CategoryEmotional Design

February 9, 2012 — Before the very first page of a book has been read, you’ve already analyzed it in countless ways without even noticing. The paper stock, the thickness of the binding, the aroma, the color of the type and even the texture of the cover; the very character of the book is being dissected by the hand and eye at every moment. Read more…

August 3, 2011 — Karim Boubker believes that an active, clean, and good looking social media profile can benefit an individual greatly. You will be seen and represented by the things you share, so the content should be good. Read more…

May 19, 2011 — User engagement can be optimized using performance metrics. Trace behavioral and emotional responses to learn (and improve) how much information and engagement the user has with your website. Read more…

April 8, 2011 — We don’t simply own products; we have relationships with them. In this article, Thomas Giannattasio shares his thoughts on designing attraction. Read more…

November 29, 2010 — How do you make decisions? If you’re like most people, you’ll probably answer that you pride yourself on weighing the pros and cons of a situation carefully and then make a decision based on logic. You know that other people have weak personalities and are easily swayed by their emotions, but this rarely happens to you. You’ve just experienced the fundamental attribution error — the tendency to believe that other people’s behaviour is due to their personality (“Josh is late because he’s a disorganised person”) whereas our behaviour is due to external circumstances (“I’m late because the directions were useless”). Cognitive biases like these play a significant role in the way we make decisions so it’s not surprising that people are now examining these biases to see how to exploit them in the design of web sites. I’m going to use the term ‘persuasion architects’ to describe designers who knowingly use these techniques to influence the behaviour of users. (Many skilled designers already use some of these psychological techniques intuitively — but they wouldn’t be able to articulate why they have made a particular design choice. The difference between these designers and persuasion architects is that persuasion architects use these techniques intentionally). Read more…

February 11, 2010 — In this article, Francisco Inchauste speaks with some of the modern-day storytellers to get their perspective and see how they apply storytelling to their work. Read more…

January 29, 2010 — With storytelling, we can pull fragments together into a common thread. We can connect as real people, not just computers. In this article, we’ll explore how user experience professionals and designers are using storytelling to create compelling experiences that build human connections. Read more…