Designing for Emotion

Vincent Feeney User Experience Designer @ My Local Broker

Emotion

A natural instinctive state of mind deriving from one's circumstances, mood, or relationships with others.

A natural instinctive state of mind deriving from one's circumstances, mood, or relationships with others.

Emotion

A natural instinctive state of mind deriving from one's circumstances, mood, or relationships with others.

Emotion

Emotion is instinctive

People will forget what you said, and what you did, but they will never forget the way you made

them feel.

Maya Angelou

Let’s look at some cognition.

There’s two systems in our brain.

System One

Fast, intuitive reactions and instantaneous decisions

E.g. what is 5 × 5

Humans are lazy.System one = 👌

System Two

Deliberate type of thinking involving reasoning

E.g. what is 32 × 27

Emotion is a system one process.

Why is emotion important in web and product

design?

Being happy broadens the thought processes and

facilitates creative thinking.

(Studies of Alice Isen)

Easier to use = Happier =

Easier to solve problems

Also, attractive things work better.

(Well, we perceive they do.)

People will forgive shortcomings, follow your lead and sing your

praises if you reward them with positive emotion.

Aaron Walter

When do we design for emotion?

Maslow hierarchy

Stephen P. Anderson hierarchy

Make it usable first, then we can worry about the

other stuff

Emotion is instinctive but we experience it in

different ways.

Visceral

PC’s in 1998

Macs in 1998

I want it (system one) before

what does it do (system two)

Behavioural

User centered design.

Uber

Interacting at the right moment to affect emotions.

Payment

Uber isn’t just a job, it’s a once in a lifetime opportunity

to help transform your city.

Uber Hiring Email

Reflective

Forming lasting relationships.

Facebook.

Some examples of emotional design in the web

Virgin America

AirBNB

Bridging the gap between online and offline with

storyboarding

Mailchimp

Interacting at the right moment to affect emotions.

wealthsimple.com

Summary

It’s easy to build things.

Making it personal is hard.

Technically, there’s not much difference between a complicated, confusing product and a simple, fun

and powerful product.

Alan Cooper

Human beings aren’t going to change overnight.

Further reading

Don Norman - Emotional Design Stephen Anderson - Seductive Interaction Design Daniel Kanheman - Thinking Fast and Slow Aaron Walter - Designing for Emotion

Thank you!