Attractive Things Work Better  

Until recently, emotion was an ill-explored part of human psychology. Some people thought it an evolutionary left-over from our animal origins. Most thought of emotions as a problem to be overcome by rational, logical thinking. And most of the research focused upon negative emotions such as fear, anxiety, and anger. Modern work has completely reversed this view.

Norman, Donald A. JND.org (2003). Design>User Interface>User Experience>Emotions

The Best Faces for the Screen

It doesn't matter how many hours of video and megabytes of graphics can be stuffed onto a silver platter, typefaces still serve an essential function that can't be duplicated by other means--transmitting complex intellectual and emotional messages in a very concise and precise way.

Will-Harris, Daniel. Typofile. Design>Typography>Fonts>Emotions

Communicating Emotions Effectively in Online Learning Environments  

This paper presents an analysis of the various textual and visual ways that emotions are typically communicated in online learning environments. It also looks at the importance (and limitations) of both verbal and nonverbal online communication from the perspective of Daniel Goleman’s concept of “emotional intelligence.” Descriptions of three case studies demonstrate situations that involve emotionally-based student-instructor interactions that could have become problematic without the instructor’s awareness of the actual emotional issues involved. The paper concludes with a set of recommended guidelines for instructors addressing emotions in online learning situations.

Shirk, Henrietta Nickels. STC Proceedings (2005). Articles>Education>Online>Emotions

Dealing with “Enronitis”: Written Communications for Building Investor Confidence  

Recently, investor confidence has deteriorated, in part due to the discovery of fraud at several large companies. As a result, many communications from those in the financial industry have attempted to regain investor trust and confidence. This paper reports my analysis of five such communications and the themes I found appearing in them: need for trust, history of continuous improvement, continued existence of high ethical and professional standards, and investor wisdom. In writing trust-building communications, technical communicators should note: trust is built in several ways, history does not always repeat itself, and emotions are very powerful factors in decision-making.

Bloch, Janel M. STC Proceedings (2003). Articles>Writing>Business Communication>Emotions

Design and Emotion

Emotion is one of the strongest differentiators in user experience namely because it triggers unconscious responses to a product, website, environment or interface. Our feelings strongly influence our perceptions and often frame how we think about or refer to our experiences at a later date.

Spillers, Frank. Demystifying Usability (2004). Articles>Usability>User Experience>Emotions

Digital Fashion

Design is the visual expression of thoughts and feelings, and combines rational and emotional conditions. In digital media the focus is shifted to functionality, primarily because the development is rapid and it takes a lot just to understand the options. This is as truer for users as it is true for designers. Once this phase is over and the standards are set, there will be a growing demand for more refined design solutions: projects that communicate and not just deliver information. Rationality rules at the surface, anything that turns the focus of the users awareness to something specific happens earlier and the motivation comes from the deeper levels of the soul. The whole fuzzy composition is very influential before the content is clearly rendered, if it ever gets clear at all; Sites are in the same situation as billboards, they have to grab the attention of the visitor in the first moment without having him to think about something specific. In a more and more competitive environment there is always an

Jenett, Daniel. Digital Web Magazine (1999). Design>Graphic Design>Aesthetics>Emotions

(e)Xpressive Markup Language?

Conveying the emotional tone of a Web page has, up until now, been impossible with HTML, and the XML standard fails to address this issue. As an interim solution, developers have proposed several new tags to the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C).

Hart, Geoffrey J.S. Geoff-Hart.com (1998). Humor>Computing>XML>Emotions

Effective Visual Communication  

Communication conveys 'facts, concepts and emotions.' To convey something, one requires a language and a medium. A language requires letters, words, sentences and rules of usage (=grammar).

Mullangath, Sinoj. STC India (2003). Articles>Communication>Visual Rhetoric>Emotions

The Emerging Role of Emotional Intelligence in Business Communication Classes  

Communication is a major component of emotional intelligence models. While we teach persuasive writing, presentations, bad news, good news, and you orientation in our business communication classes, to date we have not looked at the effects emotional intelligence has on our teaching. Emotional intelligence encompasses all areas that we teach in business communication. The purpose of this paper is to show how emotional intelligence is a part of what makes some people good business communicators and others poor ones. If we knew which students had a high-level or which had a low level of emotional intelligence, hypothetically that information could help us teach business communication concepts more efficiently in our classrooms.

Martin, Jeanette S. Association for Business Communication (2004). Articles>Education>Business Communication>Emotions

Emotion & Design: Attractive Things Work Better

Advances in our understanding of emotion and affect have implications for the science of design. Affect changes the operating parameters of cognition: positive affect enhances creative, breadth-first thinking whereas negative affect focuses cognition, enhancing depth-first processing and minimizing distractions. Therefore, it is essential that products designed for use under stress follow good human-centered design, for stress makes people less able to cope with difficulties and less flexible in their approach to problem solving. Positive affect makes people more tolerant of minor difficulties and more flexible and creative in finding solutions. Products designed for more relaxed, pleasant occasions can enhance their usability through pleasant, aesthetic design. Aesthetics matter: attractive things work better.

Norman, Donald A. JND.org (2002). Design>Web Design>Usability>Emotions

Emotional Design: Communicating an Experience

Today communicating is not always about a single message but an entire experience. One of the reasons the Web and the Internet has gained in popularity is not only because of its commercialization but because users can dynamically interact with it. Walker Gibson uses the term 'mock reader' to describe when a reader accepts the role within a story that an author has presented. The authors of Web sites, the designers, create an experience that immerses the site visitor or viewer into the Web site. A successful Web site designer has the ability to create a 'mock Web visitor' who becomes completely immersed emotionally in the site the designer has created.

