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When UX Design Meets Emotional Intelligence
- Propelrr
- 26 Apr 2021 7 min read
Emotions play a huge part in our life. People are subjective and sensible alike. Most people choose to communicate with digital technologies as well as to interact with other people when it concerns digital goods. Products with good usability are no longer sufficient; it is also necessary to spark strong emotionally positive reactions in users’ hearts.
The energy of the emotional design in the digital market goes beyond making enjoyable interactions – it makes the experience more memorable and it encourages acceptance and even creates a new consumer habit.
As an experienced UX design company, we’ll walk you through the importance of emotional intelligence in design and how you can use it when designing or revamping your website.
Norman’s Three Levels of Design
Whether you’re just laying out your first UX design project or you’re in your 50th design plan, your design must perform exceptionally well in three levels — visceral, behavioral, and reflective — to produce a good reaction and response to your product.
1. Visceral Level
This level is responsible for the unconscious and automatic aspects of human emotion. The superficial characteristics of a product will make it stand out from its rivals on a visceral basis.Â
In terms of user experience, giving the customers a good understanding of what you give straight away and having them on board as quickly as possible will result in a quick response.
2.Behavioral Level
The behavioral level basically corresponds to what we know as usability in general. The user interface, as well as the practical and technical features of a framework, are the main subject of UX. It’s crucial that nothing else matters if a person can’t access something efficiently.
User research can easily assess the effect at this stage. A good user interface can encourage users to complete their tasks and goals with the least amount of effort possible. The emotion in question is that of being able to succeed or fail at something.
3. Reflective Level
This is the highest degree of emotional design, and it considers the users’ conscious feelings as well as their decision-making ability. It’s the only level that uses conscious processing, but it’s inspired heavily by the others. The stronger the emotional design, the more likely the consumer can form a bond with it and make a meaningful decision.
Why is emotional intelligence important for UX designers?
- To connect easily with the user.
- Decreases bounce rate.
- Create a niche market for your brand.
- Emotions help you maintain the integrity of the design.
- Competitive advantage over others.
- Better website conversion.
We are designing for people; we are designing for the ultimate experience and to engage with them. We need to think about who our potential customers are and how they will feel and respond to the product.
Here are a few reasons why emotion is important in UX design:
1. To connect easily with the user.
When it comes to building relationships and lifelong relations with customers, emotions often prevail because they last longer and create positivity, which affects their feelings and helps them become more attached to the company.
2. Decreases bounce rate.
We fall behind in the marketing race if we don’t measure the statistical data in UX design.
Successful emotional design means a lower bounce rate, which is the optimal outcome for UX design. UX design provides us with resources that structuralize the website with excellent user-friendly tools in such a way that it offers the user a quality navigation experience.
3. Create a niche market for your brand.
Without a question, a well-designed interface will enhance or detract from the appeal of your brand. This feel-good aspect is responsible for getting customers back to your website, as well as generating free word-of-mouth advertising for your brand, resulting in increased revenue and market value.Â
4. Emotions help you maintain the integrity of the design.
If a designer puts their heart into the concept creation stage, they would be in a stronger position to retain their uniqueness and website values by forming a special relationship with their clients.Â
A fantastic product is also adaptable, which speaks volumes for the designers’ attention to detail in their design — this should be one of the biggest considerations in your website design checklist.
5. Competitive advantage over others.
Good emotional design brings fantastic development to the industry and lifts you up into the marketplace by giving you a loyal client base.
With their sleek, practical, and slicker styles, companies have outshined their competitors in the industry race. As a result, you’ll have a competitive advantage in the industry.Â
6. Better website conversion.
The design of a website actually raises or reduces the engagement rate and, whether it provides time-dependent terms or places a temporary call, it takes into account a call to action (CTA) and a higher level of commitment.
Integrating Emotional Intelligence to UX Design
According to the book Emotional Design Elements by Smashing Magazine, these psychological factors can induce positive emotions:
- Positivity
- Surprise
- Uniqueness
- Attention
- Attraction
- Anticipation
- Exclusivity
- Responsiveness
By considering these factors, we will have a great chance to get the desired emotional response from our users. But of course, we can’t always get a positive response since we all differ in personality and attitude.
One technique we can use is to add User Interaction to our web or mobile apps. By doing so, we are giving our apps the soul it needs or what we sometimes call the personality, making it more engaging to the users. These interactions can come from any form or element. It could be the message of the content, the graphics or images used, an output action, or a simple animation.
Being Creatively Lost and Clever
If the data the user is looking for cannot be found, instead of just displaying an error message that can make the user more frustrated, we can also show some recommendations or be creative with the message by making it more fun in a way.
Photo courtesy of Smashing MagazineSimplified Tutor
Another example is providing walkthroughs for first-time users of the app; it makes it more convenient for users. It’s as if someone is actually teaching them where to start and what to do next.
Photo courtesy of Smashing MagazineInteract and Impress
When competing for attention, you cannot stand behind anyone. You should be standing above them. The key? Interact and impress. Here are some examples of how you can apply human interactions when developing your mobile application:
Photo courtesy of Behance
Photo courtesy of BehanceThese animated transitions make it more fun and engaging for the users. It makes them curious what your mobile application can do next as an output when they do something. Gamifying your app makes it an enjoyable experience users cannot forget.
Don’t Emote Like Weird Kinks
Another technique we can use is by mimicking human emotions. The simplest act of adding a human element is enough to get your audience’s sentiment. How would you feel seeing an image of a poor boy begging at a website’s header? And how would you feel seeing an image of a hot model smiling? Got my point? You should, by now.
Photo courtesy of AwwwardsClassic Taste and Habitue Style
Going minimalist is also a technique some designers use. This technique, however, is more straight to the point or sophisticated in a way. It’s tricky how designers juggle a combination of flat color palettes, large images, and typography to convey the message. But it doesn’t mean that because it’s clean and simple, it’s already missing the “Wow!” factor. You’ll be surprised what a minimal design can do, once you get to know it. It plays around with transition, parallax scrolling, and hover effects. Check this site, for example, you’ll find out what a minimal site can do.
Photo courtesy of AwwwardsThese are just a few of the techniques that we can use to improve our design. Remember that the goal here is to convince users that your app or site is worth using or buying. But the real challenge after that layer is user retention. How you keep them coming back to your site or how to keep them satisfied using your app.
Key Takeaways
The design trend is always changing, which means we also need to upgrade and iterate our designs from time to time to cope up with the users’ needs. That’s why they say design is a never-ending process.
- Consider your users’ needs before delivering content— do they need copies? Is a video better? Are they keen on graphics? Know who they are and what they’re looking for.
- Instead of text, try using graphics, but don’t overuse illustration because it will lose its effects.
- Have multiple people with different backgrounds test your design. The more insight and comments, the better you can improve the experience.
Got any comments or questions on promoting brand awareness? We’d love to hear your thoughts. Talk to the Propelrr team over at our Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn accounts.
Effective UX design certainly relies a great deal on emotional intelligence.
Hey, thank you for the article! Great principles for creating an emotional design. I would love to demonstrate how to use them on real examples of real social media applications. Check them in this article.