In fact, this tuning is so ingrained that we donâ€t even require other people to perceive them! We perceive the expression of emotion and personality in things in our environment, including products, interfaces and websites.

Even though we may consciously know that computers and media arenâ€t animate, donâ€t have feelings and therefore couldnâ€t be expressing emotions, we still respond socially and automatically when viewing, interacting and evaluating them. We unconsciously perceive and interpret emotional expression in things and then form relationships with them based on the personalities weâ€ve given them (Reeves & Nass 1998).

When it comes to things that arenâ€t alive, we can think of a personality trait as the long-term expression of a particular emotion.

The person who appears sad or sullen is expressing an emotion: sadness. When that same person expresses “sadness” the next 20 times you meet, that person will be viewed as possessing a personality trait: “depressed.” Because physical products usually remain the same over time, any emotional expressions are perceived as “personality traits”.

Living Objects and Relationships

We perceive the expression of emotion and personality in things in our environment, including products, interfaces, and websites.

People can feel happy or sad, angry or passive, relaxed or anxious, proud or ashamed, and motivated or unmotivated through the use of products. Social interactions with things trigger emotional reactions normally reserved for social interaction with other people. Because of this effect, products should be viewed as “living objects with which people have relationships” (Jordan, 2000, p. 7).

Regardless of whether you intentionally give your product a personality, people will perceive a personality.

Intentionally designing specific personalities requires an understanding of visual and interactive design, as well as specific styles of content creation. It also means that designers need to understand how product/user “relationships” evolve through multiple interactions over time.

Personality and Relationship

Personality traits shape our relationships.

In human relationships, personality traits are an important part of attraction and conversation. They shape our relationships by determining who we like and what we expect. Personality traits also influence how much we trust and get along with others. In this respect, perceived personalities in products and websites are no different.

We tend to purchase products that seem to have personalities similar to our own, or who we aspire to be.

Unlike us, however, product personalities can exist in fictional worlds and be controlled by designers so that they appear at particular times and places. They can often be simpler, more consistent, and more easily identifiable than real personalities, reducing uncertainty and promoting trust (Fogg, 2003).

Unfortunately, when designers fail to consider and design the personality theyâ€re communicating, the result can be the opposite.The personality appears to be inconsistent, the user feels betrayed and trust is destroyed. In the end, we tend to purchase products that seem to have personalities similar to our own (Govers & Schoormans, 2005).

Although personality traits are complex, researchers have identified a number of traits that can be related to design.

Psychologists have grouped product personality traits into categories that have a similar character. Theyâ€ve identified two major dimensions of personality that are readily assigned to products, computers and interfaces by users. We explore those in more detail in the book.

The Creation of Meaning

The things we make, buy, and use help us create our existence and form our identities.

The emotions we feel are created in part by the meaning(s) we give to people, brands and things, rather than the people, brands, or things themselves. Meaning is influenced by the personality that we perceive through appearance and interaction. By enabling new behaviors and actions, objects help to shape the existence of the people who use them.

Things that assist us in realizing goals can often be associated with the emotions that result when those goals are achieved. This association imbues these things with meaning. If attention is the energy a person requires to complete tasks and accomplish goals, itâ€s through the investment of attention that we create meaning. By actively cultivating meaning through emotional experiences, we both shape and reflect our larger goals.

Objects can also become personally significant because they cultivate meaning by creating associations through time and experience.

Even though people can derive a wide range of feelings from their interactions with objects, and attribute a wide variety of meanings to those feelings, the physical characteristics of an object often suggest some meanings over others.

Association

We connect how we feel in the moment to the people and things that are in the immediate vicinity.

New people or things can also take on meanings that are based on an individualâ€s previous experiences and associations. Association can be a powerful way to connect the emotions and meaning aroused by one object or situation with another object or situation. We connect how we feel in the moment to the people and things that are in the immediate vicinity.

In addition, when we encounter objects or experiences that are similar to objects and experiences we already have strong associations with, we sometimes experience the emotions we felt previously, albeit at a lower intensity. The natural human tendency to associate feelings with certain events, objects, and people contributes to the “emotional affect” that is an ongoing part of our daily experience.

In some cases, familiarity alone can be enough to create pleasurable emotions.

