same old layout patterns, because people and designers don't dare to imagine what else is possible. Right now, it is possible to go beyond the expected and into the realms of wild imagination. Of course it might take longer than producing a 'standard' website, but being a innovator, a pioneer has never been about playing it safe or squashing the budget down such that all imagination is killed off.

It’s More than Functionality

Every piece of design carries tone. Even without trying, a usable interface can feel distant. That’s where affective design comes in. Designing intentionally to evoke positive emotions leads to greater satisfaction, deeper attachment, and long-term engagement^[3].

Belonging is a Human Need

We’re wired to belong. Not just in life, but in brands and communities too. Studies find that being part of brand-related communities increases satisfaction, emotional commitment, and word-of-mouth advocacy ^[4][5].

When your digital product reflects shared values and attitudes, users don’t just use it, they become part of something.

Additionally, recent insights show that creating genuinely connected niche communities builds deeper brand devotion, especially with younger audiences seeking identities, not just transactions ^[6].

Take the brand Rapha, for example. A quality cycling brand, known for its innovation in cycle clothing and their pricing reflects this. Arguably though, Rapha aren't doing anything Assos aren't, both are leaders in the space and both have huge customer loyalty. That loyalty isn't by accident on the parts of those brands, they are active across all of their touch points including digital. But despite this their web presence is much the same. All very conventional and all very safe with only the imagery and brand language to part them. Don't get me wrong, brand imagery, storytelling and tone-of-voice are hugely important. But what if the representation of the brand could extend beyond the conventional interactions, layouts and expectations?

Now, this is a contentious issue, because as a product designer who believes strongly in UX and UI principles of design, I understand why these two brands follow similar patterns of layout and user flow, they're primary objective is to sell you what you want as quickly as possible. Breaking conventions too far could be detrimental to that, if the short term goal is the primary one. There is such a thing as the universal understanding of how to navigate and interact with a website, especially e-Commerce websites. In the 4th rule of Heuristics, it is called Consistency and Standards. Quoting from nngrooup.com, "Users spend most of their time on other sites. Thus, anything that is a convention and used on the majority of other sites will be burned into the users' brains and you can only deviate from it on pain of major usability problems. ^[7]"

So it isn't about throwing out the rule book, but reconsidering what's possible today while adhering to it.

Beyond Pretty or Usable, It Must Resonate

Let’s be honest: beautiful interface and usability are table stakes. The meaningful difference is emotional resonance. Does the product express what the brand stands for? Does it tell a story people want to be part of?

That’s when design stops being surface-level and starts embodying belonging.

Why should you consider all of this?

If your digital product is emotionless, even if it’s usable, no one will feel it belongs to them. Users won’t return. Communities won’t form.

But when design echoes culture through visuals, tone, language, and experience, every interaction becomes meaningful. That’s what Luminous Industries builds: digital products that don’t just serve users, they help to foster an emotional connection and to build brand culture.

Summing it up

Your design shouldn’t just do something, it should make your people both inside and outside the organisation, feel a positive connection to it. We gravitate toward organisations that reflect who we are, or who we want to become. A product that resonates with those values doesn’t just work—it becomes part of one’s identity.

Let’s move beyond function and aesthetics. Let’s design belonging.