Emotions and Motivations For UX
Last week I read a article named User Psychology which Prof.Jason gave to us, it has 31 chapters, but the most impressed chapter for me is 7 to 11. These chapters mainly talk about the Emotions and Motivations for UX designers and users. After I read , I learned a lot and I realized how important the emotions and motivations to effect UX design.
Emotions
- There are two categories of emotions: Loss and Gain.
Let’s image a context, if you design a app or website in a company, nobody like it at the beginning, you feel unhappy and have negative feelings which is one of the emotions called Loss. However, if you continue working and put much effort on it, eventually, you win a lot of people appreciations and get benefits from your project, you will feel happy and have positive feelings which is called Gain. These two emotions can effect your work and life. I would like to say, the emotions are super important in UX design.
2. Emotions are reactions. Not goals.
For instance, if your friend play a joke with you and he puts you in a bag, in the first 2–5 minutes, maybe you think it is funny, but how about put you in a bag more that 10 minutes? if that is me, I will get mad. So I could say, if you design a project, no communication and no feedback to users, it’s just like put them in a bag, at the beginning, maybe users think you will give them a good design and a surprise, but in the end, you don’t achieve their goals, they will get angry. So UX designers should design a way to achieve the user’s goals and give them feedback so they can feel useful emotions.
3. Time makes emotions more complicated.
Here is a simple example, a young couple wanna celebrate their anniversary, the young lady has been waiting her boyfriend in a restaurant for a long time, but her boyfriend still not show up after an hour. At the beginning of 30 minutes , maybe this young lady will think her boyfriend just caught in a traffic jam or maybe prepare a gift and wanna give her a surprise. However, after an hour, she starts thinking, maybe her boyfriend had a car accident or his house on fire. See, this is how emotions interact with time. It is just like if you use a app, if this app has a lot of content or complicated steps and need to spend a lot of time to use it, some people don’t have much patience, they will get rid of it.
Motivations
UX designers’ motivations should manage the user’s feelings throughout their experience by giving them the information and signals they need to feel comfortable, and to understand how to reach their goals.
- Avoid something wrong
Obviously, death and pain are bad, evolution can figured that out. We are motivated to live as long as possible , and avoid anything life threatening like heights ,fire ,snakes or something make us feel painful. That’s one of elements for UX design.
2. Know what Users need.
Air, water, Food. People’s body need fuel to operate, and if it is running low, UX designers’ motivations will fix that. And also, protection of children is also important, sometimes, like with sex, it seems completely wrong and immoral. But sometimes, like with advertising, it seems like we just need extra rules and limitations. Why? Because in terms of evolution, people who haven’t reproduced yet are more valuable than those who have, so we gotta protect them.
3.Understand the users’ thinking and feelings.
Affiliation, belong to a group. Being part of a group make user feel proud. So if you design a project for user, let them belong a group, whatever student group or adult group.
Status, decide for yourself. Call it freedom, or autonomy, or responsibility. One way or another you wanna be the boos, at least of yourself. We are motivated to protect what we have gained, people will fight to keep their current status, even if it is made of something imaginary like points.
This is how I understand the emotions and motivations. If I become a UX designer someday, I will remember these rules and make it better.
