emotional design Articles & Videos

  • Handmade Designs: The New Trust Signal

    In an era of AI-generated-everything, AI-fatigued users want designs that look like they were made by a person.

  • Good Visual Design, Explained

    To create appealing designs, align type and elements to a grid, build a clear visual hierarchy, use color intentionally, and stay consistent with every design choice.

  • The Edge Cases that Break Hearts (And Products)

    Edge cases aren't rare; they're real life. Design for messy situations like name changes, shared accounts, and bad actors from day one.

  • Skeuomorphism

    Skeuomorphism involves designing digital interfaces that imitate physical elements, reducing the learning curve for unfamiliar interactions.

  • Psychology for UX: Study Guide

    Unsure where to start? Use this collection of links to our articles and videos to learn about principles of human psychology and how they relate to UX design.

  • The Anatomy of a Good Design: An Analysis of 4 Sites

    Visually pleasing designs use consistent type styles and spacing, create a visual hierarchy, and utilize an underlying grid structure.

  • Three Pillars of User Delight

    Delight can be experienced viscerally, behaviorally, and reflectively. A great design is supported by all three of these pillars and is best evaluated with specific research methods.

  • Models Matter: A Case for Using Diverse Models on Ecommerce Websites

    Not only do shoppers appreciate model diversity, but they also feel more confident in their purchasing decisions when they see many different people wearing a product.

  • How K-Pop Apps Create the Illusion of Private Messaging with Celebrities

    K-pop’s private messaging apps’ psychological and emotional UX tactics are building an unprecedented digital communication experience between fans and artists.

  • Autonomy, Relatedness, and Competence in UX Design

    Addressing these 3 fundamental psychological needs in our products increases user motivation and well-being. Users will be more engaged and more likely to use our designs.

  • The Golden Ratio and User-Interface Design

    Although traditionally used in art and architecture, the golden ratio can be referenced to design aesthetically pleasing interfaces.

  • Using Color to Enhance Your Design

    To support the user experience, colors need to be combined wisely so that they work together well, do not overwhelm, and communicate the same kind of information everywhere in the interface.

  • Why Does a Design Look Good?

    Visually aesthetic designs use consistent typography, establish a clear hierarchy, utilize a refined color palette, and align to a grid.

  • Visual Hierarchy in UX: Definition

    A clear visual hierarchy guides the eye to the most important elements on the page. It can be created through variations in color and contrast, scale, and grouping.

  • Emojis in Email Subject Lines: Advantage or Impediment? 👍 👎

    Our research shows that emojis in subject lines increase negative sentiment toward an email and do not increase the likelihood of an email being opened.

  • 5 Principles of Visual Design in UX

    The principles of scale, visual hierarchy, balance, contrast, and Gestalt increase usability when applied correctly.

  • What B2B Designers Can Learn from B2C About Building Trust

    Even though B2B and B2C ecommerce sites have different kinds of users, both types of sites can use similar strategies to simplify purchase flows and increase consumer trust.

  • 6 Rules for Persuasive Storytelling

    Stories build empathy and make the user needs and pain points memorable to your team. Effective stories speak the language of the audience, are rooted in data, and take advantage of compelling artifacts.

  • The Peak–End Rule: How Impressions Become Memories

    Cognitive biases change the way that we recall past events. The peak–end rule focuses our memories around the most intense moments of an experience and the way an experience ends.

  • Intelligent Assistants: Creepy, Childish, or a Tool? Users’ Attitudes Toward Alexa, Google Assistant, and Siri

    Users assume that assistants have a low level of competence for complex tasks and find them to be socially awkward to interact with.