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A Book Apart #5
Designing for Emotion
Make your users fall in love with your site via the precepts packed into this brief, charming book by MailChimp user experience design lead Aarron Walter. From classic psychology to case studies, highbrow concepts to common sense, Designing for Emotion demonstrates accessible strategies and memorable methods to help you make a human connection through design.
104 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2011
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 127 reviews
October 20, 2011
I was very much looking forward to this book but I came away disappointed. I'm a big fan of what MailChimp is doing. Their marketing is excellent and the customer resources are a model for us all. I can't think of a better example of a company putting so much effort into making their customers successful. So it is not without a healthy amount of respect for the author that I offer this review.
From the start I was left with a fuzzy definition of what really constitutes emotional design in the mind of the writer. This is certainly not Don Norman's "Emotional Design" which better aligns with Kathy Sierra's ideas about empowerment, self-image, and self-satisfaction in regard to how the products people use make them feel. The examples and case studies later in the book only reinforce my feeling that what this book means by "emotional design" is "personality" – and that the real target is marketing, not application UI.
The first and foremost example is the web form builder, Wufoo. It's full of personality – dinosaurs, fun colors, and cheeky copy abound. But all that personality feels like branding that has leaked onto the app from the marketing site. Peel back the personality layer and you still have a stunning app that is easy to use, clear, clever and still fun. Sometimes fun is a product of success. I like products that make hard work easier and make me feel like I'm great at it. Personality is fun and Wufoo is among the best. I'm sure it makes lots people love them. But personality isn't going to make a bad app experience better. Nor is a strong, irreverent personality the only or best path to emotional engagement.
This book leaves me with the fundamental question? Do I want users to think my product is awesome, or would I rather they felt awesome about themselves because they used my product? "Emotional design" feels like it has the wrong priorities. I'm certain there are many benefits (as outlined in the book) to making your customers love your company and your products. But I'll bet there is a deeper emotional response when your product makes people feel great about themselves. People like to do things they're good at, things that make them feel good.
This seems to me like a symptom of a greater trend in web UI design. So many apps today have beautiful, lick-able Apple-inspired UI that takes all the focus away from the comparatively bland content. Emotional Design similarly focuses the emotions of the user on the app instead of on themselves.
From the start I was left with a fuzzy definition of what really constitutes emotional design in the mind of the writer. This is certainly not Don Norman's "Emotional Design" which better aligns with Kathy Sierra's ideas about empowerment, self-image, and self-satisfaction in regard to how the products people use make them feel. The examples and case studies later in the book only reinforce my feeling that what this book means by "emotional design" is "personality" – and that the real target is marketing, not application UI.
The first and foremost example is the web form builder, Wufoo. It's full of personality – dinosaurs, fun colors, and cheeky copy abound. But all that personality feels like branding that has leaked onto the app from the marketing site. Peel back the personality layer and you still have a stunning app that is easy to use, clear, clever and still fun. Sometimes fun is a product of success. I like products that make hard work easier and make me feel like I'm great at it. Personality is fun and Wufoo is among the best. I'm sure it makes lots people love them. But personality isn't going to make a bad app experience better. Nor is a strong, irreverent personality the only or best path to emotional engagement.
This book leaves me with the fundamental question? Do I want users to think my product is awesome, or would I rather they felt awesome about themselves because they used my product? "Emotional design" feels like it has the wrong priorities. I'm certain there are many benefits (as outlined in the book) to making your customers love your company and your products. But I'll bet there is a deeper emotional response when your product makes people feel great about themselves. People like to do things they're good at, things that make them feel good.
This seems to me like a symptom of a greater trend in web UI design. So many apps today have beautiful, lick-able Apple-inspired UI that takes all the focus away from the comparatively bland content. Emotional Design similarly focuses the emotions of the user on the app instead of on themselves.
February 14, 2018
This has not aged well. Seven years is a long time in digital design — when this was published, “product design” was limited to industrial designers making physical products. Dated aesthetics in screenshots are easy to skip over since I know to expect quality writing from A Book Apart publications.
