Rhetoric Reloaded: The Age-old Art Shaping Modern User Experience
This article explores the ancient art of rhetoric, how it’s intricately woven into the fabric of effective communication, and its modern application in enhancing user experiences. Our journey begins with a very brief description and history of the practice before guiding you through its contemporary role in visual design, information architecture, written communication, process design, and more. As we go through, we’ll delve into the four rhetorical appeals: ethos, pathos, logos, and kairos, unearthing their significance in creating rewarding experiences that resonate with users, fostering user engagement, and bolstering product success — as well as how you and your team can implement these strategies.
The Appeal of Applied Rhetoric
Rhetoric is the art of persuasive speaking or writing. It originated in ancient Greece and was primarily used in public speaking and politics. Over time, its application became widespread and complex — covering everything from written/spoken word to design patterns, process design, color options, branding, the use of signs and symbols, and beyond. Objects themselves can even speak to us, telling us the appropriate way to use them whether that be a piece of hardware or a website.
Leveraging philosophies of rhetoric can enhance user experiences, but where does one begin? In fact, rhetoric offers us a great jumping off point in the form of rhetorical appeals: four basic strategies writers, designers, product developers and everyone else can start using right now to engage with users more effectively and make user experiences better for all.
Applying the appeals — ethos (trust/ethics), pathos (emotion), logos (logic), and kairos (timeliness) — in UX and product design leads to compelling experiences driving product success. But how? Essentially, appeals tell us if we want someone to have a positive experience with a product, service or website, we need to appeal to them using a lever of importance (every person you speak to is different, so you may need to appeal to different people in different ways to provide an experience they enjoy).
Effective rhetoric takes these concepts and employs them in a way that creates the greatest possible experience for the greatest number of target users.
Making Rhetoric Work for You
Applied rhetoric takes an empathetic approach to developing delightful user experiences by considering user wants and needs and meeting them where they are, which can lead to improved credibility/trust, better website/store/display traffic, higher user retention, and ultimately increased sales or usage.
Keep reading to see examples of how you, too, can apply each appeal in the context of product and experience design:
1. Ethos (An Appeal to Someone’s Ethics): Design elements that reflect credibility elicit trust, making users feel more confident in using a product, service or website. This is essential in scenarios like online shopping or financial transactions where data security is paramount.
Consider the website of an established financial institution such as a bank. The site will often be sleek, with a professional design using a secure (https) protocol, clear privacy policy links, user testimonials, and badges or seals of security endorsements. All these elements contribute to its credibility (ethos). Such professional, verifiable, and trustworthy appearances reassure users that their financial information is safe on the site.
2. Pathos (An Appeal to Someone’s Emotions): Eliciting emotional responses can deepen user connection and engagement. For example, visual design, language, tone, and user experiences that evoke happiness, excitement, empathy or other emotions can make a website, brand or product more engaging, relatable and memorable. Each of which, in turn, can positively impact product use, brand loyalty, and even new user acquisition.
Consider a brick-and-mortar pet supplies store. The store may prominently display high-quality photographs of happy pets and their owners to engage shoppers emotionally. They might decorate their store with nostalgic, playful, or heartwarming themes and use warm colors and comforting fonts for signage to enhance this emotional connection. Pet owners walking into the store might find themselves relating to these potent visuals and themes, thereby heightening their engagement with the products available. They might end up spending more time browsing the product aisles, reading product descriptions, checking reviews, or going through pet care guides displayed in the store. This retail strategy pulls at the heartstrings (pathos) of the pet owners, which could ultimately lead to increased sales.
3. Logos (An Appeal to Someone’s Ability to Reason): Simply put: usability. Logical, clear, and intuitive design helps users quickly and easily understand how to use a product or navigate a space or website, making the user experience smoother. This includes easy-to-follow menus, logical progression through tasks, clear calls to action, coherent information architecture and hierarchy, and more.
Consider the example of a well-organized physical library. The library could sort its books based on factors such as genre, author’s name, year of publication, and community ratings. It may also incorporate an efficient catalog system, quick reference guides, and organization labels for faster location of books. The library might additionally use a systematic classification system like the Dewey Decimal System, which allows patrons (library users) to track their location within the library and easily backtrack if necessary. All these contribute to the logical organization (logos) of information. This not only saves time for the users but also simplifies the navigation process, significantly enhancing their experience within the library.
4. Kairos (An Appeal to the Spirit of the Time): Designs incorporating kairos deliver the right content or functionality at the right time, adding value and convenience to the user’s experience. For instance, relevant suggestions based on user behavior or real-time assistance when users encounter issues.
Consider an online fashion retailer. As you browse, the site adapts to your activity, recommending products based on items you’ve clicked on or purchased before. And say you add items to your cart but then move your cursor to close the tab — a pop-up immediately appears offering a limited-time discount on your selected items. This is a contextual, timely (kairos) interaction that smartly incentivizes you to complete the purchase right then. Besides purchase decisions, timeliness in design can also enhance experiences in other ways, for instance, personalized greeting on the landing page depending on the local time zone of the user.
Use Rhetoric Today
In a digital world packed with information, designing experiences that truly resonate with users is more critical than ever, making the understanding and application of rhetoric indispensable for UX writers, designers, and researchers. The appeals foster trust, enhance user engagement, offer clear interfaces, boost user interaction, and enable personalized, timely features and functionality — all of which directly contributes to a positive user experience.
So, next time you’re designing, writing, or testing user experiences, remember to ask yourself if the rhetorical appeals have been addressed:
1. Ethos (An Appeal to Someone’s Ethics): Does the experience align with the values and/or principles of the user?
2. Pathos (An Appeal to Someone’s Emotions): Does the experience elicit an intentional emotional response from the user?
3. Logos (An Appeal to Someone’s Ability to Reason): Does the experience use a logical structure or hierarchy to its arguments and/or information architecture?
4. Kairos (An Appeal to the Spirit of the Time): Does the experience cater to the current times/situation — meeting the immediate needs and/or desires of the user?
By asking yourself these questions, you can get out ahead of your users’ basic needs. Embracing these rhetorical strategies not only enriches the design process but improves the end-product — bringing you closer to its ideal state on the first try — before you even test with users.
