How do you evaluate the emotional impact of your UX design?

A few years ago, I was helping a tech startup in revamping their app's onboarding. Initially, it was just about simplifying the sign-up process. But why not try engaging users emotionally? Using Don Norman's Emotional Design Model, we decided to target "curiosity" viscerally and "confidence" behaviorally. Then, we fine-tuned our approach with Plutchik's Wheel of Emotions. We chose to aim for "trust", which led to a more transparent design, and "anticipation", which inspired our teaser content. This wasn't just a regular design process any longer, it was "emotional architecture" :) Guess what was the result? Skyrocketing sign-ups and user feedback raving about users' newfound trust and excitement!

Years ago I worked with a nutrition-based startup called OME Health. At the time, we had a focus of increasing activation and improving the onboarding of our app. After speaking to users, and learning about their motivations, such as: losing weight, improving their energy, etc - I found a really surprising insight. Behind all of the reasons to join, there was a deeper 'why'. Users weren't just joining because they wanted to loose weight, they wanted to 'feel like themselves again', and 'be there for my family'. Understanding his allowed us to design our flow and content writing in a way which taught us that users need to feel confident, and trust that we are going to help them do just that. We connected to their why.

begin by defining the specific emotions you want to evoke in users and align them with your brand values, user needs, and business objectives. Utilize established emotional design frameworks like the Emotional Design Model by Don Norman or Plutchik's Wheel of Emotions to categorize and identify target emotions. Conduct comprehensive user research and usability testing, carefully observing and analyzing how users interact with your design on an emotional level. Pay close attention to visual and interaction elements such as colors, typography, imagery, animations, and micro-interactions, ensuring they resonate with the intended emotional impact. Analyze user feedback, both qualitative and quantitative, and make data-informed design decisions.

Think of it like creating an app. You want it to make people feel a certain way. For instance, if you're making a meditation app, you might want users to feel calm and relaxed. But why do you want them to feel this way? Because it matches what your app is about - helping people de-stress. To figure this out, you can use tools that sort emotions, like a color wheel for feelings. This helps you choose the right emotions that match your app's purpose. So, your meditation app aims to make users feel peaceful, which fits its goal of reducing stress.

Emotional impact in UX starts with intention. Decide which emotions you want users to feel and why. It’s a blend of brand values, user needs, and business goals. Models like Don Norman’s or Plutchik’s can help pinpoint the right emotions.

The best way to evaluate the emotional impact of your experience, is to speak to people. Quantitive metrics are numbers. I'm sure there's a way to deduce emotions, but emotions are human, and need to read them in a human way. Speak to people about memorable moments relevant to your experience. Did your solution help users achieve something they've spent years trying to solve? Did it remove something that's been holding them back? or did it help them become a superhero at their job? Speak to people, be kind, listen, and tell them to walk you through their experience.

Start by defining clear objectives for your UX design. What specific emotions do you want to evoke or measure in your users? For example, are you aiming for joy, trust, frustration reduction, or relaxation? The emotional goals will shape your choice of metrics. UX design is an ongoing process. Continuously gather feedback, refine your metrics, and make improvements to maintain and enhance the emotional impact of your design over time. In short - just talk to people. There's nothing quite like first-hand UX research/survey when trying to evaluate the impact of it.

There are many methods to evaluate users' emotions. such as field research where you have to travel down through remote farm settlements in Africa and open a workshop for farmers or you meet teachers and ask them questions about the edutech software they require to work. A/b testings, and iterative designs with following up with the user can also be a tool for evaluating happiness.

There are a number of different ways to evaluate the emotional impact of UX design. The best method for you will depend on your resources, timeline, and goals. Qualitative methods Quantitative methods Combined methods I believe that the best way to evaluate the emotional impact of UX design is to use a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods. This will give you a more complete and accurate picture of users' emotional responses. By carefully choosing your evaluation methods, you can gain valuable insights into the emotional impact of your UX design and use this information to improve your product or service.

Regarding a specific metric; it depends on what value your trying to deliver and how your delivering it. While in the fitness space, the emotion we wanted to deliver was confidence. Confidence that you could go to the gym and know exactly what and how to do it. The way that was delivered was by making it easy for anyone to create, complete, and track their workouts. Health/fitness is a long game. So while something like workouts per week/month could be a measure of success, the core thing users needed to invoke that feeling of confidence was consistency. One of the best measures from my experience; streaks. They signaled a user experienced the true extent of that emotion and was reminded about our core value prop week after week.

