The Key to Designing Emotion

There are enough useful tips for designing an emotional look of the website or app that attract Internet users. However, most of them consider the task only from a technical point of view. They focus on the means of its implementation and let the core subject alone. Nevertheless, this task goes far beyond the usual creating an appealing design.
Emotions are a universal language, the way of communication accessible by everyone anywhere in the world. It’s a kind of music that could be understood without words and that strikes directly the hearts of the listeners. That is the reason why we think the key to designing emotion is to speak one language with the customers and understand what they think and feel about it. And the only language we are all used to understand from the early childhood is a story.
The Power of Storytelling
Stories are the very first way we get experiences in our life. They form our first patterns through which we will perceive the environment. Using these core patterns and experiences common for all people, you can easily get an emotional response. Look around: is there anything in your product people need emotionally, not by a logical decision? And more, sometimes people do not really understand they want something until they see how it works. By giving your product a story, you make it multidimensional, rich and alive. To know more about how it works, don’t be redundant to take a look at the Don Norman’s theory of an emotional design.
In digital design, storytelling is achieved through vivid illustrations and remarkable style that goes through all your app’s or website’s screens, remains consistent, targets emotions and situations common to your potential users. However, a question arises: how to design emotion and make an exciting story be reflected in your product?
How to Evoke Emotions with Design
The first thing to remember: to be understood, we should refer to either cultural code or precedent phenomena. Or both.
Cultural code
By cultural code we mean symbols, events, features relevant and common to members of a particular culture or subculture. Nation, community, group, or, simply put, your target audience’s wishes, fears, childhood memories, likes and dislikes — all of these things are your starting point and a source of inspiration. Try to unlock the culture code.
When designing a product, it is important to refer to visuals relatable to a particular group of people to excite emotions and reach out to the things that matter exactly for the future users.
Precedent phenomena
This term is closely correlated with cultural code and can be even considered as a part of one. However, different cultures and groups of people may have common precedents known to a wide audience.
Precedent phenomena is a linguistic term that can be defined as:
- widely-known phenomena in the society (everyone knows about their existence);
- phenomena frequently used in speech;
- phenomena closely connected with the cognitive sphere. It means that every precedent phenomena has a mental image associated with it which makes its use in speech understandable and connotatively (emotionally) colored.
Precedent phenomena can be:
- Self-precedent (personal stories and experience) — those won’t work for us since we design not for one user only. However, if you make a secret app for the President one day, you may refer to this type.
- Social precedents — common to a group of people and known to members of this group (e.g. students, New Yorkers, moms-to-be).
- National precedents — common to all people of a certain country.
- Universal precedents — common to most of the people worldwide. This type rocks, if you refer to a universal precedent you will never be wrong, e.g. staying at home when it’s rainy, the moment you get proposed, parents giving you a puppy, etc.
Look for precedent phenomena in these sources: fairy tales, Internet (memes, trendy topics, emoji), jokes, proverbs, cartoons, movies, etc.

Connotation
When discussing precedent phenomena, we mentioned that they are usually connotatively colored. Since we added linguistics to the topic, let us review what a connotation is:
Connotation is an idea or feeling which a word invokes for a person in addition to its literal or primary meaning while denotation is simply the meaning of the word/notion.
Connotation can be:
- Positive (evoking good emotions),
- Negative (evoking bad emotions),
- Neutral.
The goal of the digital design is to provide visuals with a positive connotation that refer to basic emotions. Thus, you can draw a simple cup of coffee and show its denotation, but add meaning to it — what’s inside this cup, how hot the liquid is, how you can stir it, and with a touch of warmth and coziness, you will achieve positive connotation.
Negative connotation, however, is a powerful tool for social advertising (e.g. don’t drive fast, don’t smoke).
Reptilian brain
To make your design efforts more conscious, there is one more thing you can keep in mind — reptilian brain.
According to Paul MacLean’s theory of Triune Brain, three distinct brains emerged successively in the course of evolution and now co-inhabit the human skull. The “oldest” brain is the reptilian brain, or ancient brain, is the one responsible for instincts. It is intuitive and associative, it values food and shelter, balance, territoriality, mating — our reptilian brain has been controlling us for so long, and our primal physiology is still influencing our behavior to a great degree.
The power of the reptilian brain is so strong that we just cannot resist. To target it in design and marketing, use simple visuals referring to home, warmth, safety, basic concepts such as love and life. Use common and well-known images, the reptilian brain doesn’t like to analyze, it is responsible for the irrational decisions. Therefore, if you please the reptilian brain you will make people love and choose your product irrationally.

Be the Director of the Experiences
Now that we know where to find keys to a good story, we must consider its visualization. Do not explain the advantages but show the purpose of using the product by setting up a proper atmosphere with colors, fonts, different styles, multimedia, gameplay, and interaction. The product and the emotion should create one inseparable entity. Picture the situation which clearly shows they need your product and this is going to be your story, your product’s soul.
Imagine, your story is ready to be implemented. How should you tell the story by the design? This is how you can make use of the composition and colors to tell the story in a single picture and drag all the attention to show the bottom line. Analyzing everything mentioned above, we can summarize feelings the design should arise in order to evoke an emotional response and brand loyalty:
- arising prediction,
- intrigue & mystery,
- the sense of belonging,
- the world is getting better,
- appealing fantasy,
- laugh and sincerity,
- celebration,
- strong contrast, etc.
There is one more trick to make your design truly appealing: you are to sell emotion rather than your product, to show customers how they would feel about your product. To see how it works, it is simple to look at how worldwide brands are making their promotion: Apple, Nike, Tesla, etc. They promote big idea: think different, just do it, forward without footprints. They sell new experiences, new ideas, desire to be one of the idea followers. The sense of belonging is a great emotional hook to force the user come back again and again and even promote your product among their friends. While it’s marketing task to find the idea and build brand ideology, it is design’s task to visualize it all in consistent imagery.
The Result: Meaning & Sense of Belonging
To sum up, we all strive to acquire new experiences; that is why we need one or another product. Even if your product is completely ordinary, the proper emotional design can completely change its face making it desirable.
Emotion is something people have and machines don’t. When properly told, the story can breathe life into your design.
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