Designing for Emotion Chapter 6

Over the last month in my PR Publications class, we’ve been reading Designing for Emotion by Aaron Walter. It talks about how we can use human nature to improve our web designs and tackle challenges.

This week we could read any chapter we hadn’t yet; I chose Chapter 6, “Forgiveness.” It talks about the ways that websites and companies can respond when something goes wrong, as something inevitably will.

Walter uses Flickr’s three-hour outage in July 2006 as a prime example of a company that handled adversity well. Flickr designers created a contest to occupy its users during the outage, giving away a free year of Flickr Pro to the winners. It was a good way to create a positive experience with some nasty technical difficulties.

I absolutely agree with Walter’s assertion that perfection is an unrealistic and unnecessary benchmark. Problems will occur; the important thing is our response to them.

I also agree with the claim that users consider the totality of their interaction, rather than just one negative experience. Good tends to outweigh the bad. Even Taco Bell botched my order one time, I remember them more for the good food I’ve had there and continue to give them my business.

This was a good book. I might even finish it.