No, this is not an instruction for a new virtual group therapy. It’s a call to interface designers to be a bit more brave when it comes to including emotions in applications. People are driven by emotions. So it’s OK a must to include them in interfaces that speak and interact with human beings.
Best practices – How to do it?
- Use language in the first place to communicate emotions – It’s easy and doesn’t feel artificial
- Use animations and human like-behaviour of interface elements to invoke emotions
- Graphics, sound and other media can support emotions but should be used very carefully
When to use?
- Something went wrong in your application
- You want to regard users for purchasing, accomplishing a complex task etc.
- You want to build/grow a community around an app or a service
- You just want to add a little extra spice to the user experience of your app
What are the pitfalls?
- Don’t overdo emotions! Use them wisely in your interface to set highlights
- Be very subtle! Emotions can be interpreted in many different ways
- Positive emotions only, please :-)
Real Life Examples
last.fm error message: Joy is also an emotion.
Versions: Now that’s a registration confirmation. Even techy apps can get emotional.
Shaking icons on the iPhone home screen: Please, don’t drag me!
Language switch on intuity.de: This is a very subtle one. But only a few words can make a difference between your everyday language switch and a more human approach.
Update: Real life examples
Just found on Signal vs. Noise: Google replaced the Streetview avatar on Mother’s day with a mother and a child. A best practice for the “Get emotional”-Pattern.
[...] Joy of use and emotions are important aspects when crafting experiences. Now an interesting initiative of Volkswagen illustrates how important this fun factor really is. The goal of the initiative is to change human behaviour for the better and the theory behind it is, that the easiest way to make someone do something is to make that thing fun. The following two examples reveal the potential of the theory. [...]
[...] Joy of use and emotions are important aspects when crafting experiences. Now an interesting initiative of Volkswagen illustrates how important this fun factor really is. The goal of the initiative is to change human behaviour for the better and the theory behind it is, that the easiest way to make someone do something is to make that thing fun. The following two examples reveal the potential of the theory. [...]