How To Design Emotional Interfaces For Boring Apps

When your product deals with repetitive tasks, it’s hard to keep users excited about it. That’s where UI comes into play.

By Alice Кotlyarenko

There’s a trickling line of ones and zeros that disappears behind a large yellow tube. A bear pops out of the tube as a clawed paw starts pointing at my browser’s toolbar, and a headline appears, saying: “Start your bear-owsing!”

Between my awwing and oohing I forget what I wanted to browse.

Products like a VPN service rarely evoke endearment — or any other emotion, for that matter. It’s not their job, not what they were built to do. But because TunnelBear does, I choose it over any other VPN and recommend it to my friends, so they can have some laughs while caught up in routine.

Humans can’t endure boredom for a long time, which is why products that are built for non-exciting, repetitive tasks so often get abandoned and gather dust on computers and phones. But boredom, according to psychologists, is merely lack of stimulation, the unfulfilled desire for satisfying activity. So what if we use the interface to give them that stimulation?