Simple familiarity and positive or even neutral past experiences mean that an object is known and relatively safe. People, objects, and brands that are unfamiliar are unknown are potentially unpleasant. This vague feeling of discomfort is often enough of a negative response to dissuade many people from trying or approaching a new product.

Responses like this are evident when an existing product or system undergoes a major redesign. Even if the new system is a vast improvement in every way, some users will respond negatively. They may be irritated by the inconvenience of learning a new tool, or simply apprehensive and fearful of change.

By association, the sensory impressions that lead to emotional responses are compared and linked to similar sensory impressions encountered in the past. Whether emotions are aroused by associations with past experiences or by objects in the present moment, the feelings come from the internal representation of the thing, rather than from the thing itself.

Google celebrated the anniversary of Sesame Street and associated their brand with our feelings of childhood nostalgia.

As youâ€ll learn in the book, association is only one tool in the arsenal of persuasive methods used by designers and marketers to communicate emotion and personality. Through positive and negative associations, these professionals attempt to arouse feelings that nudge you into giving their product a certain meaning and behaving in a certain way.

Products, websites, and software applications trigger complex social and emotional responses that are no different from the emotional responses we experience when we interact with real people (Desmet, 2002). The emotions we feel allow us to assign meanings to the people and things that we experience in life, ultimately influencing the relationships we form (Jordan, 2000).

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Attention is also required to make other mental events happen, such as thinking, feeling, remembering and making decisions. It is for this reason that attention has been called “psychic energy” (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990). Like energy in the traditional sense, “without it, no work can be done and through work, that energy is dissipated” (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990, p. 33).

Emotion commands attention and affects memory.

Attention makes work possible by selecting the pieces of information that are considered relevant from the vast amount of information that is available to our senses. We then compare those pieces of information to other information patterns stored in memory.

Information enters consciousness either because it is our intention to focus our attention on it or because our attention is commanded due to perceived emotional, biological, or social needs (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990).

In Seattle Children’s Hospital, a large whale sculpture helps direct childrenâ€s attention away from the environment of the hospital.

The intensity of emotional experience has been linked with the strength and clarity of memories before, during, and after emotional events (Reeves & Nass, 1998). This link is quite natural when you think about it, because without attention, information doesnâ€t get into our brains in the first place. In discussing the power of stories, Peter Guber puts it succinctly: “emotion bonded with information becomes memorable, resonant and actionable” (Power of Stories, 2011).

We donâ€t assign equal weight to negative and positive experiences. Negative experiences tend to demand much more attention than positive experiences.

Research has shown that negative experiences tend to demand much more attention and therefore hold much more psychological weight than positive experiences, which results in stronger memories of negative experiences, along with weaker memories of what came afterwards.

Emotional experiences also affect the memory of events that occur immediately before them. Individuals have impaired memory of events that occur right before negative experiences when compared to memories of events that occur right before positive experiences (Reeves & Nass, 1998).

Using negative emotion to increase the strength of a memory may seem useful, but, commanding attention in this way can have unintended consequences.

Although attention is demanded by negative experiences, it may be drawn to some unintended aspect of those experiences. For example, a negative visual image may demand more attention than the textual message that was actually meant to be the focus.

In software, unpleasant error messages can cause people to remember and focus on negative experiences over positive ones, potentially distorting how they think and feel about the application.

Multisensory Experiences

Emotional design is about directing the userâ€s attention to the right thing, at the right time.

By creating powerful, multisensory emotional experiences, brands can demand user attention and embed strong memories of their product or service in consumers†minds. This produces changes in purchasing behavior and contributes to brand loyalty.

Many adults in North America have strong memories of being taken to McDonaldâ€s as children.

McDonaldâ€s uses a multisensory approach to make potential customers familiar with their products. Colorful commercial advertising, busy store locations, the special scent and taste of the food, the ubiquitous brand identity, and the toys all combine to create positive memories for children. Through association, the children have been conditioned by these early experiences to desire McDonaldâ€s products.

These emotional responses help to form a bond through the creation of experiences that become stories and memories.

Whether youâ€re designing a product, a website, a software application, or even an environment, emotional design is often about directing the userâ€s attention to the right thing at the right time to create an emotional response.

