5 Ways Emotional Design can help your business grow

An average human living in the city, spends 11+ hours on digital devices, smartphones, computers, TV etc. Businesses have taken notice of this trend and started developing more engaging content and designs. Websites like Facebook and Quora do so well because they understand emotional design. Things like Emojis, status updates, upvotes, “Like” buttons all give a sense of interaction with the user and engages them. How do those companies do it? We will explain.

Emotional Design is made up of 3 things:

Visceral

• Uses sensory inputs such sight, smell, touch and hearing to appeal to the user’s experience.
• Effect is often immediate, either you will love it or hate it.
• The main concept used to design almost everything we know of.
• Eg: Colour shading of Facebook is considered “Intimate” according to “Hartman’s Personality Profile”, it encourages users to share their personal feelings.

Behavioural

• Uses practical means to appeal to the user, it does what it is supposed to.
• Effect is not often immediately felt, it becomes evident through usage.
• The important part of this concept is to create something that is practical and user friendly. The “looks” come as secondary.
• Eg: Google’s search page, practical and well loved because of it.

Reflective

• Uses a sense of connection by tapping into the user’s ideology or experience
• Hardest to accomplish as it is a long-term process
• Eg: Using emojis, upvotes, and other means to encourage users to express feelings, becoming a platform or stage for their emotions.

And that’s how they do it. By understanding what is “Emotional Design” one can definitely improve their business. Here are some of our pointers on how you incorporate it into your design.

1. Add Fun

Add a fun element to your website, Eg: Google’s “Jumping Dino” game when Chrome detects no Internet. This helps to keep the user in good mood despite facing difficulty in using the service. Keep the user engaged makes the visit memorable and more likely to make want to return again.

2. Talk, don’t tell

Always remember this important statement, “It’s a person you are designing it for, not a machine”. Don’t use im-passionate words like “invalid email address”, “enter here” or similar stuff. Try use to “talk” or converse with the user. Make them feel that you value them and see them as human beings. Eg: “What’s on your mind” on Facebook encourages the user to share their content or thoughts more than “Update your status here” would. Try sounding personal and connect with the user instead of treating them as objects or emotionless beings.

3. Leave an impression

Create lasting impressions on the user. Welcome him as you would to someone coming into your home for the first time, offer to show him around the house (your website), serve him snack and coffee (offer discounts or goodies for sign up), speak well of them (appreciate the choices he makes while browsing), and thank them for coming (summarize his activities on the visit today and thank him for showing interest). Use the same thought process for returning guest (user), minus the showing around the house part.

Easy? Yes, it does sound that way. Try it and let us know on comment section below, we love to hear about it.

4. Use subtle gestures

Matthew B Dunne

Use subtle gestures to guide the user into completing the tasks he has left unattended. Eg: A gentle bell ringing animation on the notification bar of Facebook would certainly encourage the user click and read all the notifications. The current “static” state of the bell doesn’t inspire the user to click on it and see his 40+ notification. This is just one possible way you could utilise subtle gestures to interact with the user and fulfil a visit.

5. Surprise ‘em

James Lucia

Giving a pleasant surprise to the user or customer makes them feel every valued. It shows them that your business cares about them and will go that extra mile for them. If done correctly, users are more likely to speak about you to their friends and family. Free marketing. So, how to do this? Use the user’s details and surprise them in unexpected ways, Eg:Trigger a confetti splash on the screen with balloons if the user is visiting the page on his birthday. You may also provide additional non-advertised products in special cases, like a returning customer who previously had logged a complaint gets a 5–10% discount for coming back to you. There are lot ways you can do this, just put in some thought and let us know how creative you can be!

Conclusion

Understanding and using emotions helps you connect with the users and invoke a sense of loyalty, respect and intimacy with them. There is no such thing as an “overnight success”, so start making an effort now and see the results in time to come.

To achieve success, it’s not enough to give 80% or 90%. You need to commit 100% to the cause, use everything at your disposal to be the best. You agree? If you answered yes, why aren’t you doing the same for your business website or your app? There are a lot of ways to breath life into your design. You have to make it engaging, useable, practical and best of all, make it loveable. If you are in doubt on how to actually do that, keep reading our blogs and we will show you how. Till the next one, we wish you the best.