Designing for Pleasure and Emotion

Why Design for Emotion?

To ensure people love a product, it needs to be usable (making it a pleasure to use), but also desirable through emotional means.
Designing for emotion allows people to become "attached" to the product and engages the user in the product.
This develops brand loyalty, as if a user is satisfied with a product, they will likely come back to the same brand for replacements or new products.
Emotional appeal can also increase and maintain sales for a company.

A designer’s ability to provide satisfaction through aesthetic appeal and pleasure can greatly influence the success of a product, service or system.
Understanding attitudes, expectations and motivations of consumers plays a significant role in predicting product interaction.

Designers need to be sympathetic and empathetic to user emotion, which acts as a critical component to determine how he or she interprets and interacts with a product, service or system.
This allows for the product to be designed to better suit the user's emotions.

The decisions required for the product to be the most helpful for the user given certain conditions.
More of an outsider's perspective on the user's emotions and problems. They can be identified, but cannot be as in-depth as the empathetic understanding.

When the designer takes the place of the user to see who potentially could use the product and the object could be better suited for the consumer.
By being in the user's shoes, the designer can get a comprehensive understanding of feelings and needs.

A framework devised by Professor Lionel Tiger that encourages design for pleasure and emotion.
It comprises of four areas, those being socio, physio, psycho and ideo-pleasure.
A very good design can appeal to all 4 aspects.

Appeal to social wants and needs, such as social status and identity.
Pleasure comes from the purpose of the product in social life, as it is derived from social interaction.
Generally the pleasure that comes from a feeling of belonging to a social group.
Products might facilitate social interaction, such as products that enable communication or conversation-starters.
Products can also communicate one's social belonging and status, giving the sense of belonging to a group.

Appeal to physical wants of the user, such as touch, sound, smell, sight and (in some cases) taste.
Pleasure obtained from sensorial stimulations of using the product, such as the feel of the product during use, or for foods the taste or smell (smell of materials could be a factor in other products too, such as leather).
Physio-pleasure can be intentionally designed, or can sometimes occur accidentally as people grow accustomed to and enjoy the features of familiar products.

Appeal to cognitive needs and emotional appraisal.
Types of pleasure that comes from cognition, discovery, knowledge and other things that satisfy the intellect.
The cognitive load and stimulation of a product, and the emotional reactions incited through the use of it.
Products can benefit from a lot of and little cognitive loads, depending on the product. For example you would want a car to have little mental load, to make it relaxing to drive, but you would want a puzzle to have a heavy cognitive load, to give a sense of overcoming challenge.

Pleasures linked to our ideals, aesthetically, culturally and otherwise.
Ideo-pleasure can be derived from products that are aesthetically pleasing by appealing to the consumer’s values.
Values could be philosophical or religious or may relate to some particular issue such as the environment or a political movement.
These values can be embodied in products, and the user will gain satisfaction from using products that reflect their ideals.

Designing for emotion is a design strategy that focuses on increasing user engagement, loyalty and satisfaction with a product by incorporating emotion and personality into product design.

The 3 levels of design appeal is a theory about emotional appeal of designs created by infamous designer Dan Norman, and it can help guide designing strategies.
It is an alternative model to the four-pleasure framework.

While most designs only include 1 or 2 of the aspects, Norman says that a great design should incorporate all three aspects.

Visceral design appeals to the instinctual or subconscious reaction based on the physical properties (mainly visual appearance)of the product.
A viscerally-appealing design speaks to people's nature in terms of how they expect products and systems to function and how they expect to interact with them.

Behavioral design appeals to the reaction that stems from the difficulty or ease of use.
Considers how people will use a product and focuses on functionality.

Reflective design appeals to the reaction that derives from self-image, experience and memories.
Focuses on evoking memory, message, culture and meaning through the product or use of the product.
The product reflects the user's self-image and aspirations to others and themselves.

The ACT-model is a framework for creating designs that improve the relations of users with a product and intentionally trigger emotional responses.
The model was constructed by the designer Trevor van Gorp and it consists of three parts, the aesthetically-oriented attract part, the interaction-oriented converse part and the function-oriented transact part.
The model represents similar ideas to the 3-level and the four-pleasure frameworks.
The product becomes desirable when all three elements are addressed.

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