Emotion plays a fundamental role in how people perceive, remember, and interact with products and services. While functionality and usability are essential, emotions often determine whether an experience feels enjoyable, frustrating, reassuring, or memorable. Positive emotional experiences can increase customer satisfaction, loyalty, and advocacy. Experience designers consider both practical and emotional needs when creating digital products. By understanding how users feel throughout their journey, organizations can design experiences that foster trust, confidence, and meaningful engagement while reducing anxiety and frustration.
Emotion in experience design
We delve into experience design's emotional side.
Emotion is at the heart of experience design.
As experience designers are we designing the mechanism to achieve specific goals? Or the functional relationships between brand touch-points over time? Or the emotional journey as we use products & services?
The answer is the latter. In doing so we will often tackle one or both of the previous. The mechanism and functional relationships are part of the story when creating a great experience. Done well they will purposefully deliver the appropriate emotions (delight, comfort, control, fun, interest). Done badly they will deliver the wrong emotions (confusion, anger, disappointment, frustration). In today’s social media connected world delivering the wrong emotions is an outcome brands need to avoid.
The creative disciplines of interaction design, information design, and functional design are colliding with the worlds of brand strategy, behavioural economists and advertising to create a genre of design which delivers emotional responses through good functional design.
Experience designers rationalise more than most people
Most experience designers rationalise everything. We’re motivated by effectiveness and efficiency. We come from the worlds of interaction, information and function. Some might say that means we’re not emotional. But rational and emotional are not opposites. We are all emotional creatures – we all experience rationalised and un-rationalised emotions:
Rationalised: Considered, grounded, conscious
Un-rationalised: Instinctive, immediate, sub-conscious
Most people who experience the products and services we design will be more influenced by un-rationalised emotions than us. In addition to our greater natural tendency to rationalise, we have more motivation to rationalise because we’re close to the project goals and our attention is maintained for far longer. In the period before emotions are rationalised people are at the mercy of their imagination and unable to make informed decisions. Un-rationalised emotions can take over the rest of the brain in a millisecond, which can lead to irrational behaviour. This causes extreme reactions (Amygdala hijack) or simply lost sales, frustrated customers and poor reputation.
Note that rationalised and un-rationalised are personal responses. This is distinct from rational and irrational as they imply some judgement on the responses.
Context is important in designing for emotions
The emotions we want to trigger are appropriate ones. This means appropriate to the business goals, the user goals and the context. I was talking with a behavioural economist recently who cited a ‘great’ example of emotional design. The example was a billboard campaign by BBDO in New Zealand, designed to encourage safer driving in the rain. They employed shock tactics to raise awareness. When it rained the poster started ‘bleeding’.
TV campaigns for stopping distances and drink driving in the UK have used shock tactics to raise awareness with great success. The difference here is the context. On such a rainy day where careful driving is necessary, anything which creates strong emotions and distracts the driver from attention to the road is a dangerous thing. A more appropriate experience design solution might have been to use the rain sensitivity to highlight road markings in some way - to reveal parallel lines which enhance the necessary emotions of control and focus, encouraging the driver to slow down.
The shock tactics could have been reserved for situations where the necessary emotions would not be affected such as TV campaigns.
As we design we must be aware of the emotions we’re creating
There’s a balance to be struck as we design experiences. As designers we need to be constantly aware of this balance to ensure we deliver the right solution to satisfy the end users and the commercial goals. I’ve created a simple tool which can guide this thought process to ensure that it stays front of mind through design and optimisation
Designers should constantly move around this circle in developing and evaluating design ideas. Different designers will prefer to start in different places, but must pay attention to all three.
Emotion in Experience Design - FAQs
Emotions significantly impact decision-making, often influencing choices even when users believe they are acting logically. Feelings such as trust, confidence, excitement, and reassurance can encourage customers to proceed with purchases, adopt new products, or engage more deeply with a brand. Conversely, negative emotions such as confusion, frustration, or uncertainty can lead users to abandon tasks or seek alternative solutions. By recognizing the emotional dimensions of customer journeys, organizations can create experiences that encourage positive behaviors and outcomes.
Designers can create emotionally engaging experiences by focusing on empathy, storytelling, visual design, content tone, and interaction quality. Understanding user motivations and pain points allows teams to craft experiences that resonate on a personal level and address genuine needs. Thoughtful details such as helpful feedback, clear communication, delightful micro-interactions, and consistent branding can further enhance emotional engagement. These elements contribute to making experiences feel more human, supportive, and memorable.
Empathy enables designers to understand users' thoughts, feelings, challenges, and expectations. Through research and observation, designers gain insights into how people experience products and services in real-world contexts. These insights help teams anticipate emotional responses and design interactions that provide reassurance, support, and clarity. Empathy-driven design leads to experiences that feel more relevant and meaningful because they are based on genuine user needs rather than assumptions.
Yes, emotional design can have a significant impact on business performance. Customers who experience positive emotions during interactions are more likely to remain loyal, recommend products to others, and engage with a brand over time. Strong emotional connections can differentiate organizations in competitive markets where products and services may offer similar features. By creating experiences that users enjoy and remember, businesses can strengthen relationships and improve long-term customer value.
Examples include reassuring progress indicators during complex processes, personalized messages that acknowledge user achievements, supportive onboarding experiences, and visually appealing interfaces that create positive first impressions. Successful emotional design does not rely on dramatic gestures. Instead, it focuses on consistently addressing user needs and emotions throughout the journey. Small, thoughtful interactions often have the greatest impact on how customers perceive a brand and its services.