Emotional Engagement with Designing for Emotion

As I keep reading this book, Designing for Emotion, I start to think how much thought is actually put into websites that I love that I only notice when I come across an old outdated one that looks like it hasn’t been touched since 2005. I don’t know why 2005, a long time ago is my point.

I saw many great points and good lessons in this chapter but my biggest takeaway was definitely to be careful how one uses emotional connections and engagement with the audience. The chapter again talks about Mailchimp, which I’m very grateful for seeing that I’m actually familiar with it, and Twitter.

Basically, design and user experience when done right can create a human-to-human experience that will build that connection with the audience and make them feel comfortable with the product. Unfortunately, we must remember that this is still and automated system that try as we might is not actually a real person. Coincidences can happen that can cause specific people to react in an unintended way if we don’t try to see how the message may be construed from different perspectives.

Looking back, I agreed with the overall concepts and I liked learning how surprise and anticipation are such huge factors in user experience and audience reaction.

The only thing I was kind of skeptical about was the idea behind Photojojo’s shopping cart and how it works as an incentive for people to shop more and consciously interact with the feature. There are no numbers behind this and I would have to trust the author on this but I’m just not sure how effective this would actually be. I just don’t necessarily see myself caring enough about it; not the way the text describes.