Designing for Emotion I
This talk made it’s debut at the Rethink Hawaii 2009 Conference. A bit of background: I’m the Lead Designer at mint.com, and solely led design through the initial launch of the product. Prior to Mint, I ran a creative agency in Pittsburgh, doing web, identity, and advertising work for clients. The slidedeck is available on slideshare, or PDF.
—What is Design
First, what is design? Let’s start by by saying what design isn’t: decoration. Startup founders commonly believe that a designer is there to make things look pretty, because they think it should be, but aren’t really sure why. I like this quote from Joe Duffy:
“What is design? It begins with ideas—ideas based in purpose. It requires a plan or a process. It yields innovation, invention or creation. It is successful if it elicits response—attention, desire, interaction or purchase.”
Emphasis on the last four words: attention, desire, interaction, or purchase. So design is really about getting a response from your users. Design is you communicating to them. What do you want to say? What do you want your users to do? How do you want them to feel? That’s design.
Design is also a process. It’s gathering information around the problem by asking questions, then comprehension, formulation into a solution, and culminates in user engagement.
Why Design Matters
The design, and user experience, of your product, is the most critical success factor of your startup. Business model is very important, and investors evaluate that first, but clearly without design you’re not going very far because you won’t engage users. Anecdotally, early adopters who love it, will evangelize for you and really spark growth. This is what happened with Mint.com. Marc Gobé, author of Emotional Branding, explains:
“Understanding what the consumers want and bringing solutions that will inspire them is the most powerful way to support any business strategy…
Putting consumers and the product at the center of the equation is fundamental to a brand’s success…
[Design is] proof of a company’s commitment to people and to innovation.”
People is a key word there. Gobé also explains that consumers buy, and people live. Meaning that today, you’re not just marketing at consumers, successful companies are engaging in a two-way dialog and building around people and their needs.
Another reason why it matters so much comes from Stig Gustavson:
“Design is the message. It helps us communicate our strong point of difference. What you say is not as believable as what you show.”
What does that mean? Successful products and brands just have to be themselves to be successful in the market place, rather than work so hard on marketing and messaging. A great example is the Herman Miller Aeron. I’ve never seen an advertisement for Herman Miller in my life but the Aeron is absolutely iconic and has been positioned in my mind as the best chair on the market. Make design the message, and people will enthusiastically spread the word, with very positive feelings attached that will drive others to have a look.
Another critical socioeconomic truth of our day, is that we’re in an emotional economy. We’ve gone from an industry driven to a people driven economy, from production to consumption driven. We’re not in Don Draper’s world of attacking the consumer anymore. Phones and computers are no longer pieces of technology, they are positioned as pieces of your lifestyle. With the advent of fMRI, which can measure blood flow to different parts of the brain in real-time, scientists have found that we’re much more emotional, and much less rational, than we say we are. People tend to “go with their gut” first, and rationalize later, or sometimes not at all. I like to draw on my love of politics, so let’s take a look at the ’08 elections. The average voter was simply not breaking down policies between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton and deciding that way. (They were incredibly similar, but we’re ignoring that for now.) The ‘08 Democratic primary was simply about how people felt about these two people. The rallying cry for Obama wasn’t a technical idea about health care mandates it was “change you can believe in,” in every possible way. Hillary was about being tough, a fighter, and harnessing the feelings around being the first serious woman contender. None of these are rational reasons, nor translate into policy, they appealed to emotions.
In my talk I illustrated this point by saying we’re a lot less like Spock from Star Trek, meaning rational, considered, and logical, and more like Kirk– intuitive, emotional, instinctive.
But why does all of this matter? It matters because design is the most powerful tool we have to affect emotions. Visual design, experience design, product design– the end result is visceral and tangible, and provocative. More from Gobé:
“In an emotional economy, success is judged by a profound and indelible connection with people through sensory experiences.
By forgetting to focus on the way your product will be experienced, and failing to respond to people’s need to be stimulated, you fail their expectations.
No amount of money can buy the media to fix a boring product, no PR message will work once you lose that trust.”
Brand 101
Brand is a word tossed around as much as, if not more than, design. So let’s talk about it a bit, and how brand and design are related. First, a brand is not your name, or your logo. Think of a brand as a personality, or what other people think. Apple’s brand is in the hands of its users. They influence and nurture the brand through their actions towards that audience. Design is a major tool for them. From Brand Gap:
As an exercise, what words come to mind when you think of Steve Ballmer? Steve Jobs? Rush Limbaugh? Try it again for companies, like Zappos, Walmart, or AT&T. What likely came to mind is how you feel about those brands, and that’s exactly it.
The next segment will be about taking advantage of this thinking in startup building…
