The role of emotion in User Experience Design
Emotion is one of the few mental states that have an impact on human behavior. The world of user experience (UX) design highly regards emotional factors. On several occasions, designers fine-tune the design process to achieve desired goals by manipulating human emotion. I will discuss those processes, discoveries, and advancements in cross studies in the following paragraphs.
What is emotion?
Emotion (anger, disgust, fear, joy, sadness, surprise, relaxation, inspiration, encouragement, excitement, delightfulness, and fun) is a mental state expressed through physiological or somatic responses (gestures, facial expressions, and so on) originated from a specific event (Cabanac de Lafregeyre, 2002; Weinschenk, 2011). The mental state is the representation of conscious cognitive interpretations of perceptual-sensory responses. The midbrain controls emotion.
Why designers and UXers should know about emotion?
Education: In the education world, emotion helps students persevere, sustain motivation, and direct their behavior. Emotions play a vital role in organizing students’ efforts and their commitment to academic work. Emotions also influence students’ coping and persistence in the face of obstacles and setbacks. Furthermore, emotion is a vital variable that impacts how and what students learn.
Commerce: Humans can differentiate between real and fake smiles by identifying conflicting emotions; people trust the genuine smile as it directly relates to genuine emotion. For example, on any website or service, showing a video or image with a human face with a genuine smile is always a plus to establish trust between the buyer and seller.
Sight/Vision: The human eyes are susceptible to a human face. They can recognize between the alive and lifeless by looking into the eyes and identifying known faces quite naturally, even if they are among many other unknowns. The familiar face arouses an emotional response, be it love, hate, fear, or otherwise. The use of look in a design grabs attention and conveys emotional information. A unique part of the human brain positioned outside the visual cortex responsible for face recognition bypasses the usual interpretive channels and identifies more quickly than an object. The fusiform Face Area’s (FFA) sensitivity to faces appears to be something humans are born with. Due to the face sensitivity, newborn less than an hour old prefers to look at something with facial features. People primarily use the eyes to decide whether they are looking at humans and alive.
User eyes prefer gradual transition in digital design over the immediate transition. Immediate transition increases cognitive load as users take more time to understand the changes. As a result, they tend to avoid quick transition. On the other hand, gradual transition shifts the user’s task from cognitive to perceptual activity. For example, mac book users can see the animation of gradual transition when clicked on a minimized application icon (Donati, n.d.).
Audio/sound: Sound has the power to influence human emotion and senses. The second most important human sense is hearing after sight. Music and noise were able to trigger reactions, emotions, memories. Sounds add additional sensory information that confirms events—the sound frequencies and context and volume influence human mood. For example, the drum’s low-frequency sound makes soldiers want to march, yet it can have a tiring frequency over time, which is counteracted by mixing in the high-frequency sound of trumpets to stimulate the brain and provide the energy so the soldiers can march longer. Passive sound in the background (wind, music) influence mood, while active sound engages our conscious awareness (Kenwright, 2020). Rhymes are easier to remember. Before the written language, humans memorized stories and retold them in rhyming verse to others. The activation of one line in a verse help recall the next verse Weinschenk (, 2011).
Memory: People experience positive emotions during the trip planning phase and a few days or a week after the trip ends. During the journey, the positive emotion tends to stay lower than the earlier and later phase. Also, people remember in long-term memory what happens at the end of the vacation. Therefore, while designing an interface where users plan something for the future (winning a lottery, planning a business trip, building a house), a positive feeling stays long during the planning phase. Generally, we expect good review comments when request a few weeks after the trip is over, however honest and realistic opinion is only available when asked immediately after the interaction.
Amygdala processes emotion, which is very close to the hippocampus, responsible for the long-term coding of information into memories. Flashbulb memories are vivid, and most vivid memories are wrong. While interviewing people and needing them to remember events, it’s better to remember that the people’s narration may not be accurate (Weinschenk, 2011).
Mood: People are inclined to choose the familiar brand and product when they are sad and scared for some reason; however, they are open to trying new options when feeling positive and in a good mood. Established brands gain out of fear or loss message; on the other hand, a new brand might message fun and happiness.