Understanding the importance of attention (and how emotion commands it) will allow you to use design elements to shift the userâ€s focus in the right way at the right time.

References

• Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1990). Flow: The psychology of optimal experience. New York: Harper Perennial.
• Power of stories (2011). Storytelling Interview with Peter Guber. < http://www.powerofstories.com/storytelling-interview-with-peter-gruber > Accessed 8.13.2011.
• Reeves, B., & Nass, C. (1998). The media equation: How people treat computers, television and new media like real people and places. Cambridge, UK. Cambridge University Press.

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Emotions dominate decision making because they motivate us to behave (i.e. avoid or approach).

The stronger or more intense (i.e., arousing or stimulating) our emotional experience is, the lower our ability to consciously evaluate the pros and cons of an offer or a situation. All of this makes us easy targets for marketers and advertisers.

Using Flattery to Influence Purchase Decisions

Compliments and flattery are persuasive devices that can be used to influence decision making.

A few years ago, Trevor was shopping in a department store in Sweden. While browsing in the menâ€s section, he came across a pair of pants that he liked and decided to try them on. In the fitting room, he put on the pants, his back toward the mirror. Turning around to examine the fit, he was surprised to see the message in the image on the left.

Flattery has long been recognized as an effective persuasion method.

Even though Trevor was aware that the message was designed to persuade him to buy whatever he was trying on, it still produced an instant, unconscious emotional reaction. Part of that reaction can be attributed to sheer novelty, because he had never encountered something like this. However, the remainder of his reaction was due to a compliment offered, oddly enough, by an inanimate object.

Even a compliment from an inanimate object is more affective than no compliment at all.

The experience of being flattered is usually a pleasurable one, even when the compliments come from a few impersonal words written on a mirror. Tactics like this can often provide the touch of added influence that triggers a purchase decision. The more intense the emotional experience is, the lower our ability to consciously evaluate the situation.

Behaviorally, pleasure is linked with the tendency to approach, and pain is linked with the tendency to avoid.

When shoppers make purchase decisions, brain imaging has revealed that a choice is made between the pleasure of purchasing and owning the item and the pain of spending the money. Researchers found that they could accurately predict shoppers†purchase decisions by noting which area of the brain was more active when they considered a purchase (Knutson, Rick, Wimmer, Prelec, & Loewenstein, 2006). We explore this in much more detail in the book.

Advertising and Emotional Appeal

Itâ€s not just retailers who are using emotion to influence your buying habits and purchasing decisions.

The vast majority of pharmaceutical advertising (95%) relies on some sort of emotional appeal (Frosch, Krueger, Hornik, Cronholm, & Barg, 2007). When people get ill, you might think that theyâ€d be looking for the most up-to-date information to help diagnose their illness and choose the appropriate medication. This would likely include descriptions of symptoms, possible risk factors and probable causes. However, a review of pharmaceutical advertising (Frosch, Krueger, Hornik, Cronholm, & Barg, 2007) showed that:

• 82% made some factual claim
• 86% made rational arguments for product use
• 26% described condition causes and risk factors l 25 percent described prevalence
• 95% made some sort of emotional appeal

95% of pharmaceutical advertisements used an emotional appeal.

Incidentally, not one mentioned lifestyle change as an alternative to their products. The ads often framed medication use in terms of losing (58%) and regaining (85%) control over some aspect of life (Frosch et al., 2007).

Even the pills themselves have been “designed”, with studies linking the color of the pill to its perceived effectiveness. A survey of 12 studies found that stimulants worked better when colored red, orange, or yellow and that tranquilizers worked better when colored blue or green (de Craen, Roos, de Vries, & Kleijnen, 1996).

Marketers and advertisers in a number of industries clearly understand that emotions dominate decision making. Itâ€s time that designers and UX professionals understand this as well.

References

• Damasio, Antonio, R. (1994). Descartes†error: Emotion, reason, and the human brain. Florida: Grosset/Putnam, Inc.
• de Craen, A. J., Roos, P. J., de Vries, L. A., & Kleijnen, J. (1996). Effect of colour of drugs: Systematic review of perceived effect of drugs and of their effectiveness. BMJ, 313 (7072), 1624–1626.
• Knutson, B., Rick, S., Wimmer, G. E., Prelec, D., & Loewenstein, G. (2006). Neural predictors of purchases. Neuron, 53(1), 147–156.
• Frosch, D. L., Krueger, P. M., Hornik, R. C., Cronholm, P. F., & Barge, F. K. (2007). Creating demand for prescription drugs: A content analysis of television direct-to-consumer advertising. Annals of Family Medicine, 5(1), 6–13.

