What emotional triggers should designers be aware of when conducting user research?

1 What are emotional triggers?

Emotional triggers are stimuli that evoke strong emotional reactions in people, such as anger, fear, sadness, joy, or disgust. These triggers can be internal or external, conscious or subconscious, and vary from person to person. For example, some people may feel anxious when they see a spider, while others may feel curious. Some people may feel nostalgic when they hear a certain song, while others may feel indifferent. Emotional triggers can also be influenced by factors such as culture, context, mood, and personality.

2 Why do emotional triggers matter in user research?

Emotional triggers are important to consider during user research as they can affect how participants behave, think, and feel. These triggers can influence how participants perceive and interact with your product or service, and how they express their feedback and opinions. Additionally, emotional triggers can impact the level of trust and cooperation between the researcher and participant, as well as how the participant deals with stress, frustration, confusion, or boredom during the research session. Furthermore, positive or negative memories, associations, or expectations triggered by the research can bias or enrich the data collected.

4 How to manage emotional triggers in user research?

Managing emotional triggers in user research requires using your emotional intelligence skills to empathize with your participants, respect their boundaries, and support their needs. To do this, you should prepare yourself and your participants for the research session by setting clear expectations, explaining the purpose and process, and obtaining informed consent. Additionally, building rapport and trust with your participants is important, so use active listening, open-ended questions, positive reinforcement, and humor. Acknowledge and validate your participants' emotions by expressing empathy, curiosity, and appreciation. Additionally, provide choices and control to your participants by allowing them to skip or modify questions or tasks, take breaks, or end the session early. Finally, debrief and follow up with your participants by thanking them, summarizing the key findings, asking for feedback, and providing resources or support.

5 How to adapt to different user research methods?

Different user research methods can present both challenges and opportunities for dealing with emotional triggers. Surveys and questionnaires may be less likely to elicit emotional triggers, so you could use rating scales, open-ended questions, or follow-up interviews to measure and explore participants' emotions. Interviews and focus groups may be more likely to elicit emotional triggers, so you could use probing questions, reflective statements, or storytelling techniques to understand and validate participants' emotions. Usability tests and user observations may trigger frustration, confusion, or boredom, but they can also be useful in revealing emotional pain points and opportunities. To address this, think-aloud protocols, task scenarios, or debriefing questions can be used to monitor and discuss participants' emotions.

6 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?