This is not new concept, Aarron Walter published his first book ‘Designing for Emotion’ back in 2011. It made such an impact on my life and the way I approach design!

So why has it become so important in this new world we find ourselves living? COVID-19 has changed the way humans behave…in order for us to be truly human-centred we need tune into your customers’ emotions - fluctuating from fear and uncertainty to joy and hope.

Once we understand our customers emotions, we are able to design better and create more empathetic customer experiences. It is no longer good enough just designing for delight as it falls incredibly short in feeding the needs of the human spirit. We’ve got to figure out how to design for the whole human experience, which includes negative emotions too.

The Emotional Design Principle 

People will forgive shortcomings, follow your lead, and sing your praises if you recognise and respond to their emotional state. This is what Aarron refers to the emotional design principle, and it can be applied in any business. 

Emotional design turns casual users into believers ready to share their experiences. It also offers a safety net that encourages your audience to stay when things go awry. Emotional design isn’t just about copy, animations, or design style: it’s a different way to think about how you communicate with your users. 

Here’s an example of how I have applied this thinking in one our latest projects.

Lockdown was announced on the 11th March 2020…our world was about to be turned upside down! We realised that many of our customers would be affected both financially or emotionally.

We wanted to launch a site to help our customer navigate their financial health during these difficulty times.

Everything from the way we approached this project to how we wrote our content used the basic principles of emotional design.

'“We maybe far apart. But we are in this together. “

Illustration Style

We created a new visual language that was a lot softer than our standard style. Our focus was on simple clean easy to consume carefully written content. We also designed a range of ‘emotional illustrations’ that were more empathetic, more playful and less functional! We toned down the pallet and created a light animation that helped calm our users.