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Emotionally Intelligent Design Ignite Presentation Shane Austin | @scdaustin

Emotionally Intelligent Design - Ignite Presentation

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Slides from my ignite talk on Emotionally Intelligent design at Okanagan Developers Group on Decmber 13th, 2011.

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Page 1: Emotionally Intelligent Design - Ignite Presentation

Emotionally Intelligent DesignIgnite Presentation

Shane Austin | @scdaustin

Page 2: Emotionally Intelligent Design - Ignite Presentation

We humans project ourselves into so much

of what we see. As we gaze at the world,

we discover ourselves looking back. When

we stare at the clouds, or inspect the grain

of a gnarled piece of wood, inevitably we’ll

construct the image of a face in our mind’s

eye. We are accidental narcissists seeking

that which we know best—ourselves.

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Emotionally Intelligent Design assumes that everything we interact with is “preprogrammed” with information that we can read and feel with our senses.

We live every day navigating through turbulent waters of information, interactions and decisions. How things are designed has a huge impact on the outcomes of these relationships.

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Page 5: Emotionally Intelligent Design - Ignite Presentation

“Emotional Intelligence”. It’s not a new concept and was introduced to me in Daniel Goldman’s book “Emotional Intelligence: Why it can matter more than IQ”.

It states that the definition of EI is simply “The ability to use your emotions in a positive and constructive way in relationships with others.”

Emotional intelligence is the ability to understand and express your emotions to meet the requirements of day-to-day living, learning, and relating to others.

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Page 7: Emotionally Intelligent Design - Ignite Presentation

EI is used in every day life. It provides “steering” to get us through many challenging situations. We propel ourselves using guiding emotions like fear, love and courage.

Many call this innate ability being able to “read people”. Those of us with a high level of Emotional Intelligence tend to be very good at building relationships and have a prominent place in their social circle or community.

Those without Emotional Intelligence may be prone to live their lives with anxiety, disconnection or exhibit disruptive behaviours.

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Emotional Intelligence is seen in things we design. We can provide the same steering mechanisms through effective design. Positive emotions; helpfulness, empathy, education, friendly, guidance.

Products and brands can act as avatars to help guide us through decision making processes.

Even a well designed graphic can provide navigation propel a user through a complex website structure.

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Page 11: Emotionally Intelligent Design - Ignite Presentation

Emotional Intelligence can be seen in every day things like signs, products, people.

For many things the design is inherent or natural and for others it is something that can be created or acquired.

You could separate them into intrinsic or extrinsic design features.

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Page 13: Emotionally Intelligent Design - Ignite Presentation

Emotionally Intelligent Products often display EI through personification or even more subtle traits to affect our perceptions. Smart product designers know that our inhibitions can be dissolved quickly when we see something familiar or humanlike in design.

we know that the Android robot is intelligent, amiable and helpful

we know that the Apple finder is organized, connected and inoffensive

Look at virtually any child’s toy and see the glowing personalities of familiar beings.

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Emotionally Intelligent People have an innate gift for communication and understanding — even their appearance and demeanour affect our perceptions

Through watching their behaviour we are often forced to react uncontrollably, giving in to our emotions.

Listen to the wisdom of the Dali LlamaFeel the persuasion of marketer Guy KawasakiOr get mushy to the gurgling and giggling of Babies

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Page 17: Emotionally Intelligent Design - Ignite Presentation

We see a great variety of Emotional Intelligence in animals and nature.

Everything from dangerous predators, lush untamed rain forests, and destructive Tornadoes. We’ve been programmed over thousands of years to understand the hidden meanings behind these things.

The very survival of our species has been dependent on learning which natural phenomenon to avoid and which to seek out.

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Daniel Pink often blogs about Emotionally Intelligent Signs.

Signage is specifically designed to emote messages meant to compel us to think. The more embedded ‘subliminal’ the messages, the easier it is for our brains to digest.

Example: In case of fire, exit building before tweeting about it.

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What can we learn from Emotionally Intelligent Design and how can we use it?

By understanding the solidified human perceptions we can create experiences that communicate more clearly and compel audiences to react.

By utilizing Emotional Intelligence designers can motivate, educate and inspire.

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Real world examples of Emotionally Intelligent Design being used out there in the wild.

I’ll cite examples ranging from brands to user interfaces to products. Hopefully you’ll be able to spot many more instances of this type of emotional design after my presentation.

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Page 25: Emotionally Intelligent Design - Ignite Presentation

Clearleft designed a usability testing app named Silverback. The ape is a character personification of the product; stable, strong and somewhat human through it’s ape-ness.

It’s clear that the designers of this app wanted us to identify with the brands persona and had a firm understanding of their desired target customers while developing the brand’s spokesperson, or spokes ape.

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Page 27: Emotionally Intelligent Design - Ignite Presentation

Coda is a website design and development app made by Panic. They added visual metaphors to give the user instant cognitive directions on how to perform basic tasks like opening website projects.

Coda also understood that writing code requires a great deal of focus so they design of the app would need to be task focussed and distraction free.

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Page 29: Emotionally Intelligent Design - Ignite Presentation

Objects like this wine opener designed by Metrokane. It perfectly balances form and function—its elegant design makes it easy to use.

Industrial design is a craft where practitioners understand that how a product looks and feels is just as important as how it works.

Take a look at virtually any modern mobile device and you can see they paid special attention to the details that make people feel good while they use the phone.

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Page 31: Emotionally Intelligent Design - Ignite Presentation

I’ve put together some steps that could be used to bring more Emotional Intelligence into designs.

The first is understanding.

Much like a professional actor taking on a part you will need to form a profile of your audience. Study the traits, needs and desires, strengths and weaknesses so that you can form insights into their behaviours.

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Page 33: Emotionally Intelligent Design - Ignite Presentation

Next you would create a delivery mechanism for your message.

Knowing your user or audience, what will stimulate them emotionally and provoke them to engage? Embedding a lifelike personality or human characteristic will pry open the doors on your viewer’s defenses.

You might choose fearful imagery if it were for a home fire emergency instruction or cute and friendly character if it were a product made to clean up toddler ‘messes’.

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Next you would define basic interaction patterns and reaction points.

Knowing your audience you can make educated guesses on how they might react when surprised, rewarded or directed.

The more emotional or personal you get, the stronger the reaction.

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Finally, you’ll need to capture as much data as possible in order to fine tune presentation.

Collect audience feedback through studying their behaviour. Did they react as you expected? Why and why not?

Analyzing this chain of input and output will get you closer to your mark with huge benefits.

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Page 39: Emotionally Intelligent Design - Ignite Presentation

My resources:

Drive by Daniel Pink

Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ by Daniel Coleman

Designing for Emotion by Aaron Walters

Honest Signals: How They Shape Our World by Alex Pentland

Images from Stock.XCHNGE