3 Stages of Design's Effect to Emotions
Emotions are an essential part of cognition. Therefore, visuals nowadays need to incorporate emotional connection to engage audience’s perception on personal level.
Visceral aspect looks at the appearances. This is the quickest yet least memorable effect of visuals seen by the audience, since they only "see the book by its cover". Behavioural aspect notices the pleasure and effectiveness, which comes from the functions or the benefits of the visual to the audience. Reflective aspect is related to rationalisation and intellectualisation. This means a visual is associated to subjective thoughts. This is what we need to aim: intimate connection between target audience and visual. |
Designing with Emotions
This approach involves the use of positive emotions in communicating positive content, and vice versa to achieve a rich user experienced design. This method is more commonly used in idea development because this approach increases comfort for audience. |
While negative emotions can trigger rejection, they do not 100% trigger unpleasantness. Though the use do not promise positive experience, negative emotions can contribute to overall rich user experience. The fact is, if they are put to good use, negative emotions can offer inconsistent and ever changing stimulation for audience. |
In Between: Using Mixed Emotions
The chart on the left shows the kinds of rich experiences we can aim for. To create an enjoyable design, designers need to aim for either highly positive emotions or mixture of positive and negative emotions. However, strong positive emotions are difficult to draw out using solely visuals because they need a sense of achievement or memorable event to trigger the reaction. So, the alternative option is to mix positive and negative emotions because they can offer complex yet interesting and enjoyable experience.
The next part will explain about Paradoxical Theory, one method that explains how to use mixed emotions in design. |