Each chapter has numerous real-world examples on how to help your users have an emotional connection with your site/product. The emotional connection comes from the site/product having a personality that resonates with the user. In the examples, that desirable personality seems to come only from cheeky copy, bright colors, and interaction gimmicks.
The reader doesn’t get a feel for the science & psychology behind emotions as much as they’re told to inject humor and surprises into the UI. “There is no formula for emotional design, only principles of psychology and human nature to guide you.” really sums it up. Even though it’s a quick read, I think you can skip this book entirely and pick up something else that covers some of those psychology & human nature principles.
Aaaand it took over half of the book to get to one example from a woman professional in design. 🤦🏻♀️
Each chapter has numerous real-world examples on how to help your users have an emotional connection with your site/product. The emotional connection comes from the site/product having a personality that resonates with the user. In the examples, that desirable personality seems to come only from cheeky copy, bright colors, and interaction gimmicks.
The reader doesn’t get a feel for the science & psychology behind emotions as much as they’re told to inject humor and surprises into the UI. “There is no formula for emotional design, only principles of psychology and human nature to guide you.” really sums it up. Even though it’s a quick read, I think you can skip this book entirely and pick up something else that covers some of those psychology & human nature principles.
Aaaand it took over half of the book to get to one example from a woman professional in design. 🤦🏻♀️
September 20, 2017
It is a concise and short book but it led me to a look at the design of the site and the software from another perspective. It is a fantastic book on how design psychology influences how we understand, relate and desire software, websites and even everyday objects. It is full of great examples and it just gets you inspired to think of what emotion I want to convey before you start a new project!
This sentence shows a summary of the content of the book:
“Emotional design isn’t just about copy, photos, or design style; it’s a difference way to about how to communicate.”
This sentence shows a summary of the content of the book:
“Emotional design isn’t just about copy, photos, or design style; it’s a difference way to about how to communicate.”
September 18, 2012
I bought this bundled with the other Book Apart book Mobile First which is the one I actually wanted to read so with that context in mind, I'll give a brief review.
It's a light read and I skimmed a lot as, ironically, considering the topic is all about engagement, I didn't really connect with a lot of it. It felt a bit like the concept of "emotional" design led the book more than the actual evidence of the content did. It began to feel like someone talking really quickly at me hoping that if they're still talking and I'm still listening then I'm engaged rather than just wondering if this is going to go anywhere.
Perhaps my biggest furrowing of the brow came from feeling that a great deal of what is referred to as emotional "design" in this book seemed more like emotional marketing to me. Examples: Twitter releasing snippets of their redesign, Flickr's method of dealing with a long outage by throwing in a contest, etc. Of course those examples needed a design solution but their strength is first and foremost that they're a good marketing idea that harnessed design rather than examples of design itself.
There are some nice ideas but I didn't find them unique, for example: user stories or "Personas" is surely already a fairly well known technique across several disciplines (eg agile software development has much the same).
More than anything else though, for a book called Emotional Design, it really triggered no emotions for me. Contrast that with other Book Apart titles like Design is a Job which had many "YES!" moments and left me feeling enthusiastic to get out and change things.
It's a light read and I skimmed a lot as, ironically, considering the topic is all about engagement, I didn't really connect with a lot of it. It felt a bit like the concept of "emotional" design led the book more than the actual evidence of the content did. It began to feel like someone talking really quickly at me hoping that if they're still talking and I'm still listening then I'm engaged rather than just wondering if this is going to go anywhere.
Perhaps my biggest furrowing of the brow came from feeling that a great deal of what is referred to as emotional "design" in this book seemed more like emotional marketing to me. Examples: Twitter releasing snippets of their redesign, Flickr's method of dealing with a long outage by throwing in a contest, etc. Of course those examples needed a design solution but their strength is first and foremost that they're a good marketing idea that harnessed design rather than examples of design itself.
There are some nice ideas but I didn't find them unique, for example: user stories or "Personas" is surely already a fairly well known technique across several disciplines (eg agile software development has much the same).
More than anything else though, for a book called Emotional Design, it really triggered no emotions for me. Contrast that with other Book Apart titles like Design is a Job which had many "YES!" moments and left me feeling enthusiastic to get out and change things.