Anthropomorphism: Anthropomorphism and augmented reality (AR) successfully arouse emotional factors in human users. Lee et al. (2020) found that humans find emotional stability in non-human objects similar to themselves. Therefore, the humanoid robot generates human emotion. Apart from humanoid robots’ humanlike interactions also connect to social cognition in the human brain. “However, in Human-Robot Interaction (HRI), touch, and especially affective touch that communicates or evokes emotion, has received less attention than modalities such as vision and audio” (Alenljung et al., 2018)
Stories influence human emotion: Anecdotes are powerful because they are in the form of a story. Listeners process stories differently. Different areas of the brain react to stories rather than data alone. Stories evoke feelings and emotions, which cause humans to remember information longer and better. (Weinschenk, Chapter 73)
Few flying thoughts about utilizing the emotion in design
Designers can plan background tracks with low frequency to hold user’s attention for long. A low-frequency track always motivates and fills humans with positive emotions.
Brand identity is very crucial for upscaling business. Users rely on the known brand when scared or fearful. Promote the tagline of a company in the form of a poem or rhyme. Humans always memories information in rhyme format long term.
UXers and designers can make informed decisions while designing products or services. The use of visual components and audio is widespread in the web world. Designers always want to create a lasting impact on user’s minds by quickly grabbing their sight and attention towards the services and offerings. A site gets only a few seconds to catch user’s attention in the world of tight competition. Knowing the mechanism of how mental state is hard wired, a designer can always manipulate the design (in an ethical way) to convert a visitor into a consumer.
Happy designing, Folks! :)
References
Alenljung, B., Andreasson, R., Lowe, R., Billing, E., & Lindblom, J. (2018). Conveying Emotions by Touch to the Nao Robot: A User Experience Perspective. Multimodal Technologies and Interaction, 2(4), 82. https://doi.org/10.3390/mti2040082
Cabanac de Lafregeyre, M. (2002). What is emotion? Behavioural Processes, 60, 69–83. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0376-6357(02)00078-5
Dirin, A., & Laine, T. H. (2018). User Experience in Mobile Augmented Reality: Emotions, Challenges, Opportunities and Best Practices. Computers, 7(2), 33. https://doi.org/10.3390/computers7020033
Donati, M. (n.d.). Understanding the transitions between web interfaces designed to stimulate specific emotions. Universal Access in the Information Society, 17.
Ganglbauer, E., Schrammel, J., Deutsch, S., & Tscheligi, M. (2009). Applying Psychophysiological Methods for Measuring User Experience. Possibilities, Challenges, and Feasibility. Proc. User Experience Evaluation Methods in Product Development Workshop.
Kenwright, B. (2020). There’s More to Sound Than Meets the Ear: Sound in Interactive Environments. IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications, 40(4), 62–70. https://doi.org/10.1109/MCG.2020.2996371
Lee, S.-C., Lin, G.-H., Liu, C.-C., Chiu, E.-C., & Hsieh, C.-L. (2020). Development of the CAT–FER: A Computerized Adaptive Test of Facial Emotion Recognition for Adults With Schizophrenia. American Journal of Occupational Therapy, 75(1), 7501205140p1. https://doi.org/10.5014/ajot.2020.043463
Media, O. (n.d.-a). 23. Memory Takes a Lot of Mental Resources — 100 Things Every Designer Needs to Know About People, 2nd Edition. Retrieved April 11, 2021, from https://learning.oreilly.com/library/view/100-things-every/9780136746959/ch23.xhtml
Media, O. (n.d.-b). Chapter 12. Human Decision Making is Rarely Rational — Designing with the Mind in Mind, 2nd Edition. Retrieved April 11, 2021, from https://learning.oreilly.com/library/view/designing-with-the/9780124079144/xhtml/Cover.xml
Poitras, E. G., Harley, J. M., & Liu, Y. S. (2019). Achievement emotions with location‐based mobile augmented reality: An examination of discourse processes in simulated guided walking tours. British Journal of Educational Technology, 50(6), 3345–3360. https://doi.org/10.1111/bjet.12738
Stein, J.-P., & Ohler, P. (2018). Saving Face in Front of the Computer? Culture and Attributions of Human Likeness Influence Users’ Experience of Automatic Facial Emotion Recognition. Frontiers in Digital Humanities, 5, 18. https://doi.org/10.3389/fdigh.2018.00018
Zhang, F., Markopoulos, P., & Bekker, T. (2020). Children’s Emotions in Design-Based Learning: A Systematic Review. Journal of Science Education and Technology, 29(4), 459–481. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10956-020-09830-y
