What Is Emotion-Centered Design?
A term adopted by Matter–Mind Studio in 2016, ‘Emotion-Centered Design’ is a term the studio uses to describe their unique practice as a research, strategy and design consultancy and research collective.
Emotion-Centered Design (ECD) is an approach for designing for people’s emotional needs.
Its process typically starts with understanding how people feel about certain experience, products or services over time. It involves co-designing solutions with stakeholders and ends with experiences, services, and/or organizational culture that are emotionally engaging and supportive.
It is especially relevant today because a lot of the challenges companies and organizations face are rooted in complex emotional underpinnings, whether it is toxic culture caused by lack of trust or inflexible services that make customers feel powerless.
3 key components of Emotion-Centered Design
- ECD is based on the belief that how people feel matters and makes a difference, and design as a discipline can and should care for people’s emotions.
- ECD is about going beyond doing research for the explicit knowledge and taping into the tacit and latent emotional insights about people that an organization or company wants to connect with.
- By reframing the challenge through the lens of emotion, ECD encourages and enables new ways of thinking and reveals opportunities that are deeply human.
Want more?
Read more than 35 articles about the practice and theory behind Emotion-Centered Design.
Explore the Lookbook Now!
A new design approach requires new tools. That’s where the Lookbook for Emotion-Centered Design comes in. The tools in the lookbook serve a variety of functions in the ECD process such as ‘to materialize’, ‘to relate’ and ‘to uncover’.
