1 Beyond the Pixels
This chapter covers
- Understanding the importance of emotions in digital product design
- Defining emotions and their mechanisms
- Exploring the three levels of emotional design
- Designing for each level of emotional design and developing skills for enhanced design proficiency
Glance over at this snapshot of a mobile app’s home screen. It’s a simple project I whipped up with my students during a UI design crash course. The goal? Tracking the number of digital product subscriptions and how much they’re costing you. Easy as pie.
Now, take a closer look (Figure 1.1).
Figure 1.1 Three Fresh Takes on a Subscription-Tracking App
Are you attracted to any of them?
Perhaps you prefer the frugality and elegant minimalism of the first option? When it comes to your hard-earned cash, there is no room for jokes or wild experiments with your finances, is there?
Or maybe you’re of the younger generation, a maverick who thrives on novelty and unconventional ideas. In that case, the design in the middle might strike your fancy.
Not everyone will like the third option. It’s quite ugly with its dirty shadows, mix of color without any logic, a button that will make your eyes water, hard to see gray on gray, etc. Does it have any advantages? Not at all, and it’s rather daunting. And even if you find some parts that you like exclusively in this one, the first two designs will be liked and enjoyed by most users.