January 22, 2014
Fantastic short book on the importance of emotion in design. While I've always been a big fan of design, this book helped me think about it in the context of emotion, which I had never really thought about before. It makes me want to do some of that user analysis immediately! Includes great case studies and solid data, which is often necessary to push for these kinds of changes. A plus: unlike some other books in the series, this content is unlikely to go out-of-date any time soon.
Highly recommended read for designers and anyone involved in something the user can see.
Highly recommended read for designers and anyone involved in something the user can see.
March 1, 2014
This book is an example of when brevity strikes back. This book, while brief and an enjoyable is lacking in substance.
Emotional design or the topic of emotion and design is often tackled from a subjective perspective by known experts. These perspectives while interesting and often fresh are often lacking of the foundations to explain just why emotions matter so much, leaving the authors preaching to the choir and lacking the empirical perspective.
I was hoping this book would cover the science of emotions and their implications for design. Instead the author primarily focused on the practical approach for designing for emotion, borrowing from mail chimps and other sites of similar scale. The challenge in this, is the author is very comfortable making design tradeoffs that bias towards the whimsical in spite of some of their costs in terms of page load times etc.
This approach is often quite useful and beneficial to smaller companies that are not marketplace leaders, but to use an obvious example like the "don't pull this handle button) would never be used by a category leader, in spite of the rich emotional connections some category leaders such as Apple have developed in the process.
The good news is there are other books such as: Design for Emotion and Emotional Design to name a few that go into more depth.
There are redeemable traits of this book as well. For example the brevity leads to a quick read and the section on designing your brand personality is quite interesting approach for making a brand personality a bit more concrete.
Emotional design or the topic of emotion and design is often tackled from a subjective perspective by known experts. These perspectives while interesting and often fresh are often lacking of the foundations to explain just why emotions matter so much, leaving the authors preaching to the choir and lacking the empirical perspective.
I was hoping this book would cover the science of emotions and their implications for design. Instead the author primarily focused on the practical approach for designing for emotion, borrowing from mail chimps and other sites of similar scale. The challenge in this, is the author is very comfortable making design tradeoffs that bias towards the whimsical in spite of some of their costs in terms of page load times etc.
This approach is often quite useful and beneficial to smaller companies that are not marketplace leaders, but to use an obvious example like the "don't pull this handle button) would never be used by a category leader, in spite of the rich emotional connections some category leaders such as Apple have developed in the process.
The good news is there are other books such as: Design for Emotion and Emotional Design to name a few that go into more depth.
There are redeemable traits of this book as well. For example the brevity leads to a quick read and the section on designing your brand personality is quite interesting approach for making a brand personality a bit more concrete.
March 6, 2012
Where the earlier A Book Apart books focused on tangible, tactical skills that could be incorporated into our design workflows, I found this one to be much more of a call to arms to re-evaluate the fundamentals of how we think about what it means to design interfaces.
The part that really gets me excited is the integration of all elements of a product together to craft an experience that delights people. Mailchimp's interface is great, but it would be nothing without the copy writing, which would be nothing if the service itself wasn't fantastic.
I also found the idea of a design persona to be really useful. Instead of just creating personas for users, create one for the personality of your site/app. It's a bit like a style guide, but more abstract. I hope to try it out soon.
The part that really gets me excited is the integration of all elements of a product together to craft an experience that delights people. Mailchimp's interface is great, but it would be nothing without the copy writing, which would be nothing if the service itself wasn't fantastic.
I also found the idea of a design persona to be really useful. Instead of just creating personas for users, create one for the personality of your site/app. It's a bit like a style guide, but more abstract. I hope to try it out soon.
November 20, 2011
A great book to get you started thinking about emotion in design. It walks you thought the options, and whether emotion is really right for your next website. While it doesn't give you all the answers, it gives you plenty to start thinking about the appropriate answers, because, let's face it, web design is not a one size fits all career. Each site will need it's own individual answer.
April 11, 2017
"Let’s think of our designs not as a facade for interaction, but as people with whom our audience can have an inspired conversation. Products are people, too." - найсильніша цитата для мене з цієї книжки.
