Designing for Emotion: Chapter 4

This week in my PR Publications class, I was asked to read the fourth chapter of our text, Designing for Emotion. This chapter has to do with emotional engagement.

In previous chapters, the book discussed the importance of making emotional connections, but this chapter expanded on that idea, telling readers of the importance of interaction.

Two of the things I really liked about this chapter were the Wufoo example and saying “you may” instead of “you must.” The makers of Wufoo send handwritten letters to customers, thanking them for their loyalty. I think this is an incredible way to break the barrier and alert customers of the human connection they are making when using Wufoo. The second thing I liked was the idea of saying “you may” instead of “you must.” The difference is subtle but can have a tremendous effect on people’s attitudes and how they want to engage a product.

One thing that I didn’t like about the chapter was the MailChimp example. The witty chimp mascot was said to prime users into having a better experience, but to me, it is pretty lame. One of the examples was of the chimp saying, “Aaron, you know it’s hard out here for a chimp.” This would be a good pun, I suppose, if it was warranted, but I don’t want to log on to my email and have a chimpanzee tell me about his problems. I feel like this is something my mom would like, or someone who doesn’t know where to find humor on the internet. I already know where I get my funny stuff from.