emotional design

Get Emotional!
How designers can understand and research the emotional impact of design and incorporate emotion in the design process
Marco van Hout ; Design & Emotion

Since recently I have been giving workshops for designers on the topic of ‘designing for emotion’, together with Paul Hughes (strategic director at Lava). In this workshop we are trying to introduce designers to designing for emotion by providing them with three steps that can be used to integrate emotion in the design process. In this sense we are not talking about designers putting their own emotion in the design, but rather that of the people who will eventually interact with it. In fact, we are designing for emotion, not with emotion.
First, it is vital to have a clear understanding of what emotional experience of design is and why certain designs have more emotional impact than others. Second, you study the emotional impact of your own creations in order to understand people’s emotional experience in relation to your own design decisions. And, third, you integrate emotion in your design process.
Understand the emotional experience of design
There is nothing vague about emotions. They are vital in decisions we make (also the rational ones). There are so many aspects that we need to take into account when we try to understand emotion, that it is easy to get lost in the bulk of theories and facts. In our attempt to introduce designers with the reality of emotional experience, we deliberately cut emotion down to three main characteristics.

Three things that make up emotions
The three main characteristics that we define to describe emotion, and to best understand its relation to experiencing design, are:

- Emotions involve a relationship
- Emotions are short
- Emotions are personal

First of all, emotions involve a relationship between a person and another person, an object or event. Every emotions starts from such a relationship, be it between a son and father, a girl and her iPod or a little boy who is enjoying the sun on the playground. These contacts and experiences evoke emotions.
Secondly, emotions are short (in time). The word emotion is generally used by people to describe a number of types of feelings. Nevertheless, they are not to be mistaken with other types of ‘affective states’ like moods, sentiments or emotional traits. An emotion usually only lasts seconds, like for example the pleasant surprise when you open the packaging of the iPod. Moods, however, are longer lasting and can take a couple of hours, days, a week etc. (when you are sad for instance). Sentiments are our general likings and dislikings that we have developed. You can love ice-cream for a period of time or even a life-time. Finally, emotional traits are personal characteristics that are related to emotion. You can be a cheerful person all throughout your life.
Thirdly, emotions are personal. They are influenced by previous experiences and associations plus our personal background (attitudes, standards and goals). This explains why people can experience different emotions with the same object or design. One can love a Ferrari because his goals are to get attention. His attitude is to find a red sports car beautiful and his standard is to find it OK to spend $500.000 on a transportation vehicle. Then, another person hates the same Ferrari car. His goal is to be responsible for the environment. His attitude is that Ferrari cars are a waste of money and environment. His standard is to only spend money on the necessary things and be responsible for the environment.
With these three characteristics of emotion in the back of your mind, you will better understand why certain designs or design features evoke specific emotions. This will eventually help you in trying to integrate emotion into your creations.

Three levels of emotional experience in relation to design

In the emotional experience of design, we distinguish three levels of experience:
- Aesthetics
- Usability
- Reflection

You also may want to read Don Norman’s book ‘Emotional Design’ and read about his levels of processing: visceral, behavioral and reflective. Also Pat Jordan’s pleasure framework and Rafaeli’s levels of emotional experience are interesting to relate to our levels.

At the aesthetic level, processing is unconscious and emotions are evoked through rapid (unconscious) judgments of what is good or bad, dangerous or safe and ugly or beautiful. For example, some colors immediately evoke certain emotions that are embedded in our instinctive reaction system: red is an active color, in nature often related to ‘danger’.
At the usability level, processing is unconscious (until it doesn’t work properly! Then we immediately switch to conscious processing). At this level, the pleasure and effectiveness of use or experience has a central role.
At the reflection level, processing is conscious. At this level, emotions become personal. Why do I love an iPod and you don’t? At this level we relate the stimulus to our personal background, associations and previous experiences. For me, the iPod represents social acceptance so I experience positive emotions like pleasure, amusement, pride, etc. And you, you were taught not to seek acceptance in material possessions, and because you dislike this type of behavior you experience negative emotions with the iPod.
Designs that are able to affect us at all levels of emotional experience are probably the most successful ones.
Research the emotional impact of your creations
When you have a good understanding of what the emotional impact and experience of design can be, you are one step away from incorporating emotion in your design process. The next step is to research the emotional impact of your own creations. Here you will get a better understanding of the emotional experience of your designs and you will find that certain decisions you have made have affected it either positively or negatively.
To investigate emotional experiences there are a number of tools and methods available that can help you measure, explore or evaluate emotions that are evoked by the design of a product, service or brand. A great repository of tools and methods can be found at the website of the ENGAGE project, now taken under the wing of the Design and Emotion Society. In the last year I have been responsible for the ENGAGE project for the D&E Society. ENGAGE was a European funded initiative to bring together industry, research and design in the field of affective engineering, to create a knowledge community and realize best use of both current and future knowledge. Together with 20 other European partners we have managed to gather around 75 tools and methods related to designing for emotion. Almost all of these tools and methods are now available on the freshly re-designed website of the D&E Society: www.designandemotion.org. I encourage you all to become a member of this growing community!
A tool that is being developed by Monito Design & Internet, is the LEMTool. This tool focuses on measuring the emotional experience of websites, but we are currently also exploring other applications. The tool is web-based which makes it easier to have people evaluate their experiences with a website in their own home setting. Eventually, the LEMTool- and also the other tools and methods, will have to provide us designers with a map of emotions that can be related to specific design decisions. That way we can improve the experience by adjusting those particular elements in the design that were found to affect emotions in another direction than we aimed for. Slowly, we will be able to come closer to an ‘emotional fit’ between our design and the user.

Incorporate emotion in the design process

Once you have a clear understanding of what emotion is, what impact design has on emotional experience, and you are able to research the emotional impact of your creations, you are ready for the next and final step: incorporating emotion in your creative design process. This sounds straightforward, but it isn’t as easy as it sounds. To be able to really design for emotion, you will need to spend a lot of time focusing on real people, on real emotions that are evoked: measuring, exploring them. This is usually not the way the company wants to work, because it takes time and effort. Therefore, your biggest challenge as a designer will not only be to ‘get emotional’ yourself, but rather your boss(es). They will need the same confidence as you have in the results of designing for emotion. Remember, it was (and often still is) the same when trying to convince management of the importance of usability research. Vital at this stage is to keep your back straight, continue evangelizing the importance of (emotional) experiences. Get the message out there, organize workshops with designers, management, marketers, just about anybody who is involved in creation. Show them what it is all about…. Get them Emotional!

Marco van Hout (The Netherlands) holds a master degree in Communication Sciences, specializing in the emotional experience of (interactive) products, brands and services.
Marco is a founding partner of Monito Design & Internet, a company that specialises in innovative solutions for Internet applications. He is an experience design “evangelist” and offers workshops, training and consultancy to companies and organisations who want to learn what impact their designs, products or services have on consumers’ experiences and how they can use this knowledge to improve those experiences.
Marco is also an active member of the Design & Emotion Society where he is responsible for the promotion of the ENGAGE project. Furthermore, he is editor of the website “design & emotion” where he publishes interviews with leading design professionals from some of the most respected brands and writes about the emotional impact of design, brands and services.

For more information on the Get Emotional! workshop: www.design-emotion.com
For more information on the LEMTool: www.lemtool.com

Columns 20-06-2008

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