Кожен із нас має друзів/родичів/коханих до яких сильно прив'язаний і прив'язані ми через певні риси характару цих людей і через емоції, які виникають у нас через спілкування з ними. А тепер уявіть, що програма над якою ви працююєте - теж людина і ви з нею спілкуєтеся, якими рисами ви її б наділили?
Книжка, написана дизайнером MailChimp - дуже класна. Про те:
1) як будувати маркетинг з допомогою емоційного дизайну
2) як створювати контент, який викликатиме емоції (надіюся позитивні)
3) як емоційний дизайн виручає, коли летить сервак, etc.
4) як працювати з юзерами і створвати ажіотаж довкола своїх апдейтів
Кожен із нас має друзів/родичів/коханих до яких сильно прив'язаний і прив'язані ми через певні риси характару цих людей і через емоції, які виникають у нас через спілкування з ними. А тепер уявіть, що програма над якою ви працююєте - теж людина і ви з нею спілкуєтеся, якими рисами ви її б наділили?
Книжка, написана дизайнером MailChimp - дуже класна. Про те:
1) як будувати маркетинг з допомогою емоційного дизайну
2) як створювати контент, який викликатиме емоції (надіюся позитивні)
3) як емоційний дизайн виручає, коли летить сервак, etc.
4) як працювати з юзерами і створвати ажіотаж довкола своїх апдейтів
October 19, 2021
Este libro deja reflexiones interesantes para lograr conectar con las emociones en las experiencias que los designers construimos día a día, tiene buenos ejemplos, me parecieron variados y con buenos recursos, además que trae artículos y otros libros que me parecieron bien interesantes para profundizar en este tema.
January 30, 2019
Quick and inspiring Read about how the focus on emotions and a persona in the design helps users have better and more enjoyable user experience ,really very effective book that inspired me with tons of ideas for design .A Must-Read for Designers :)
April 7, 2019
Несистемно написанная книга про веб-дизайн
April 24, 2023
Read this if you work on/with/about websites.
April 19, 2018
I read Designing for Emotion by Aarron Walter, which is about delighting your audience through emotional design. The book oozes with personality and was really hard to put down - in fact, I read the entire book in one night. It's full of real world examples that help demonstrate the principles he discusses. Although it was released in 2011 and some of the examples are a bit dated, I think the underlying principles hold true. Here are my notes:
Emotional design uses psychology and craftsmanship to create an experience that makes users feel like there is a person (not a machine) behind the product/service. People are beginning to expect websites/apps to reflect a personality they can relate to.
Translating Maslow's hierarchy of needs into the needs of our users: functional, reliable, usable, pleasurable. This top tier of pleasure/fun/joy/delight is what makes an experience powerful and one that you'd recommend to a friend. We need a new yardstick to measure success of our designs that transcends usability.
Create personality in the user experience through copywriting, colours, fonts, and shapes.
Emotional experiences make a profound impact on our long-term memory. (Citing the same molecular biology research findings from John Medina as Talk Like TED). Design for emotion is good for business - more people sign up for services, stay on websites, and buy more stuff when the experience is pleasurable.
Behind every design principle is a connection to human nature and our emotional instincts. Examples of baby face bias, golden ratio, and contrast. The human mind also has limitations, and when contrast is overused we struggle to process options (Hick's law). Aesthetic-usability effect: attractive things work better.
Similar to how we use user personas to stay focused on the needs of our target audience, we can create design personas for articulating the personality of our product as it will appear in design, copy, and interactions. Components of the persona include: brand name, overview, personality image, brand traits, personality map, voice, copy examples, visual lexicon, and engagement methods. Personality needs to be authentic. If it's used as a gimmick, it can have the opposite effect. We need to tailor the personality to the content and audience.
Surprise amplifies our emotional response by compressing it into a split second. Anticipation can also be used to encourage a user's imagination and create a yearning to end the mystery. Priming positive emotional experiences can help train people to fall in love with a product or service.