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If your business involves competing in a market in which your customers have to choose between your product and similar products made by your competitors, consider this: individuals without the capacity for emotional response are unable to make even simple cognitive decisions such as what clothes to wear in the morning (Damasio, 1994). Youâ€re required to make hundreds of seemingly inconsequential decisions each day, and simple emotional responses are likely the deciding factor in those decisions.

Emotional design is not some rare or sacred thing—itâ€s all around us.

Professionals in a large number of industries are now realizing the importance of considering their customers†emotional responses. Security professionals have now realized that they are providing not only actual security but also the feeling or perception of security (Schneier, 2008).

Video games are designed with your emotions in mind.

Companies that make the latest video games have recognized that emotional engagement is the real reason that games become hits (Kohler, 2008). One of the results of this is that games have become more cinematic, with multiple characters, frequent scene changes, and epic story lines.

Other gaming companies are focusing on incorporating players†emotional states into gameplay by monitoring their physiology. Journey to the Wild Divine: The Passage is a video game that uses biofeedback to monitor emotional arousal by measuring heart rate and skin conductance (Wilddivine.com, 2011). Movement through the game is dependent on the playerâ€s ability to regulate his or her arousal levels. Some levels require players to relax themselves and others require the players to increase their energy.

All design is emotional design.

With continuing advances in technology and increasing understanding of the psychology and physiology of affective states, interest in emotion is growing because it makes for good business. Emotional design is not some rare or sacred thing — itâ€s all around us.

 “3. Emotion Dominates Decision-Making” >

References

• Damasio, Antonio, R. (1994). Descartes†error: Emotion, reason, and the human brain. Florida: Grosset/Putnam, Inc.
• Kohler, C. (2008). Interview: Ubisoftâ€s Yannis Mallat wants emotional games. Wired. <http://www.wired.com/gamelife/2008/02/interview-ubiso/> Accessed 12.10.2010.
• Schneier, B. (2008). The psychology of security. <http://www.schneier.com/essay-155.html> Accessed 2.22.2011.
• Wilddivine.com. (2011). <http://www.wilddivine.com/software.html> Accessed 2.17.2011.

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Because we donâ€t have the attention required to process and interpret all the information we receive each day, a lot of the information we encounter is simply screened out (Davenport & Beck, 2001). Our brains then process and interpret the information that has actually made it into our heads. This information is represented and compared to the information we already know.

The information you take in informs your mental model or “map” of the world and reality.

Because no one can be exposed to everything, everyoneâ€s map is incomplete. No single personâ€s map can possibly encompass “all” of reality. This inherent limitation naturally leads to some heated debates between people with different “maps” about the nature of existence, god and a number of other interesting questions that we wonâ€t attempt to address here.

But letâ€s back up for a minute. What is it that keeps information from being ignored or screened out in the first place? What is it that selects the information that actually gets into our brains and becomes part of our mental models of reality? Attention selects relevant information by focusing on it and deletes information thatâ€s considered irrelevant by simply ignoring it.

Emotion is the energy that drives and directs attention.

Emotions and other affective states like moods, sentiments and personality traits influence every aspect of our interactions with brands, products, and websites (Forlizzi & Battarbee, 2004). This includes our intentions, our plans, and any feedback on whether we achieve success. Our plans are our internal representations of sequences of events, actions, and consequences. Plans provide a link between the goals we envision in our minds and the actual realization of those goals in the physical world.

Affective states run the range from short-term emotions to long-term personality traits.

In this way, affective states act as continuously shifting influences that are always altering perception and triggering the mental processes that lead to behavior. In emotion research circles, this influence is called “emotional affect” (Russell, 1980).

Emotional affect can be envisioned as a lens that constantly colors our realities.

