Microinteraction Humor Methods: Micro is the New Macro

“Are microinteractions details? Damn right: the magic is all in the details.” -Don Norman

Think back to the last time you turned on your phone. The flash of the logo, brief vibrations, sliding to unlock animation, and the changing colors of the pressed numbers of your passcode is a sequence that we are too familiar with. How did the designers decide upon this sequence? How did they determine which details to include? By well orchestrated microinteractions.

In Dan Saffer’s book Microinteractions: Designing the Details he dives into our small moments with technology we often look but are anything but insignificant. In this blog post I will be examining his chapter called: Feedback. The purpose of feedback of a microinteraction is to cultivate understanding with the user in accordance to what is happening with a specific interaction. This understanding can be achieved by a number of techniques that elicit emotional connection one of those being humor.

Let’s take a look at this first example from the mobile Yelp app. In the situation of a wrong entry in the location field the user is greeted by an error message.

Instead of plainly presenting to the user that something went wrong, Yelp uses the aid of a cartoon and a joke to get it message across and make light of the situation. Not only does this provide a memorable experience because of its uniqueness, but the user is relaxed by the distraction of the humor. An error message is normally one that people don’t want to see and can potentially be a source of frustration, but in this case it is replaced by a pleasurable response.

Stack Overflow is another example of successful humor utilization. CAPTHAS are a commonly known annoyance that no one likes to take the time to do on the web. They are necessary however and so Stack Overflow sought to do something to make the most out of it.

The sarcastic question, “Are you a human being?” invokes a sense of playfulness and humor. The caption “Bots and scripts can be remarkably lifelike these days!” plays off the dressed up bots in the picture in a sarcastic way by making fun of how bad the costumes are. All in all the page would be considered not funny by very few people.

In explaining why they have to annoy you, they in turn distract you from the annoyance. The user gets a clear sense of the company personality from the page as well.

Beyond easing frustration and annoyances of experiences, humor and instances of delight can serve other purposes as well. So in that light, what other values of humorous interactions are there? This is something that Dan Saffer writes about in his signature moment’s case for Radar magazine.

Humor has implications that go beyond momentary interactions. If done well, it can create powerful positive implications of a brand image. Humorous microinteractions in turn become “signature moments” of a company’s experience. Saffer goes on to conclude that these moments can actually build consumer loyalty and increase adoption. He also says “they can also give you something interesting and enjoyable to market, to show off to potential users. Especially if your client is in Marketing, this is a winning strategy.”

Saffer’s insight is clear: taking the opportunity to make something different out of a frustration interaction can only mean good things for brand reception. Yelp understood this and used humor to have customers make delightful associations with them. Stack Overflow used humor to delight as well as convey their unique sarcastic personality.

Now let’s examine an example where humor was less than effective in enhancing the user experience. In Google’s iphone app they have a notification that let’s you know when there is no mail.

This is an attempt at making light of something potentially frustrating similarly to Yelp but yet it failed at transforming the situation. The ambiguous sun-smiley face figure seems irrelevant to the “you have no mail” message. Their choice to display a general symbol and caption make the experience generic. Overall there is no sense of personality conveyed and therefore no real connection established with the user.

At the same time integrating too much personality into microinteractions can also have an adverse effect. A user who forgets their password does not necessarily want to be greeted with a “Really can’t remember your password? FAIL!”. Language like this can be annoying and reprimanding. While a connection might be successfully made with the user, the experience becomes negative and reflects poorly on the company culture. A strong personality in this case is definitely a wrong kind of “Signature Moment” to build with a consumer.

Like in the real world, interactions that involve humor need to be balanced. Effective nuances are dependent on the tiniest of details such as phrasing and context. While we know that humor is the real world helps establish connections with people, how is it that we can also make connections with objects and interfaces? What is it that makes humorous microinteractions so successful? We know that these websites are non-living things, but how do we then become attached and laugh at their jokes?

It turns out that it is human nature to want to create emotional meanings for things. Whether is be a coffee cup, icon, or website, we naturally look to make connections with the things that we interact with.

In a study called “Personality Predicts Activity in Reward and Emotional Regions associated with Humor” done at Washington School of Medicine, fMRI scans of the brain showed that humorous cartoons activated more Blood Oxygen Level Dependent signals in the amygdala then any other brain area. This was true for the majority of participants independent of personality type (whether they were introverts or extroverts). This finding means that the amygdala is the main culprit responsible for processing humorous input we receive from our sensory systems.

What makes this significant is that the amygdala is specialized in the processing of emotion integration, emotional behavior, and motivation. Therefore signals to the amygdala activate of emotional meaning. Humorous input, because it is always sent to the amygdala, therefore activates emotional processing. Interacting with humor, whether it is with a human or an interface, activates the same emotional center of the brain in the same way.

This is perhaps why humor provides for some of the richest user experiences. Humor in interaction, no matter what the scale, is a sure way to bring emotional reactions into user experience.

In the world of user-centered design it is known that emotional experiences are the best experiences. Humor as feedback in microinteractions is not the only way to delight but serves as a catalyst for powerful connections with customers.

Sources:

Saffer, Dan. Microinteractions: Designing with Details. N.p.: n.p., n.d. Print.

Saffer, Dan. “Getting to Signature Moments with Microinteractions.” Radar. Oreilly, 13 June 2013. Web. 6 Dec. 2015.

Schmid, Simon. “The Personality Layer — Smashing Magazine.” Smashing Magazine. N.p., 17 July 2012. Web. 06 Dec. 2015.

Mobbs, Dean, Cindy Hagan, Eiman Azim, Vinod Menon, and Allan Reiss. Personality Predicts Activity in Reward and Emotional Regions Associated with Humor (2005): n. pag. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. 13 Sept. 2005. Web. 6 Dec. 2015. <http://www.pnas.org/content/102/45/16502.abstract>.