Hurdles: Not all brand personalities afford humor. Sometimes we need to inspire confidence and trust in our audience, such as in banking websites where users may be skeptical about signing up or sharing their financial information. Laziness is another hurdle that can be overcome by creating a sense of accomplishment when users complete required tasks. Finally, users react apathetically to websites when the content is irrelevant to their interests or poorly presented. Combat apathy by collecting user feedback on the match between brand personality and customers, relevance of content, and whether the use of emotional design methods interferes with their hierarchy of needs.
Emotional design can also help deal with difficult situations like server downtime, lost data, or software bugs as a well crafted response and cache of trust help you gain forgiveness from your users. When people are deeply stressed by an outage or mistake, explain what happened swiftly, honestly, and clearly. Give the facts, communicate you're doing your best to resolve things, and update users regularly. Once emotions are softened, consider redirection by giving something away for free.
Showing emotion in design is risky. Not all people will get along with the personality you choose. However, an emotional response to your design is far better than indifference. It's advisable to start small and try simple experiments for a short time period.
When trying to convince your boss/organization to embrace emotional design, start with the design persona and connect your ideas to business goals. Reference psychology principles that support the users decision-making process. Pick one key metric you'd like to improve (eg average time on site, or number of sales inquiries). Test your changes against the original design to track improvement and build a case for including more emotional design.
Emotional design uses psychology and craftsmanship to create an experience that makes users feel like there is a person (not a machine) behind the product/service. People are beginning to expect websites/apps to reflect a personality they can relate to.
Translating Maslow's hierarchy of needs into the needs of our users: functional, reliable, usable, pleasurable. This top tier of pleasure/fun/joy/delight is what makes an experience powerful and one that you'd recommend to a friend. We need a new yardstick to measure success of our designs that transcends usability.
Create personality in the user experience through copywriting, colours, fonts, and shapes.
Emotional experiences make a profound impact on our long-term memory. (Citing the same molecular biology research findings from John Medina as Talk Like TED). Design for emotion is good for business - more people sign up for services, stay on websites, and buy more stuff when the experience is pleasurable.
Behind every design principle is a connection to human nature and our emotional instincts. Examples of baby face bias, golden ratio, and contrast. The human mind also has limitations, and when contrast is overused we struggle to process options (Hick's law). Aesthetic-usability effect: attractive things work better.
Similar to how we use user personas to stay focused on the needs of our target audience, we can create design personas for articulating the personality of our product as it will appear in design, copy, and interactions. Components of the persona include: brand name, overview, personality image, brand traits, personality map, voice, copy examples, visual lexicon, and engagement methods. Personality needs to be authentic. If it's used as a gimmick, it can have the opposite effect. We need to tailor the personality to the content and audience.
Surprise amplifies our emotional response by compressing it into a split second. Anticipation can also be used to encourage a user's imagination and create a yearning to end the mystery. Priming positive emotional experiences can help train people to fall in love with a product or service.
Hurdles: Not all brand personalities afford humor. Sometimes we need to inspire confidence and trust in our audience, such as in banking websites where users may be skeptical about signing up or sharing their financial information. Laziness is another hurdle that can be overcome by creating a sense of accomplishment when users complete required tasks. Finally, users react apathetically to websites when the content is irrelevant to their interests or poorly presented. Combat apathy by collecting user feedback on the match between brand personality and customers, relevance of content, and whether the use of emotional design methods interferes with their hierarchy of needs.
Emotional design can also help deal with difficult situations like server downtime, lost data, or software bugs as a well crafted response and cache of trust help you gain forgiveness from your users. When people are deeply stressed by an outage or mistake, explain what happened swiftly, honestly, and clearly. Give the facts, communicate you're doing your best to resolve things, and update users regularly. Once emotions are softened, consider redirection by giving something away for free.
Showing emotion in design is risky. Not all people will get along with the personality you choose. However, an emotional response to your design is far better than indifference. It's advisable to start small and try simple experiments for a short time period.
When trying to convince your boss/organization to embrace emotional design, start with the design persona and connect your ideas to business goals. Reference psychology principles that support the users decision-making process. Pick one key metric you'd like to improve (eg average time on site, or number of sales inquiries). Test your changes against the original design to track improvement and build a case for including more emotional design.