This lens is so pervasive and ubiquitous that itâ€s easy to forget that itâ€s there, unless our emotions become intense enough to demand and divert our attention. The color and focus of the lens may change depending on the quality of the emotions weâ€re experiencing, but the lens is always there, subtly influencing how we see the world. We explore the effects of emotional affect in more detail in Chapter 2 of the book.

next: “2. All Design is Emotional Design” >

References

• Davenport, T. H., & Beck, J. C. (2001). The attention economy: Understanding the new currency of business. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Business School Press.
• Forlizzi, J., & Battarbee, K. (2004). Understanding experience in interactive systems. DIS 2004. p. 264.
• Russell, J. A. (1980). A circumplex model of affect. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 39, 1161–1178.

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The short answer is that emotion is an overriding influence in our daily lives (Damasio, 1994). It constitutes our experiences and colors our realities. Emotion dominates decision making, commands attention and enhances some memories, while minimizing others (Reeves & Nass, 1998).

Emotions and Meaning

The emotions we feel allow us to assign meanings to the people and things that we experience in life.

Most of the time, pleasure means “good” and pain means “bad.” When we use products, websites and software applications, we experience complex social and emotional responses that are no different from the responses we experience when we interact with real people (Desmet, 2002).

Emotion and Personality

Over time, the emotional expressions that we perceive in both people and things can come to be seen as “personality traits” (van Gorp, 2006).

We perceive personality in the things in our environment and then form relationships with those things based on the personalities weâ€ve given them (Reeves & Nass, 1998). As Donald Norman put it: “everything has a personality, everything sends an emotional signal. Even when this was not the intention of the designer, the people who view … infer personalities and experience emotions. … Horrible personalities instill horrid emotional states in their users, usually unwittingly” (van Geel, 2011).

Our tendency to perceive emotion and personality in things is utilized by marketers and advertisers, who target advertisements for particular brands to the audiences of specific shows. The “personality” of each show—represented by its look, feel, and emotional tone—is known to attract an audience that fits certain demographics and has certain tastes. “Modest people are more likely to watch the blue-collar hero show Deadliest Catch, while altruistic people tend to prefer cooking shows like Rachael Ray and reality shows with happy endings like The Bachelor” (Bulik, 2010).

We perceive personality in things and then form relationships with those things based on the personalities weâ€ve perceived in them.

Because of peopleâ€s natural tendency to perceive personality in things, they form relationships with those things based in part on the personalities they perceive. Personality traits contribute to our choices in terms of the media (e.g., TV shows, music) we choose, the products we purchase and the story of the brands we embrace or ignore (Govers & Schoormans, 2005).

Five Reasons to Practice Emotional Design

To create better value for both your clients and their customers, begin considering your users†emotional responses as part of your design process.

Emotions affect key cognitive functions on both the conscious and unconscious levels. Letâ€s take a more detailed look at the reasons that emotion has such a profound influence on the success of a design:

• 1. Emotion is Experience
• 2. All Design is Emotional Design
• 3. Emotion Dominates Decision Making
• 4. Emotion Commands Attention and Affects Memory
• 5. Emotion Communicates Personality, Forms Relationships, and Creates Meaning

In upcoming posts, we’ll be covering these five reasons to design for emotion, adding news and updates, and posting excerpts from the book, so stay tuned.

next: 1. Emotion is Experience >

References

• Bulik, B. S. (2010). You are what you watch, market data suggests. Adage. <http://adage.com/article/news/research-links-personality-traits-tv-viewing-habits/146779/> Accessed 2.13.11.
• Damasio, Antonio, R. (1994). Descartes†error: Emotion, reason, and the human brain. Florida: Grosset/Putnam, Inc.
• Desmet, P. R. (2002). Designing emotions. Delft: Pieter Desmet.
• Govers, P. C. M., & Schoormans, J. P. L. (2005). Product personality and its influence on consumer preference. Journal of Consumer Marketing, 22(4), 189–197.
• Reeves, B., & Nass, C. (1998). The media equation: How people treat computers, television and new media like real people and places. Cambridge, UK. Cambridge University Press.
• van Gorp, T. (2006). Emotion, arousal, attention and flow: Chaining emotional states to improve human-computer interaction. Masterâ€s degree project, University of Calgary, Faculty of Environmental Design, Calgary.
• van Geel, Jeroen. (2011). Design research and innovation: An interview with Don Norman. Johnny Holland. <http://johnnyholland.org/2011/01/design-research-and-innovation-an-interview-with-don-norman/> Accessed 2.17.2011.

