Emmotive Factors in UX design

It is important to remember that the experience a person has using a product or service is every bit as important as that product or services usability.

Deep Down We Are All Shallow People

Back several years ago while still in school it was necessary for me to go off and buy a copy of Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice. Upon telling the shop owner what I was looking for she produced two different editions of the play. She told me that both editions contained good notes and explanations of the text with room to make my own notes as I went along, in fact she made no distinction between the two editions at all. Despite of this I was immediately able to make a choice. You see one edition was colourful and glossy with colour images, while the other contained black and white images with a matt purple cover. I chose the better looking one.

We all have a similar experience. Given the choice between two otherwise equal options we will all choice the better looking one. People enjoy aesthetically pleasing items, that will come as no surprise to anybody. However it is important to bear this fact in mind. Just as we pay attention to the usability of a product we must also pay attention to it’s aesthetics. If a product is aesthetically unappealing people will be less likely to use it, no matter how user friendly it is.

In fact the relationship between aesthetics and usability is quite complex. Research carried out by Noam Tractinsky among others has shown the more aesthetically pleasing an item is the more usable people will believe it to be. As such it is vital that in designing items we find a balance between usability and aesthetics.

But apart from the aesthetics and usability there is another crucial element to design. The emotional aspect.

Emotions are a Response to the User Experience

Remember buying music in the eighties? (If not maybe go ask someone older) It was an event. You went to the record shop, you flicked through their many many racks of vinyl before selecting a record. Perhaps you were waiting for a specific release in which case much time would be spent pestering the staff as to when the record would be out (this usually happened every weekend, actually it’s impressive you weren’t barred) before you finally managed to get your hands on the desired piece of music. Then with the record (all twelve inches of it) tucked under your arm, you made your way home on the bus admiring the art work the whole time. The whole experience was an event. Then came CDs. Consider how many people complained that buying CDs just isn’t the same as buying vinyl, that they lack the feeling of having made a purchase. In fact major artists are still realising on vinyl to this day because people still buy it. I swear that Leonard Cohen sounds better on Vinyl than he does on CD despite the fact that logically I know this can’t be the case, but emotionally I feel it so when I buy a Cohen album I buy it on vinyl.

This is especially important when we consider that the music market has changed yet again. Now we have music downloads and the experience is radically different. The visual and tangible experience of buying an album is now gone or altered. You no longer end up owning a physical product and album art and physical presentation have become almost irrelevant. The entire process of getting the music has also changed. Music is bought in an instant, no longer do you have to browse through the section of a shop, but simply type the name of whatever you are looking for into a search function. You can even make your purchase at any time of the day or night. From a strictly functional and usable point of view this new way is far better than physically buying some music, yet many music fans are not happy (and I don’t just mean the Goths). People don’t feel the same sense of ownership of their music and they are not making as strong emotional bonds with it as they once did. The whole experience just isn’t the same anymore.

But that can change. It is worthwhile looking at how some companies deal with digital copies of music. A very good example is Apple who are probably the main players in music downloading. iTunes will now download the album art with any album you purchase and even retrieve the art of any album you personally rip. Presenting Genre sections as well as new releases and recommended albums promotes browsing by the user which is similar to the traditional experience of purchasing music.

It is also interesting to look at one of the browsing methods which shall be used in the upcoming iPhone. The user shall be able to scroll though the album covers of each album in a fashion similar to flicking through the albums you have on your shelf. So instead of just selecting an option from a long list of text the real life experience can be imitated.

Because of these steps some of the visual and emotional aspects of buying or selecting music is restored to the overall experience.

Conclusion

So why is it is crucial to consider the emotional impact an item will have on a user. Well basically good experiences sell. If using a product or service makes you feel good you are likely to use it again. As such it is vitally important that when we design an item we achieve a balance between the usability, look and feelings of the item. We must appreciate not only whether the user can use the product, but also how they will react to it from both an aesthetic and an emotional perspective.