January 4, 2012
C'est un livre intéressant mais qui n'est pas aussi passionnant que les autres de la série A Book Apart. J'en suis encore à me demander qu'est-ce que le "emotional design" exactement, hésitant entre un buzzword qui reprend des concepts déjà existants, ou quelque chose de vraiment novateur. Je m'attendais à obtenir ces réponses mais je vais devoir lire un peu plus sur le sujet avant d'être fixé, et c'est à ce niveau que l'auteur à peut-être échoué.
On y présente tout de même un concept intéressant, qui s'appelle le "design persona" et qui permet de définir la personnalité d'un site Web, pour guider le ton et tout l'aspect des communications par la suite.
On y présente tout de même un concept intéressant, qui s'appelle le "design persona" et qui permet de définir la personnalité d'un site Web, pour guider le ton et tout l'aspect des communications par la suite.
June 9, 2013
Aarron Walter has added another excellent book to the A Book Apart series, which are quickly becoming must-reads for designers in the digital age.
Emotional Design was a great reminder that sometimes designing engaging content gets lost in the midst of cumbersome requirements documents, challenging client relationships, or aggressive deadlines. The book made we want to bring more surprise, delight, or whimsy into my design work, purposefully trying to make a connection with another person.
Emotional Design was a great reminder that sometimes designing engaging content gets lost in the midst of cumbersome requirements documents, challenging client relationships, or aggressive deadlines. The book made we want to bring more surprise, delight, or whimsy into my design work, purposefully trying to make a connection with another person.
October 18, 2016
A must read for designers not just for the world wide web.
October 20, 2018
I put off reading this book for a long time because I thought it was about designing for emotional situations. Shows what kind of reading comprehension I've got! It's actually about designing a product or interface to resonate with its own emotion - giving your product a personality and voice and tone.
As a UX Designer, it invites me to think of different interactions that my designs can have with our users - from silly and playful to sincere and human. It talks about techniques for researching both the design persona one starts with and the usability tests one uses when the design persona has been drafted.
Like most of the A Book Apart books, this book isn't designed to be the be-all-end-all on the topic, but rather an introduction to it, which will give you enough information to move more deeply into designing for emotion either by experimenting or by using the resources listed at the end of the book.
I would've liked a few more examples of what can go wrong, but otherwise, it was a well put-together book and one that I thoroughly enjoyed reading.
As a UX Designer, it invites me to think of different interactions that my designs can have with our users - from silly and playful to sincere and human. It talks about techniques for researching both the design persona one starts with and the usability tests one uses when the design persona has been drafted.
Like most of the A Book Apart books, this book isn't designed to be the be-all-end-all on the topic, but rather an introduction to it, which will give you enough information to move more deeply into designing for emotion either by experimenting or by using the resources listed at the end of the book.
I would've liked a few more examples of what can go wrong, but otherwise, it was a well put-together book and one that I thoroughly enjoyed reading.
June 14, 2021
A short read ! I liked the personal anecdotes and baby stories it made the book itself reach out to our emotions surrounding fatherhood.
Some links are alas broken :( Good thing most of the exemples are explained, screenshot or transcribed in the book !!
The use of great memorable exemples the reader can be very familiar with (especially the flickr contest and the tumblr onboarding) is really nice especially with how Walter manages to explain what works and why it does.
Else, a classic structure, lovely, emotional design principles, risks and rewards and how to convince your stakeholders without making them read this whole book.
The 'party pooper mode' stats segment made me die with suspens and delight !!
Some links are alas broken :( Good thing most of the exemples are explained, screenshot or transcribed in the book !!
The use of great memorable exemples the reader can be very familiar with (especially the flickr contest and the tumblr onboarding) is really nice especially with how Walter manages to explain what works and why it does.
Else, a classic structure, lovely, emotional design principles, risks and rewards and how to convince your stakeholders without making them read this whole book.
The 'party pooper mode' stats segment made me die with suspens and delight !!
June 17, 2019
Usually I very much enjoy the breviety of A Book Apart publications, but this one seemed just a bit too shallow.
