Exploration - Lecture 8.1

Introduction

In this Exploration, we will touch on the creation of user experience through emotional design. Emotional design, and the subsequent evocation of good or bad feelings through a product or product characteristics, is highly subjective in nature. Commonly, feelings and opinions are based on an individual’s experiences, history, and beliefs and once these become associated with the product and context of usage, it can prove quite difficult to generate a fitting emotional design that caters to all your users.

Emotional Design | An Introduction

Therefore, emotional design is an elusive topic, and while associated concepts such as user satisfaction or user happiness are really challenging to measure, we can probably all agree that we are — at the same time — human beings. This universal truth implies that we all (potentially) have the same CPU (our brain), the same input capabilities (our eyes and ears), and output modalities (our hands, fingers, legs, and vocal cords). In addition, we also have a set of innate behaviors and patterns we exhibit that we typically can’t control, commonly referred to as instincts.

You see, emotional design generally leverages these volatile opportunities, which can shape a user experience for better or worse. As mentioned previously, these emotional triggers can be fed to us via our input systems, and quite often, marketing and advertising entities exploit our underlying behaviors to sell us products, beliefs, emotions, or needs, even though we don’t really need them.

As UX researchers and designers, we don’t want to exploit emotional design to simply sell a potentially mediocre product or app. Instead, we frame emotional design in a more sophisticated manner.

• Emotional design is a tool in our toolkit to enrich the overall positive user experience of a product, device, system, or app.
• In addition, we can leverage the opportunities of emotional design on the visceral, behavioral, or reflective level for the user to improve our designs.
• Finally, in an ideal world, cleverly applied emotional design will allow a user to create a positive bond and long-lasting relationship with a product.

Next, take note of the sketch below, which outlines important aspects to consider in emotional design. Following two examples introducing emotional design in the next sections, we will review the three levels in emotional design.

Emotional Design | Peloton Example

In June 2019, Peloton, a San Francisco-based exercise and technology startup disclosed in this article from Yahoo Finance Links to an external site. something quite surprising. A re-pricing of their product, the Peloton bicycle, caused an increase in sales:

“It was interesting psychology that we teased out,” Peloton CEO John Foley recalled in an interview last year with Yahoo Finance. “In the very, very early days, we charged $1,200 for the Peloton bike for the first couple of months. And what turned out to happen is we heard from customers that the bike must be poorly built if you’re charging $1,200 for it. We charged $2,000 dollars for it, and sales increased, because people said, ‘Oh, it must be a quality bike.’”

Let me repeat. The company made the same product more expensive and then it sold better on the market. Does that make sense to you? Is it logical to infer — from a price point — the perceived value or quality of a product? Is the Peloton bicycle now twice as good now in terms of usability, durability, quality, and user experience just because the price nearly doubled?

I honestly don’t have the answers to these questions myself, but it is common knowledge that:

• value is what you are willing to pay for and;
• price is what you pay and value is what you get in return.

Therefore, it seems that raising the price led to a higher perceived value of the product in this example, which is a unique and exotic case of changing users' beliefs via up-pricing to create a premium appearance of the product. Let’s look at another example.

Emotional Design | Video Game Console Startup Sounds

As mentioned previously, there are many different ways to convey emotion to your users. In the Peloton example, the beliefs of the future bicyclists were changed through a reframing of the product on a reflective level via a change in price. You can also convey emotion and the belief of quality, fun, or related feelings through sound, which is a more immediate and direct experience on a visceral level.

In this part of the Exploration, you will listen to a series of startup sounds of video game consoles and reflect on how you feel while listening to them. Please follow the steps below:

1. Turn on the audio of your device for this part of the Exploration.
2. Grab an empty piece of paper and a pen.
3. Watch, or rather listen to, this compilation of startup sounds, YouTube clip of Video Game Console Startup Sounds Links to an external site..
4. Now, listen to the five specific sounds listed and linked below. After each sound, pause the video and take a minute of your time to write down how each sound makes you feel, what it makes you think of if you like it or not, and why. Try to write down at least a few adjectives, such as ecstatic, annoyed, moody, curious, bored, etc. (listen to the sound multiple times if you need to).
5. You can then uncover my responses to the five sounds and compare my answers to yours.

