Originally posted at Taylor Ashley's PR Pubs
Originally posted at Taylor Ashley's PR Pubs
Originally posted at Dusti-PR pubs
When dealing with systems shutting down on customers, this can create major impatience among users. The Flickr example at the beginning of the chapter was great. I always get SO frustrated when a site is down that I really need to get on. Flickr’s idea to keep their customers distracted with a contest was a genius solution. I have never thought about directing the users mind’s some place else.
Flickr also updated their customers as much as they could about the maintenance that was being done. Although I’m sure this calmed down some of the customers, I would argue that many of the customers were still very upset about the site being shut down. No matter how many updates or distractions you put into place, there will always be those users who will not be satisfied until they can get back to what they were working on.
Although this chapter was short, it made me think about certain aspects of design that I have never thought about before. When customers have felt betrayed or disappointed in one of your products, design is something that can reel the users back into trust. The chapter uses the example of gaining back trust with another person. You gain back trust through gut feelings.
Originally posted at Taylor Jurica- Gaylord Journalism Student
In Chapter 5 of Designing for Emotion written by Aarron Walter, he talked about overcoming obstacles. I love how he talks about how as designers, we have every tool to help our audience use their gut. We have all the tools for typography, contrast, color and more that lead our audience in the right direction. These tools not only help our reader use their gut, but it is easier for them to understand the information that we are throwing at them.
I never even thought about how appearance matters. Appearance is the difference between your audience trusting in your company, or not. I like how Walters uses a body guard in a pressed suit versus a guy in cutoff jean shorts and a ripped Grateful Dead shirt. This definitely put things into perception for me.
I disagree with what Dropbox did. I don’t think that bribery is ever the right thing to do. It is almost like trickery to me. I don’t support that especially since I know that as a user myself, I would not like to be bribed to stay on a site I don’t need to be staying on.
Originally posted at Claire White
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
This week my class had the option to read whatever chapter they wanted in Aaron Walter’s book, Designing for Emotion, and I decided to continue where I last stopped at chapter 5. This chapter was all about overcoming obstacles that may occur when you are designing a site, app, etc. The major obstacle in most cases is trying to get people to trust in what you’re selling. I totally agree with the author when he said that most of the things we do on a day-to-day basis is go with our gut. Gut decisions can be a good idea, but at some times it may not. I think you really have to pick and choose your battles.
One example used in this chapter was the website or app, Mint.
Mint is a financial tracker that allows you to input information from whatever bank you are with and gives you tips on how to budget your money and even tracks your budget. I personally use this app on my iPhone one because my TFCU app kept crashing and I could never sign in and second because I heard how safe and reliable it was. I was a little skeptical at first because it said that you could sign up free all you needed to do was input all your bank information. Like the author said, trusting a website that says free with no gimmicks is incredibly tough. It helped that this site does have credible sources saying it’s a good app. Sources like the New York Times, Wall Street and I even saw that it’s a part of Intuit. The site and app also look very nice ad with me presence goes a long way so believing in this company wasn’t as hard as others are.
Another key point the author made was when he said that some companies will use bribery to get people coming to their site, but it’s not just about getting people to visit you site, it’s also about having them continue to visit and use the site. Dropbox was the example used and I think at first dropbox was something really cool, but overtime its lost it. I hate the fact that they tell you its free to sign up and you get to store things on a cloud, but they don’t tell you that you only get so much storage, which isn’t a lot. I choose Google Drive over Dropbox now and do so because I feel like Google is more trustworthy, has a better reputation and is able to translate over a variety of devices easily.
The last thing I took from this chapter was to continue trying if something doesn’t go as you thought. You have to continually try to make changes when you fail at something. Our gut thoughts are never always right and sometime we have to step back, ask others and go from there. Learning how to design doesn’t come overnight so it’s important to be open to change.
-Tori
Originally posted at Tori Beechum - PR Pubs
Chapter 6: Forgiveness
I thought it was interesting that this website talked about the benefits of having a website that can be forgiven if anything were to go wrong. To me, it sounds like having good PR for your PR. Go figure.
One thing I had never thought about was the idea to distract users from any temporary site problem by creating fun and enjoyable activities to do as an alternative–as shown in the Flickr example. “Flickr users remember the fun they had participating in the coloring contest, and for some, how great it was to win a free year of Pro service.”
Although I agree that “emotional engagement can help us look past the most serious infractions”, I’m not sure if that’s the case with every website. For instance, the University of Oklahoma website Ozone, is down almost all the time when several students are on at once. This usually happens around the last couple days before school starts which is when students need to get on the most. However, just because their website sucks, doesn’t mean I’m going to stop going to OU or even stop referring back to the website.
Originally posted at Brought to you by Brooke
In chapter 5 of the book Designing for Emotion by Aarron Walter, he discusses how going with your gut and how to erase skepticism and apathy in your website.
Walter discusses how we go with our gut decision everyday and that made me stop and rethink all the decisions that I had made today. I agree with Walter that we do base our decisions on our gut instinct and not logical thinking, “You use instinct to choose something thats good enough when the best option is unclear” (Walter, 67). We use our gut to to choose everything from what we are wearing to the route that we take to work during the day. As designers we need to bring this out in our personality of our websites, we need our uses to use their gut and instincts and not over think the different choices.
Designers need to create a path of least resistance, in other words we need to design for the laziness present in humans. Walter discusses how Dropbox uses this method to their advantage in the form of bribery. I disagree with this, I personally find Dropbox to be confusing and more effort than it is worth. Maybe its because I don’t fully understand the site but I don’t agree with the belief that it is catered towards those who are lazy or more resistance to effort. TO use Dropbox you have to go through a process of downloading then uploading it onto your computer and then onto all the other devices you plan to use it on and in my opinion they don’t do a good way of benefiting you to get through this process.
Whatever we are designing we need to remember to cater to the instincts of our users.
Originally posted at Grace Vojvoda
Originally posted at Taylor Ashley's PR Pubs