A deeper look at emotional design
Have you ever taken a brand new phone out of it’s shiny phone bed, powered it on, explored the empty landscape and thought to yourself “This is so much better than my old phone.”? While much of the hardwear is updated and wired to function better, in that initial moment this new phone is far less usable than your other familiar version. You have to go through the process of importing your needs and setting it up to your liking but it feels like it’s so much better than what we had. This perception that our beautiful new phone is better than an older version is due to the principles of emotional design.
Don Norman wrote Emotional Design ‘Why we love or hate everyday things’ as a follow up to ‘The design of everyday things’ when he came across the realization that there is more to design than functionality. As described in his book, there’s a phenomenon that occurs in the brain (I’ll spare you the cognitive neuroscience nerd out, but shoutout to dopamine) that essentially codes aesthetically pleasing objects as more usable. If you look around your life you might come across some items that you love but in reality aren’t extremely functional, or at least not the most functional. While you might have already known that your most beautiful products are not the most user friendly, you may not have understood why that is. If you’re anything like myself you’re extremely fascinated with how the brain works to create the world we live in and why we equate beauty with function.
What is emotional design?
Emotional design is rooted in three main components; visceral, behavioral, and reflective. These components mirror the three levels of processing that humans have evolved to possess which has shaped us into the complex beings we are today. At a high level emotional design is the design of products to create positive emotions that will influence their actions which will in turn leave the user feeling as though the product was more functional than others. If we design appealing products that put the user in a positive emotional state it can increase the comfortability with the platform and will leave users looking back on the experience as a positive one.
Visceral
The visceral level of processing can be related to our gut reaction. When we come across something in our world our sensory system activates and starts the signaling process in the brain. The visceral system is extremely fast acting and is used to make quick judgements that initially helped us assess the danger of a situation in order to act accordingly. When we come across products in our world there may be some objects that immediately create frustration or disgust. That initial reaction can be tied to the visceral level of processing being activated.
It’s at this level where we develop a judgement about an experience based on the aesthetics and initial feelings about a situation. This is where branding comes into play, it is in the first interactions with a product that a user will be swayed by the visceral level of processing which will affect the way they interact.
Behavioral
As sort of a chain reaction effect, the next level of processing is known as behavioral. Similar to the visceral level this type of processing is directly related to the sensory input. Unlike the visceral level this type of processing can be influenced based on input from the reflective and visceral levels. For instance when you come across a door in the wild and you reach out your hand but take pause to read what kind of door it is before following through with your action.
When we think about user experience design we are often times thinking of the behavioral level of processing. Often we design experiences and products to be innate, effective, efficient and functional, which satisfies the behavioral centers in our brains. Something that was previously left out was the understanding that this area of the brain can be impacted by both the reflective and visceral levels. If you have a product that is highly usable but your gut reaction is one of disgust, you’ll look back on the experience as a negative one and using reflective processing you might stay away from that in the future.
Reflective
The highest and most advanced form of processing is known as reflective. Unlike the other two levels this on is not swayed by sensory input. Humans have evolved to develop a level of processing that allows for thinking about our actions and analyzing past experiences to learn and move forward in the future with different actions. The short of it is our reflective level of processing is the ability to think about things.
Using our reflective processing capabilities we can come to give meaning to experiences or even share our experiences with others to help prevent others coming across a similar challenge. Along these lines we can also use our reflective processing to take in others experiences and decide how we want to interact with our world based on their findings. When someone has a bad experience it doesn’t just deter that user, it has the power to shape others interactions with your product as well.
How to use emotional design
When it comes to creating better products it’s important to understand how these three levels of processing interact to code the experience for users. In the book Don Norman talks about a study in which users who are in a negative emotional state will have a more challenging time interacting with an interface and will look back on the experience as a negative one.
But what does this all mean?
If we want people to walk away from an experience with our designs and remember it as a positive one we must not only design for usability, we must put the user at ease and create a pleasing experience by balancing the three levels of processing. As stated above, if we want to improve our users experiences we need to understand how to design aesthetically pleasing products in order to put users in a position to expand their creativity and comfortability with exploring the platform so that when they reflect on their interaction they remember a positive experience which equates to high usability.
