Designing for emotion: Experience attributes Eugenia Ortiz User experience designer - NetSuite @eugeo 

1.  Designing for emotion 2.  Experience attributes 3.  What, Why, Who, When 4.  How – A process proposal 5.  Example 6.  Questions Agenda 

Why designing for emotion? 

Why designing for emotion and why having a personality? •  Our lasting relationships center around the unique qualities and perspectives we all possess. We call it personality. •  Is the mysterious force that attracts us to certain people and repels us from others. It can be a powerful tool in designing for meaning. •  Emotional design’s primary goal is to facilitate human-to-human communication. Defining the personality 

Why designing for emotion and why having a personality? Defining the personality 

Defining the personality: Experience Attributes 

Experience attributes Visually oriented adjectives that describe the message or personality a product should convey (from a company’s & user perspectives). These attributes can be the starting point to defining design principles. •  They articulate the fundamental goals that all decisions can be measured against (“the big picture”). •  They provide a consistent vision of the project for the project team. •  They establish criteria for success for the project. What? 

The experience is how we want people to feel, and what we want them to know about the product. •  It is emotional. •  It should be different from our competitors. •  It should represent the strengths of our products, and how our users and customers perceive us. •  It guides a wide range of things including interaction design, language, visual design, development, implementation, marketing, etc. What we mean by “experience”? 

Examples 

Examples 

Examples 

•  They help focus decisions and get everyone on the same page. •  Used to determine what concept we move forward with. •  To assist us in creating a consistent and purposeful experience for our customers. •  Intended to be discussion and decision-making tools. Why defining experience attributes? What are they good for? 

From a company perspective: Product owner, Sales, Marketing, Engineering, CEO and key stakeholders. Who and When? Who can help define attributes Ideally at the beginning (requirements, “sprint 0”, redesign, envisioning..) When to do it 

How? From: Designing for the Digital Age 

First, extracting the attributes 

First, extracting the attributes Step 1 Make a list of potential desirable attributes. •  From the company's perspective: •  Look at identity guidelines, mission statements, brand's legacy, what stakeholders literally say -catch the entire phrase- (ask them to compare the product to people, cars or other products). •  Look at the words to see if any of them are ambiguous, replace them with synonyms. •  From user's perspective: •  Add terms based on the research and personas goals (to reduce subjectivity). If relevant, add qualities that appeal to the personas. 

Experience Attributes Workshop 

Workshop - Goals To gain collective understanding on what the ideal experience should be for the product we are designing. A workshop helps define the experience more vividly. Examples bring life to the conversations. Is a starting point for future discussions. 

Can be done in person or remote. Expressing the experience attributes in visual terms helps stakeholders understand their relationship to the design. Some remote tools: •  Dropbox image gallery (don’t forget to add a number as Id to each photo) •  SurveyMonkey (to collect the most and least representative pics for each participant) •  Join.me, Hangout, Skype (to discuss why they picked those images & concepts and extract attributes) Workshop – Remote or in person 

Once you have the list of attributes Step 2 Group related qualities into clusters. Some stakeholders that are not in sync with the brand might say some words that don't fit in any group. Eliminate those that create conflict. 

Once you have clusters Step 3 Refine and filter clusters (3-5 groups). Remove any cluster that seems contrary to the persona goals (dev-related stuff, for example). 

Once you have refined clusters Step 4 Optimize terms to guide design decisions. •  An attribute has to be an adjective, has to aspirational and has to describe a quality that can be represented through design. ("Easy to use" doesn't work, maybe "approachable" works better.) •  Reword any negative attribute into a positive terms. •  The set should be small enough to be manageable, but not trimmed to the point where you lose nuance. •  Within the set of words you might have ones that are harder to visualize than others, that doesn't mean that they cannot guide the design direction and decisions (interaction design, content, IA, etc.). 

Once you optimize your terms Step 5 Choose the best term from each cluster that best represents the concept. These are the experience attributes. Keep the other words in each category as supporting terms, they are helpful to provide an accurate sense of the concept. 

Once you have your attributes Step 6 Describe and optimize relationships. •  Attributes also have to work well as a set. The define the boundaries of the future design. A good set creates tension and balance among the attributes to keep the design from going to inappropriate extremes (E.g. Fun vs Precise). •  You can find it helpful to illustrate the conceptual relationship among the attributes using diagrams. Always accompanied by explanation for those that are not part of the design team. Modern   Sterile   Direct   Bossy   

Last but not least Step 7 Develop additional communication tools •  Help stakeholders visualize the attributes. One approach could be to develop a collage of images that represent each attribute and its associated supporting terms. •  Approach it from an emotional perspective more than an intellectual one. 

Opportunities •  Explore visual language •  Explore initial concepts •  Gather impressions •  Start defining signature interactions •  Explore language personality •  You name it.. 

+ - Example - From images 

Example – Thru a list of adjectives 

Example – To clusters 

Example - To visualization 

Example - All applied to your products / services 

More information & resources h#p://www.slideshare.net/nickmyer5/the-­‐interface-­‐is-­‐now-­‐your-­‐brand   h#ps://join.me/   h#ps://www.surveymonkey.com/   

Questions?