• 10/02/2023
  • 10

The future of mobile design led by emotional intelligence

The use of design elements to elicit positive emotions of happiness, delight, joy, trust, satisfaction in users is emotionally intelligent design. This narrative has become of core essence in the mobile UX design sector with a proven record of increase in user engagement and loyalty. The rise of mobile devices, its use in almost every part of our lives – designing for an emotionally intelligent experience for mobile application is more critical now than ever. AI and ML play a vital role in developing these emotional connections with help to data analysis and prediction.

An emotional connection is vital to build for business as emotions are essential for all users to build trust and a lasting relationship with a brand. For they are key to making our daily decisions and what we choose to do. Knowingly or unknowingly, humans are largely driven by their emotions hence their purchases are most likely influenced or driven by a feeling. Emotion sells – the marketing and advertising world would be the first ones to agree to this.

When we talk of mobile applications and websites, UX design is huge consideration businesses often put on the back burner. There is a need for brands to consider the implication of opportunity lost when UX design is not one of the top priorities. With the global population seeking shopping experiences online, a mere product display is not enough. The presentation and site experience should allow for the user to connect with the brand ideology, their storyline, and the product features.

Also read: What is white space in design and why is it important

Design is meant to be consumed by people – to indulge and engage them into unique experiences. When a designer knows who his customers are and what they need to build the design around from an emotionally intelligent viewpoint, the brand’s experience will lure in the customers. When a designer works to harness the power of emotions in UX design, emotional intelligence comes into picture. And here’s why emotional intelligence matters in the world of UX:

A. Build lasting connections:

Emotions prevails when it comes to building long lasting customer relationships that engage them in a feeling of joy, positivity and helps them to be more attached to the brand.

B. Keep the audience hooked:

A successful UX design with emotional connect offers customer retention and low bounce rate. A great UX design strategy will build a user-friendly toolkit for a great navigation experience.

C. Build and sustain a competitive advantage:

With good emotional designs that are practical, sleek, and meaningful – one can come out as an industry leader and build a unique client base with first user advantage.

D. Drive conversions:

An emotionally intelligent design with lure in the customer, build a connection, engage the user towards a call to action that usually helps to convert them into a customer.

E. Foster a culture of trust:

Empathy acts as a key element in emotionally intelligent design. A designer puts himself in the shoes of the user to identify emotional points – happy or painful – to address them and aid the customer to experience without hesitation or reservations. This helps to foster brand credibility.

F. Retain and serve your customers better:

With data analysis – designers can understand if the users are more inclined to swipe than scroll and understand what experiences are able to trigger positive memories – both aspects helping in serving new customers and retaining the existing ones.

Also read: Product design: Crafting intricate design for wearable technology

Designers use several elements in their overall design to help evoke certain human emotions. These elements in design range from colour, typography, imagery, graphics, motion/ animations – all these collectively or individually can help to guide a user to a certain positive emotion leading to a call to action.

Colour: A particular colour may hold a stronger connotation in one culture than others. Some colours act as a warning sign, or information holder to make sure the user is aware of the action they are taking. For example, red is often used to warn the user or highlight something urgent and top priority.

Type: Different type styles read differently to us. When something is written in bold and capital, users tend to eyeball that first – as it is meant to catch immediate attention. A cursive type will appeal to our creative and explorative side.

Emoticons and other imagery: A text message with emoticons helps the users to identify the tone of the written content. Similarly, a background image of a sunset at a beach with coconut water brings the user to a calm, joyful and peaceful sensation of a vacation.

Each element holds a powerful narrative in design and user interaction with each aids the designers to build storylines in UX design that are directly linked with users’ emotions.

Also read: Nike’s design innovation strategy 

If you may still wonder how over a mobile application can this emotional connection be fosters, here’s how:

Creative guide

For first-time users, an emotionally intelligent design will offer them a walkthrough like someone is actually taking them through the use – where to start, how to find what you are looking for, what to do next. The connection and engagement start from the very first time after all.

Creative direction to related context

If a user is searching for something that may not be available or found, a creative way for an emotionally intelligent design is to guide the user to related recommendations and be more creative with the message than simply display an error message that may lead the user to be frustrated.

Creative Interaction and engagement

Good UX design is one that interacts with its user to make sure they are engaged and impressed. Animated and motion design pages and transitions are known to be rather successful for this in mobile application. They keep the content engaging, help the brand to build small games within the app to make the experiences more enjoyable and memorable.

Creative marketing

When there is application of brain science in the field of marketing -we enter the dimension of neuromarketing. It works with building marketing strategies by tapping into the human emotional needs.

To appeal to a consumer’s both subconscious and conscious brain – visual elements and voice elements become instrumental in evoking positive emotions in the users while also helping them to eliminate rational thinking.

For example: Zomato works exceptionally well with their order food ads, most of us have gone with their witty one-liners and ads on social platform and ordered a meal in the middle of the day simply because the offer was irresistible, or we were enticed by the melting cheese on the pizza that popped up on our screen.

Also read: Strate x Tata Motors partnership

Emotional UI and UX lead to target this impulse in users and also help marketers to build creatively effective lead generation forms. As we move into a world integrated and connected with emerging technologies, emotionally intelligent design would be the base point for each brand. For designers to help one design stand out from another, they will need to work with available data and focus on the elements their users are mostly likely to respond to. Images of fresh juicy burgers work well for the food sector while a fashion retail giant may need to embrace the cultural connotation of their global audiences to build unique connections.

When designing for emotionally intelligent design, designer should:

– Consider their users’ needs – does video work better or will they respond better to graphics?
– Consider replacing text with voice or graphics – the hyperconnected world is fast moving towards voice search and recognition – designers should pay attention to the future of vernacular content.

– Consider testing with inclusivity in mind – the more inclusion of differently abled and different background users – the better your design will perform with more choice for you to improve the experience of your intended users.

Also read: Multi-sensory typography: Engaging different sense with words

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