A notepad or a physical book is a good tool especially when you deal with people who can't read or use technological tools like Google Analytics, google forms, and mobile applications.

When choosing tools and metrics to evaluate the emotional impact of your UX design, it is important to consider the following factors: Your evaluation methods: The tools and metrics you choose should be appropriate for the evaluation methods you are using. For example, if you are conducting interviews, you will need different tools and metrics than if you are using analytics. Your goals: What are you trying to learn about the emotional impact of your UX design? The tools and metrics you choose should be able to measure the specific emotional responses that you are interested in. Your expertise: If you are not familiar with a particular tool or metric, you may want to consult with a UX expert.

Helpful tip is to also know your audience. If you're speaking to mostly product managers and directors, beef up your statistics, facts, and numbers as they might respond better to these since that's what their primary interests are.

Once you have collected and analyzed your data, you need to interpret and communicate your results in a meaningful and actionable way. This involves identifying the key insights and patterns that reveal how your UX design affects user emotions and how they relate to your emotional goals. You then need to share your findings and recommendations with your stakeholders and team members in a clear and engaging way. I believe that it is important to interpret and communicate your results in a way that is meaningful and actionable for your stakeholders and team members. This means identifying the key insights and patterns in your data, connecting your findings to your emotional goals, and developing specific recommendations for improvement.

In my experience, the best results bring people together. But it's you, not the results, which should orchestrate that. Bring others along with you from the start. Invite them to the sessions, invite them to post-session calls to talk about the findings, and then keep them engaged with short summaries and clips later on. Taking stakeholders on a learning journey, as opposed to a learning TLDR update, invites them to be so much more engaged.

Think of it like making your app even better after you've seen how people react to it. For instance, if your cooking app wanted people to feel excited about trying new recipes but found they were confused by the layout, you'd make changes. You might rearrange things to make it clearer and more fun. Then, you'd ask people to use the app again and see if they felt more excited. It's like adding extra ingredients to a recipe to make it taste even better. You keep testing and improving until people feel just the way you want them to when they use your app.

Iterating and continually improving your UX (User Experience) design is a fundamental principle in creating user-centered and effective digital products or experiences. Here's a brief overview of the iterative process: 1. Focus on the most important tasks first. Don't try to fix everything at once. 2. Start with small, incremental changes. 3. Use low-fidelity prototypes to test your ideas before you invest too much time and effort into them. 4. Get feedback from users early and often. By following these tips, you can iterate and improve your UX design quickly and efficiently.

Iterating and improving your UX design based on your results and feedback is the last step in evaluating the emotional impact of your design. This involves prioritizing and implementing the changes that can enhance user emotions and achieve your emotional goals. You also need to test and evaluate your design again to measure the impact of your improvements and identify new opportunities for optimization. By iterating and improving your UX design based on your results and feedback, you can create a design that evokes the desired emotional responses from your users and achieves your emotional goals.

Use the insights gained from your evaluation to iterate and refine your design further. Address pain points, enhance positive emotional experiences, and continually improve the emotional impact of your design. Don't forget to continuously test and ask - there's probably not going to be an exact endpoint (if we exclude milestones). Don't forget that you design for people and it should be user oriented. In theory, metrics are great, irl - user feedback is the most important.

When i worked at Fat Llama, we needed to expand the mental model of people renting things, to realise that you can rent anything with our solution, not just the expected norm of cameras and expensive equipment. What helps people expand their understand, in an engaging way? Suprise. Our onboarding flow purposefully placed expected items such as tents, speakers and bikes, to unexpected ones such as board games, kayaks and kitchen mixers. It was surprising. It expanded the idea of what can be rented. It was a way to increase the mental model of onboarding users what is possible.

Measuring user moods and emotions presents a particular difficulty in the dynamic world of User Experience (UX) design. Due to subjectivity, direct tactics are ineffective, which forces the use of indirect strategies. Physiological indicators provide insights, and cultural variety needs a nuanced UX design. Surveys and Likert scales are useful tools, but creating thoughtful questionnaires is essential. Empathetic chats and carefully planned interviews reveal nuances that quantitative measurements could miss in the middle of data. The human touch is still essential. Success in UX design ultimately depends on a confluence of creativity, cultural sensitivity, and a dedication to comprehending the human experience.