Designing For People
I’m not just designing pages.
I’m designing reactions.
A lot of conversations stop right at the surface: the colour palette, typography, spacing, and layout. They’re all important but I’ve learnt (through 8 years running a studio and working with health and wellness businesses) that the real “conversion moment” isn’t always on the screen.
It’s inside the person.
It’s the inhale before they click. The micro-flinch when they can’t find pricing. The quiet doubt when a page feels too vague. The overload when there are too many choices, too much text, too little structure…
So, their brain does the most protective thing it can do: it leaves.
That’s what “designing for humans” means at Angell Designs. Not just how it looks, but how it lands.
And if you work in health and wellness, this matters even more. People aren’t just buying a service. They’re trusting you with their body, story, time, and nervous system.
Who We Are: Angell Designs
Angell Designs is a unique branding and design studio built for human-centred, health and wellness aligned businesses. We help practices and practitioners look professional (not clinical), feel welcoming (not vague), and create designs (and marketing) that’s calm, clear, and sustainable.
We do that through three core lenses:
Strategy: what you’re saying and why it works
Design: how it looks and how it reads
Systems: how it functions day-to-day, so you can actually maintain it
Most Designers Miss…
Human-centred design is built on an explicit understanding of your audience, tasks, and environments, refined through evaluation, and addresses the whole experience (not just the interface).
That line “the whole experience” is where everything changes.
Because the experience isn’t just a homepage. It’s all about finding you to deciding you’re credible to understanding your offer to booking to showing up to feeling cared for to rebooking to referring.
If any step creates unnecessary friction, trust starts leaking. Repeatedly.
Micro-Moments That Lose Trust
Here are the micro-moments that lose trust before someone even ever contact you. I look for these in audits and strategy work. They are the small internal experiences that quietly decide whether someone continues or closes the tab.
Hesitation
Hesitation usually shows up when the next step is unclear. The person wants to act, but the pathway(s) feel uncertain.
Common causes in health/wellness brands:
“Enquire Now” with no explanation of what happens next
Booking buttons that lead to a confusing service list
No mention of fees, rebates, or appointment length (where relevant)
A contact page that feels like a void (no response times, no expectations)
This is basic trust math. Design can communicate trustworthiness, but the user’s actual experience is what ultimately matters. If the experience feels uncertain, the person pauses. If they pause, they often disappear.
Confusion
Confusion happens when someone can’t orient themselves quickly. They’re forced to “work” to understand what you do, who it’s for, and how to take action.
Common causes:
Services described in poetic language but not plain language
Pages with multiple competing CTAs
Navigation labels that sound nice but don’t mean anything (“Solutions,” “Journey,” “Experience”)
Key information buried halfway down the page
Confusion creates cognitive load (the mental effort required to use a website or complete a task) and higher cognitive load makes it harder for users to find content and complete actions. In health and wellness, that load can be the final straw for someone who’s already feeling overwhelmed.
Doubt
Doubt shows up when something feels “off,” even if it’s subtle: inconsistent visuals, missing details, overly generic copy, or a lack of proof.
People assess credibility quickly. Stanford’s Web Credibility guidelines emphasise showing there are real people behind the service and making it easy to contact you as credibility boosters.
In practice, doubt often comes from:
No team/practitioner bios (or bios that say nothing specific)
No location details, registration info, or clear contact options
Testimonials that are vague or non-existent
A mismatch between brand tone and the actual service experience
Overload
Overload happens when the design asks too much at once. Too many words, options, fields or decisions all compete for the audience’s attention.
Forms are a classic culprit. Reducing cognitive load in forms focuses on structure, transparency, clarity, and support because completing a form is mental work for your audience.
If your enquiry form feels like completing a tax return, people won’t even bother to start it. Others might start but totally abandon it halfway. Both look like “low demand,” when it’s actually a point of high friction.
How Micro-Moments Lose Trust
These micro-moments don’t feel overly theatrical. They feel significantly small.
But small is exactly why these micro-moments are dangerous. People don’t email you to say, “Hey, I experienced mild doubt and a medium confusion spike, so I left the website.” They just leave. And from your side, it looks like you questioning why if your website is pretty or the content is good, people aren’t enquiring.
Trust breaks quietly. Then it shows up later as:
“I’ve been meaning to book for months…” (translation: hesitation and uncertainty)
“Can you explain what you actually offer?” (translation: confusion)
“Do you have prices?” (translation: doubt)
Ghosting halfway through the intake form (translation: overload)
Audits, Strategy & Systems
When we work with clients, we don’t start by redesigning. We start by listening to the experience.
Here’s how I diagnose what’s happening in your designs. It typically includes:
A Human-Centred Audit
This isn’t “does it look modern?” It’s us figuring out if it would work for a real person in a real moment.
We use a mix of:
Usability principles (heuristic review)
Cognitive load checks (where do decisions pile up?)
Credibility and trust checks (is it clear who you are, how to contact you, and why you’re trustworthy?)
Conversion-path mapping (how many steps to book, and where do people drop off?)
Content clarity review (are you saying the thing, or circling the thing?)
Strategy That Clarifies
In wellness brands, people often aren’t just buying a service. They’re buying relief, understanding, support, momentum, function, safety, or hope.
So we clarify:
Who this is for (and who it’s not)
What outcome you help with (in plain language)
What your process looks like
What the next step is
System Design
This is the unsexy part that ultimately changes everything. We build a system that makes the experience repeatable, all so you can maintain it.
That can include:
A content system (so your socials build trust consistently, not randomly)
A website structure that answers real questions in the right order
“What happens next” micro-steps across pages, posts, and booking flows
Designs for FAQs, service pages, intake explanations, email responses (etc.)
Accessibility and readability baselines that keep the experience easy to use
Human-centred design is iterative and shaped by evaluation. We build systems that can evolve as your business grows without losing clarity.
Real-World Examples
Here are the kinds of fixes that create immediate shifts in trust.
Replacing vague CTAs (“Enquire”) with micro-steps (“Book a Discovery Call” *choose a time* then *receive confirmation*)
Adding a “First Appointment” page that explains what to expect, how long it runs, what to bring, and what happens after
Restructuring service pages so they answer anxiety questions early (price, process, fit, options)
Simplifying enquiry forms and adding supportive helper text
Improving navigation labels so people can find what they need without interpretation
Building proof that feels ethical and human (process stories, de-identified outcomes, practitioner credibility)
Tightening visual hierarchy so the page is readable at a glance (less effort, less load)
None of that is “just design.” It’s designing the experience of trust.
Most designers focus on what’s on the page. Human-centred design focuses on what happens inside the person using it. Cognitive load makes tasks harder to complete, and credibility cues like real people, clear contact, and transparent information shape whether someone feels safe enough to proceed. At Angell Designs, we diagnose and fix these issues through audits, strategy, and system design that makes your brand clear, credible, and human.
If you’ve ever looked at your website or socials and thought, “It looks good… why aren’t people book?” this is usually why. The friction isn’t always visible. But it can always be felt.
If you want a brand that doesn’t just look polished but actually holds people through the decision-making process, here are the best next steps with Angell Designs:
Book a discovery call if you want a clear, human-centred plan for what to fix first.
Explore our services if you’re ready for brand strategy, identity, website design, content systems, or ongoing support.
Visit our store if you want to book specific services and programs like The Brand Audit or The Social Media Manager.
And if you’re in health and wellness, the work you do matters. My job is to make it easier for the right people to find you, trust you, and take the next step without feeling overwhelmed on the way there.
