Power of emotional design
Emotions are very important part of humans as the have power to influence the way we make decisions, evaluate risks, solve problems, focus our attention, find somethings interesting and categorize information. When your design that influence emotions, the user tends to create a relationship with your brand and they want to use it again and again.
Users perceive objects that are aesthetically pleasing as being more effective. — “Emotional Design” a book by Donald Norman
Design is not just about making things beautiful but a lot more how it make us feel, how it influence us, experience etc. Emotions affects us before our rational and cognitive processes start working. Before we start thinking we already have an image in our mind.
Why is it important for your product or company?
- It dominates decision making: it affect what we choose, positive or negative
- Increase motivation: helps you take action or complete task
- It affects memory: how we link few images with product or events with product.
How can you create “Emotions” in your design?
- Understand your users better. Focus on them. eg. Understand who is going to see your product that will define a lot of things like color, typography, type of content used for it marketing etc.
- Your message. The content you use to advertise your product should be able to connect to your user. Adding some humour might help or worlds like fun and easy. The content you use should match your company image.
- Use of images. Images also can elicit emotions by what they display. Whatever meaning your image has, it should be obvious from the context. Do not force your viewer to guess why an image is present.
- Use of colors. Yes personal preferences, culture, and the context of how the color is used all play a role in how it effects us. You can read more about it here.
- Video and Sound. These are two subtle elements work together to convey a simple, but create unforgettable message that user connects with their experience or feelings. This develop an emotion.
Well designs that use emotion to communicate usually get more viewers on a personal level and create stronger and more lasting relationship with them. There have been many studies conducted around what I mentioned above. Try it with your product.