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We want to address those questions here, since we’re as concerned about information privacy as you are.

After a week of having the button on the site and reviewing this service, we’ve decided to remove “Pay with a Tweet”.

We have removed the Pay with a Tweet service due to some issues we had with the way it functions. Any information we collected through the sign up process is to be used exclusively by Affective Design and Morgan Kaufmann for sending out updates about the book. Affective Design will never lease, sell, rent or loan your information to any third party.

For those of you not familiar with Pay with a Tweet, it’s an application that works with Twitter, where users can exchange a customizable tweet for some item of content.

As Pay with a Tweet is a third party service, we do not have control over how it handles data. Our attempts to communicate with the creators to get some of our questions about privacy addressed have gone unanswered. After a week of having the button on the site and reviewing this service, we’ve decided to remove “Pay with a Tweet”.

With OAuth appplications, the standard Twitter sign up page requires the user to agree to a number of conditions that some users may find to be excessive. Pay with a Tweet is not different from other OAuth applications in this respect, but the terms on the Twittter sign up page are inconsistent with the terms on the Pay with a Tweet “Terms” page.

Affective Design will never lease, sell, rent or loan your information to any third party.

While many users do not find such conditions onerous, we recognize that a number of our users might, so we’ve removed “Pay with a Tweet” from the site.

I hope this helps to address some of the questions we’ve received about privacy. If you have any further questions or concerns, please don’t hesitate to contact us at:

EMAIL: info [at] designforemotion [dot] com

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We’ll be conducting a draw for an Amazon Kindle in mid 2012.

We’ve been a bit overwhelmed by the dozens of contributions we received from individuals, organizations and respected design firms all over the world.

If we’ve chosen your example, we’ll be notifying you after the book is published.

Over the next few months, we’ll be going through your examples and finding the best place for them in the book. As the time for publication comes closer, we’ll notify you whether your example has been chosen for inclusion in “Design for Emotion”.

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The window of opportunity to contribute an example *has now closed*

It’s easy to submit an example. Just visit the Contribute page and fill out the form. We’ve received dozens of contributions from individuals, organizations and respected design firms all over the world.

Every contribution is entered in a draw for an Amazon Kindle and if we use your example in the book, we’ll even send you a copy FREE.

But, we can’t keep taking contributions forever, so we’ll be closing the window of opportunity very soon. It only takes a minute to submit an example, but your ideas may live in print for a lifetime.

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We’ve always been affecting the emotions of the people who use the products we design.

Still, formal acknowledgement of “emotions” as a goal for design is relatively recent in the west. However, there are other cultures with deeply held traditions of emotional design that go back centuries.

Japanese culture has a longstanding tradition of designing for emotions and moods. Two elements in Japanese aesthetics relate to our discussion of emotional design.

• Kibun – building in a mood
• Kanjo ni uttaeru – touching the emotions

Kibun means feelings, frame of mind or mood.

It usually refers to a mood of reverence and a recognition and appreciation of impermanence, as in wabi-sabi, but other moods and feelings can be targeted as well. A beautifully designed tea bowl can evoke feelings of vitality and richness. Evoking a mood through an object is kibun.

Kanjo ni uttaeru means appealing to the emotions.

A thorough consideration of how to satisfy emotional wants and needs underlies the distinctive Japanese approach to otherwise everyday interactions. This emphasis on emotions is as evident in transaction-based, business relationships as it is in social, inter-personal interactions.

It’s evident in the design of many objects and even in the rituals involved in their purchase. For example, the extreme (to this westerner’s eyes) hospitality and ritual surrounding the purchase of a simple box of rice crackers. It’s also revealed in the emotional appeal of utilitarian, functional objects. Just as a set of handcrafted plates made of paper can transcend their day-to-day function of merely holding food, normally disposable packaging can be beautiful enough to transcend merely transporting consumer goods.

If you’re interested in learning more about Japanese aesthetics and emotion, a good introduction to over 50 terms in the Japanese aesthetic vocabulary can be found in:
Elements of Japanese Design, by Boye Lafayette de Mente, Tuttle Publishing, 2006.

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