Website and applications don’t just have to work and be helpful; they must also provide a user with feelings and emotions. The discipline of User Experience (UX) design fully understands the importance of affect and its consequences on the user. Building on this understanding has emerged emotion-based UX design, a strategy that captures user emotions and designs this digital environment.
The Power of Emotions in UX
Emotions are habitual. That is, they are an inherent feature of life and function consequently in the lives of individuals. In all forms of digital contact, emotions can be a powerful stimulus for use, as can customer loyalty and satisfaction. Consider the following emotions:
Joy and Satisfaction: The positive experience results in yuppy and satisfaction. Hence, users tend to navigate the services further, make purchases, or revisit a site or app.
Frustration and Confusion: Anger or confusion leads to website rejection, negative comments, or using other sites that offer better services.
Trust and Empathy: Another advantage of increasing confidence and empathy is that this will help to create fans of the brand among users.
Understanding User Emotions
In order to form an emotionally compelling experience, we at Linkup Studio understood that we had to determine what range of emotions the users are likely to experience during the uses. Let’s delve into some techniques that can help you achieve this:
User Surveys: Holding a series of polls will help to receive the data necessary to determine users’ attitudes toward your platform. Speak to them regarding the emotional outcome, gratification, and expectations and what limit they desire to see amended.
Example: Often, hosts, as well as guests, report their feelings and needs to Airbnb through various polls or questionnaires constantly conducted by the company. Having identified the dissatisfactions and incorporated them, Airbnb builds its relationship with the users.
User Testing: What users do when they are using the website or application can tell you about their emotional state. You can use this insight in the new product development process. During testing, you should beware of such factors as an applicant’s facial expressions, his/her gestures, and words said abreast of the test.
Example: Regarding UX, Spotify gathers emotional feedback by testing its playlist recommendation tool. Interestngly, that users’ smiling during the testing session gives a signal to developers that the feature is well appreciated.
Analytics and Heatmaps: Professionals in the field understand that there are alternatives to understanding emotions, at least of users’ behavior, for instance, by using Google Analytics or heat maps. High readership levels, like the amount of time a person spends on a page or the number of shares a post accumulates, will give positive emotion.
Example: Meet the challenge of finding out when users get frustrated in file sharing: Dropbox uses engagement analytics to detect when users are frustrated in sharing files. This data was helpful for them when they wanted to establish the sharing process and minimize negative feelings for customers.
Using Emotions for Designs
Now, we’ve discussed a few basic steps for using emotions in your design and content strategy. It’s the right time to apply it. Here are some strategies and examples of how companies have successfully integrated emotion-driven design:
Examples That You Could Feel Yourself:
- Coca-Cola’s “Share a Coke” Campaign: Before, a massive global marketing campaign that involved writing people’s names on the cans of Coca-Cola was meant to elicit happy and positively associated emotions. Such appeal evoked emotions, thus leading to the effect of sales and social media shares.
- Headspace Meditation App: The Headspace application uses pictures to ease tension and embrace mellowness and sound in combination with meditation sessions for stress-free experiences. By so doing, this approach promotes the emotional satisfaction of users and also increases their loyalty to the app.
- Nike’s “Just Do It” Slogan: Nike’s Just Do It campaign entices users by motivating, empowering, and encouraging them to get it done. Hence, engaging such feelings fosters the creation of Nike, the global brand for athletes and similar corporate bodies.
- Disney+: Disney+ uses assigned emotions to control its users’ behavior, targeting feelings of nostalgia and awe when the viewers are connected to the platform. Disney Plus does not only give a lifetime collection of all the Disney Movies and TV series but also gives content that would appeal to emotions. For instance, Disney+ presented content with themes like “Disney Princesses” or “Marvel Cinematic Universe,” which go directly to the heartstrings of viewers. Thus, they address the feelings typical for Reese’s fans and people who still cherish their childhood, as well as fans of particular movies and shows.
- Duolingo: This is a language learning application that implements the concept of emotional design in its application as a way of gamification. There are the resets, badges, and balances for accomplishments, lessons, and streaks. This approach appeals to self-achievement, competitiveness, and progress. Duolingo makes language learning enjoyable and interesting. Therefore, the users have a positive and engaging association with the app.
- Airbnb’s “Experiences” Feature: Making Emotional Bond: A feature introduced by Airbnb called “Experiences” lets the hosts provide guests with special locally curated experiences. It is largely a business that facilitates the generating of trustful, emotionally charged experiences between travelers and hosts. From leading a professional cooking class in someone’s home to developing a walking tour of a city that the traveler has chosen as their destination, Airbnb tries to deliver value beyond the exchange of goods and services and the coupling of acquaintance. These emotions make users repeat the use of the platform in search of other inspiring travel experiences.
Measuring Emotional Impact
It must thus involve tracking factors such as User interaction rating, click-through rates, and User satisfaction levels. However, there is also user feedback to assess positive and negative emotions, and sentiment analysis to evaluate user experience. Linkup Studio’s professional product designers can assess the emotional impact of users’ opinions regarding your product after the implemented changes.
Are You Ready to Deepen Connection with Your Users?
Passionate UX design can produce intuitive and aesthetic experiences that not only satisfy users’ utility and requirement expectations but also instill deep emotions within the user. Knowing the positive and negative emotions of users and effectively using them can bring the company and users closer and help users make decisions. It’s important to note that feelings are the final purpose, although what people need is a good website or a useful app.