Chinn, Darryl. EServer (2001). Design>Web Design>Visual Rhetoric>Emotions

Emotional Factors for Mobile Business Success

How do emotion, meaning and identity shape the design and rapid adoption of mobile devices and services? China is a wonderful place to study this topic.

Braiterman, Jared and Yue Yu. uiGarden (2007). Articles>Business Communication>Technology>Emotions

The Emotional Potential of The Web

The Internet can connect people who are continents apart, in a way that is genuinely one-on-one and filled with emotion.

Usborne, Nick. Excess Voice (2002). Articles>Cyberculture>Online>Emotions

Emotions Trigger The Right Moves

We pump out a lot of information about product features and benefits on the Web, but have you taken a look at how much -- or maybe how little -- we use emotional appeals to help customers buy our products? Take a look at how customers make purchase decisions.

Allen, Cliff. Allen.com (2001). Articles>Business Communication>Marketing>Emotions

The Emotive Value of Professional Communication and Use of Emotional Intelligence in Mangement

Now there is a growing body of science in the field of Emotional Intelligence (EI), indicating that the proper understanding and use of emotions can help us to be more effective professionals and better communicators for the overall development of a learning organization. This paper provides an overview of this topic and includes commentary from EI experts Daniel Goleman, Peter Salovey, and others to prove how one can effectively manipulate EI. This paper also highlights the components of EI and how they can be used to help employees create more productive working relationships inside and outside their organization. Through an analysis of various models of EI competencies available, this paper argues how they can be combined with other knowledge and technical capabilities to increase one’s overall effectiveness on the job.

Kumar Panda, Prasanta. International Journal for Technical Communication (2008). Articles>Business Communication>Management>Emotions

Exploring Types and Characteristics of Product Forms  

Incorporating emotional value into products has become an essential strategy for increasing a product's competitive edge in the consumer market. It is therefore important for product manufacturers to understand how products affect consumers' emotions. This study was undertaken to investigate the types and characteristics of household products that elicit pleasurable responses, in particular among young, college-age consumers. The results of the study could suggest the types and characteristics to consider when developing pleasurable products aimed at young consumers.

Chang, Wen-chih and Tyan-Yu Wu. International Journal of Design (2007). Design>User Interface>User Experience>Emotions

From GUI to E(motional) UI

How ironic that we think we can get more exact results from our computers by emulating human interaction, but when we want exact results from human interaction, we unintentionally emulate computers. Engineering, air traffic control, legal contracts--in all endeavors where precise communication is critical--our success has depended on washing out human emotion and natural language in favor of formal procedures and protocols, complete with a detailed domain-specific language.

Agro, Leandro. UXmatters (2006). Articles>User Centered Design>User Interface>Emotions

Global Market, Global Emotion, Global Design?

In the current discussion of where design is going and what matters, there is an emphasis on the user and his or her (emotional) experience. It is a hot topic in books, blogs and the minds of industrial designers and interaction designers, worldwide. The importance of a focus on (emotional) experiences in addition to a merely technological or functional focus is being stressed by professionals with many different cultural backgrounds.

van Hout, Marco. uiGarden. Articles>User Centered Design>User Experience>Emotions

Hot Cogntion: Emotions and Writing Behavior  

Although contemporary psychologists generally acknowledge the significance of affect in human experience, few attempts have been made to understand its role in cognitive processes. Important books on cognition barely mention the subject of emotion, feeling, or sentiment. Unlike the strictly cognitive and physiological psycholoúgists, social psychologists are deeply concerned with affect. These psychologists contend that to consider people dispassionate, information processing systems is a poor if not badly inaccurate model of the human being. A positivistic psychology has been too “cold' to carry the entire motivational burden. What is needed is some way to heat up cognition—a theory that unites the cognitively blind but arousing system of affect with the subtle cognitive apparatus. In an otherwise cold-blooded tradition of cognitive science and flow chart intelligence, the idea of hot cognition became a major humanizing counterstatement during the mid 1960s and early 1970s.

Brand, Alice G. JAC (1985). Articles>Rhetoric>Emotions>Cognitive Psychology

How Do Users Really Feel About Your Design?

The user experience field has been trying to move beyond mere usability and utility for years. So far, no one seems to have developed easy-to-implement, non-retrospective, valid, and reliable measures for gauging users' emotional reactions to a system, application, or Web site. In this column, I'll introduce you to a promising method that just might solve this problem.

Sherman, Paul J. UXmatters (2007). Design>User Experience>User Centered Design>Emotions

Implementing Excellence  

Have you been exposed to one or more quality initiatives? Did this exposure leave you with strong but mixed emotional reactions? In a complex environment of organizational risk and change, how do we as communicators do the right thing the right way? Changes are so rapid that before one new vision of what’s right is fully implemented, it seems that another, even better vision comes in to take its place. By using a Japanese model for customer satisfaction, the product information quality initiatives at my company were implemented in three broad areas: quality assurance and control, quality performance and improvement, and quality excitement and planning.

Goodier, Katherine S. STC Proceedings (1993). Presentations>Collaboration>Assessment>Emotions

Making Emotional Connections Through Participatory Design

Most of the people we talk to believe that the desired end result of experience design is an emotional connection between a person and her experience with a product or service. When a company is able to make them, such connections can have a positive impact on the company’s brand.

Gage, Marty and Preetham Kolari. