Designing for Emotion Chapter 4

This week in my PR Publications class we read Chapter 4 of Designing for Emotion by Aaron Walter. It was the first chapter that actually had the word “emotion” in its title, “Emotional Engagement.”

In this chapter Walter focused primarily on humor and anticipation as a way to positively “prime” customers. He cited his MailChimp redesign as a time when humor made people want to keep using the site.

As far as anticipation, Walter cited Twitter’s 2009 redesign, which was rolled out to just a handful of users before it became available to the general public. These users sparked a conversation about #NewTwitter and did a lot of free marketing for the site. They also inspired envy from people who didn’t yet have #NewTwitter and “primed” them to like the redesigned site once they had access to it.

My favorite example of emotional engagement was the way Wufoo handwrites letters to its thousands of clients. If I got a handwritten letter from a large company, I’d definitely be more inclined to use it.

I also loved Walter’s example of surprise: the way we enjoy our favorite songs more on the radio than on our iPods. Hearing the song play at random causes all our positive emotions to occur at once–what we call “surprise.”

I’m not sure that product descriptions should be hidden behind levers that say “Do Not Pull” because I’m the kind of dunce who would click around a webpage for five minutes going, “Where’s the description? Why is there not a description?” But that’s just me.

Solid chapter.