Sounds

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How did you feel about the sounds? Were your emotional reactions similar to mine or completely different?

Consider how my emotional reactions to these sounds are shaped by my unique experiences and memories with these consoles, as well as my age and life stage. Take note of how I look back, to some degree, on prior experiences and memories with these devices (reflective level) and talked about my raw emotions and reactions when I heard the sounds (visceral level).

Whether you felt similar or different than I did, the sounds likely generated some emotional reaction on either the reflective or visceral level for you and at the end of the day, that is what emotional design is about. :)

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Emotional Design | According to Don Norman

Don Norman describes emotional design, which can lead to rich user experiences, in three distinct design levels:

• Visceral Level of Design: This level often refers to the initial impression of the product or system. It’s this moment of enticement, wonder, or curiosity. A product is teased in a trailer and you might say: “Finally, OMG, I so want this!”. The visceral level of design comes into play once you unbox a product you saved all year for and finally own it. For example, a new gadget, a designer dress, or even a car you purchased. You unpack it, you wear it, you sit inside of it, and you inspect it from all sides, and you are either happy or disappointed or somewhere in between. It’s your first impression of the product, and first impressions matter :)
• Behavioral Level of Design: This level often represents the actual product usage in the short term. This is the stage where the user really gets to know the product and potentially creates a bond with it. Let’s use the car example here. When you turn the key of your ignition, your car starts. When you turn on the AC of your car, it blows cool air in the driver’s cabin. Your car drives safely and doesn't need many repairs or maintenance jobs and simply behaves as intended. It might even outperform your expectations, for example, it might consume less gasoline than you initially assumed. Similarly, it might disappoint you if the engine doesn’t start as easy on cooler days and you often have to try a few times to get it running. You now get to know the behavior of the car.
• Reflective Level of Design: This refers to the long-term impact of the product on the user. You drove the car for a long time, probably years. You might still have it or already have a new car. Someone might ask you about the first car you owned, maybe because that person is thinking about buying the same model used. And whether positive or negative, you surely have some stories to tell about your first car. Maybe you recall that it was really reliable and carried you and your friends 800 miles cross-country to this awesome concert one day. Or it let you down in that snowstorm and you all were stuck in the middle of nowhere, freezing. You might remember that air freshener 'wonder tree' that you hung on your rear-view mirror, which gave your car a nice pine tree scent. You will look back on the product, the usage, and the time you spent with it — your relationship with it — and you will either associate good or bad memories with it.

Emotional Design | In Conclusion

Ideally, your design and product will address all three levels of emotional design:

• It will convince at the first impression (visceral level).
• It will be useful and have utility over a long period of time (behavioral level).
• Finally, if the product or design succeeds on both levels, it allows you to form a bond with the product and potentially establish itself as an enduring or even permanent part of your life (the reflective level).

Note that there are many products that impress at first (on a visceral level) but might disappoint once you use them (on a behavioral level). Emotional design evokes feelings in users via different means, and there is no single recipe to create 'good emotional design'. Emotional design is a quality that enhances the usability and utility of a product, it is what makes it special and causes the user to become attached to it.

I have owned a 16oz stainless steel coffee tumbler from Starbucks for about ten years. It is beaten up, the paint is peeling off and there are scratches and dings everywhere. I customized the tumbler and put a few stickers on the outside which are washed out by now. That coffee tumbler was with me everywhere I traveled to and lived. I liked the design and still do. I got to enjoy the durability, and I still carry it with me everywhere I go. I definitely got attached to it and one might say, I love it — figuratively speaking. And yes, I also clean it every once in a while. :)