Designing for Emotions!
One of the hot topics in design; How can a designer evoke feelings about the product?
Lately, it is being discovered that emotions are vital in terms of user behaviors. In the past it was accepted that humans were completely rational creatures and no matter what they choose the most logical choise. But even you can refute the idea from your daily life experiences; like when you buy a new phone when you already have an old one which still functions and try to make it sound like you have a good reason to buy it, or when you buy a book you know that you won’t read but you carry it anyway so you look smart, or even when you text your ex while you know very well that the texting him/her probably was a very bad idea but still you can not stop yourself. One thing you should know that; emotions matters more than you think! In fact your emotions affect your life more than your rational thoughts.
But how does this notion relate design? Well, to discuss this let’s talk about emotions first.
What is the emotion?
For most of us, it is hard to define what an emotion is. This is ok, because the emotions are about feelings which are very personal. Emotions are complex psychophysiological changes resulting from the external or the biochemical (intrinsic) influences.
Good feelings, bad feelings…
We may think to divide emotions into two categories; bad ones and the good ones. It is easy to make the division. You would probably feel very anxious before an important exam. Maybe you fear because of the though of failure. Depression, anxiety, melancholia, fear… These are the emotions that will not help anyone perform any better. These kind of emotions can be labeled as bad feelings. And then, there are other kinds of emotions; happiness, enthusiasm, joy, pleasure.. This positive emotions are labeled as good feelings.
What are they for?
You may think anyone should avoid to have bad feelings or the less you feel bad feelings, the better it is. Well, that is not the case actually.
As human beings, we need the bad emotions in order to survive as a species. The bad feelings prepare us for threatening situations and make us deal with it. They help us choose when we have more than one alternatives. We learn from bad feelings and next time we deal with the same problem, we look for an alternative this time. The bad experience enables us to choose the right path!
Emotional Response
Emotions mostly arise due to external stimuli which is mediated by cognition. The cognition enables us to obtain information from our surroundings which is turned into perception in the brain and our perception causes the responses like emotions. Think about it, when you fear, you only fear of the possible existence of a threat in your surrounding. For example, you think you see something in the dark when you are alone in your home, you assume it might be a possible threat, a stranger perhaps, you start to fear and you get nervous. Then you realize it was only a bias and you feel relaxed.
How does design function to evoke emotional responses?
People get in touch with products everyday. The products convey messages to users — which in return evoke feelings. Or in other terms, a design might function as a form of an external stimuli.
Assume that you are at a friend’s house and you want to use the cattle. There are 3 identical buttons but you only want to turn the kettle on, you feel confused. You try each one and there is no warning from any of them that showes boiling has started, no sound, no lighting, anything. Now you feel frustrated. Then you realise there is no glass on the exterior of the cattle so you can not be sure if there is even water in it, or not. Now you are really angry.
Or think that you are at a bookstore. The one on the top catches your eyes. You have never heard of the book before and you know nothing about it. But it has a very colorful cover, with big sans serif fonts. You can easily assume that the book is not one of the world classics, but a easy one to read.
So, what should designers do?
Designers should focus on what kind of functions should the product have, or what is it for? The product should match the user’s expectations and goals. The user should easily understand what the product is for and how it is used. The designs must be effective (they should satisfy the user’s expectations), efficient (they should be easy to use) and appealing (they should have aesthetic worries).
Tips! 1: Try to evoke positive emotions, as well as a good usability
Tips! 2: The worst thing occurs when your product evokes no feelings at all.
Tips! 3: Great designs not only evoke positive emotions but also limit/destroy bad feelings about the product so that the user would not get frustrated and go out to look for alternetives.
As a conclusion…
In the real world, when a product does not match with our expectation and needs we simply go out and look for an alternative. The first thing designers should do is to prevent users feeling bad so that they do not look for an alternative. The products must provide a very good user experience to evoke positive emotions and limit the bad feelings for the product.
