Designing for Emotion: Chapter 4

This week we were asked to read chapter 4 of Designing.

 

One thing I disagreed with in this chapter is the element of surprise. While yes sometimes surprise is nice, if you are a person like me sometimes surprises get overwhelming. In the chapter it talks a lot about a website called Photojojo and it says “a pleasant surprise is around every corner at photojojo”. To me that really intimidates me and overwhelms me. Whenever I shop and too many this are happening at once I tend to shut down. I do get that surprise helps make sales happen but for some people simplicity is better.

 

One thing that really resonated with me and I found to be really cool is about a company called Wufoo. The creators of Wufoo sent hundreds of personal pen letters to their customers thanking them for their loyalty. I find that to be really cool when it comes to an online company. Because you aren’t directly interacting with people over the web something things can be very impersonal. By sending these letter to their customers, it makes me feel important and more likely to use the website again.