Chapter 5 of Designing for Emotion covers overcoming obstacles. This chapter did a great job of tying in chapter 4 – emotional engagement. I am a very logical thinker so realizing the amount of times we use emotion to make decisions in our lives was very interesting for me. I had never considered emotion to be a “tie breaker” for our decision-making process.
The chapter continues on to talks about obstacles that some companies and apps have to overcome in order to gain the users trust and their business. The one that hit home for me was how skeptical users can be about certain requirements of the app. The examples I liked best were how individuals were skeptical of free apps and apps that require secretive/sensitive information such as bank account information. Going back to my logical thinking preferences where I do not use emotion very often, I am also very skeptical about free apps. It is always hard to believe that an app that performs a service for you could be free just because it would like to “help make your life easier.”
I am also very skeptical about releasing secretive information such as my bank account information. I barely trust myself with this information let alone an app. With this being my thought process it was very interesting to see how companies try to persuade us and prove to us that their company or app is not sketchy. It was very interesting for me to see how the company Mint (that requires your bank account information) has convinced users that they are safe.
The two other topics I found very intriguing in this chapter were the cost to benefit ratio and the giving of awards. The cost to benefit ratio involving emotion was what I found the most interesting. I did not realize that designers followed the idea that they had to make the benefits appear to outweigh the costs to appeal to individual’s emotions. I also found the Dropbox example of using a reward at the end as a very smart idea. Many people follow the idea that if you give you should receive. So by people giving Dropbox their information and business, they want something in return – which happens to be more free space for their files.
Overall, I found this chapter to be extremely thought-provoking. I like learning about emotional decision making, and how using certain aspects in your design can influence users to trust it, stay loyal to it, and most importantly – love it!
Originally posted at OU Public Relations Publications