I'm a huge fan of Mailchimp and the work of emotional design and branding Aarron Walter did there, and was looking forward to understand what were his references and methods. What I found instead, was a loose list of design examples (that now feel quite dated) and bits ultra-pop-psichology threw in as theoretical explanation.
All and all useful, but could just as well have been a Medium post and saved my $15 dolars.
I'm a huge fan of Mailchimp and the work of emotional design and branding Aarron Walter did there, and was looking forward to understand what were his references and methods. What I found instead, was a loose list of design examples (that now feel quite dated) and bits ultra-pop-psichology threw in as theoretical explanation.
All and all useful, but could just as well have been a Medium post and saved my $15 dolars.
November 28, 2017
For such a short book, I was surprised there wasn't more information in it. There are useful points and examples, to be sure, but I expected a lot less fluff. For example, the first chapter makes the case for why Emotional design is important, but this argument is peppered throughout the book, so the first chapter is redundant and offers nothing of value. I would say the material in this book could be condensed into a chapter of a larger scoped book.
March 24, 2021
Really lovely little book. This is the first from A Book Apart that I’ve read, and I’ll certainly be going back for more. It’s not so much a deep dive of information. But it IS non-threatening, and the chapters are short enough that I can fit one into my morning routine before starting work.
Loved the examples for each concept, and particularly appreciated the last chapter talking about how to get other non-design coworkers on board.
Loved the examples for each concept, and particularly appreciated the last chapter talking about how to get other non-design coworkers on board.
April 18, 2021
The book is old so the knowledge written inside is outdated although it can still be applicable (maybe) in the current world.
The writing is underwhelming, although I did take some notes on some of the ideas and facts in this book.
But for me, I will not recommend this book. I can't say it's a useless book, it's just an outdated one, thank god it's just a short book.
I tried to search the companies that were the examples in this book and most of them do not exist anymore.
The writing is underwhelming, although I did take some notes on some of the ideas and facts in this book.
But for me, I will not recommend this book. I can't say it's a useless book, it's just an outdated one, thank god it's just a short book.
I tried to search the companies that were the examples in this book and most of them do not exist anymore.
February 21, 2017
I enjoyed it overall. The examples are great! I would have appreciated more depth to the process of creating a persona to represent a brand. What methods are used to gather the personalities and vibe of a user base so a brand persona can properly be developed?
What other challenges or constraints should we expect in that creation process?
What other challenges or constraints should we expect in that creation process?
May 25, 2018
A bit dated, but still some good points. A design persona can be a useful way of framing design work, but having seen so many chatty designs fail at nuance I find myself opposed to going as far as having the interface act "human". I also question whether some of the short-term "delight" generators mentioned here translated into long-term success. But the other points were well taken.
July 16, 2025
Too old and didn't contain much of timeless examples that would have solidified it as a good read. Contains lots of examples that wouldn’t be as useful in the present day, but still had a few takeaways. I can say I already understood more than 80% of what was talked about. Should have dug deeper into the psychological aspects of things.
March 7, 2018
Acredito que seja um bom livro rápido, de fácil leitura e bem global. Mostra alguns exemplos interessantes para inspirar. Tem alguns insights positivos. Mas não se torna tão provocativo assim.
Foi uma boa leitura de assuntos que nos permeiam nossas leituras atuais no Medium.
Foi uma boa leitura de assuntos que nos permeiam nossas leituras atuais no Medium.
August 24, 2020
A short and concise book that all ui/ux designers should read. My favorite part was where he used Maslow’s Hierarchy of Need to explain how to design for users and the importance of making our designs pleasurable which satisfys the top 2 on the hierarcy:Esteem and then self actualization.
September 29, 2020
Доволі нудна книжка, основний зміст якої можна, на мою думку, можна звести до фрази: "Emotional design isn’t just about copy, photos, or design style. It’s a difference way to about how to communicate".
August 15, 2022
Mainly an interesting case study of Mailchimp's designing for emotion. Was expecting more about designing for emotional situations, but this doesn't really cover that. What it does cover is interesting and useful though!
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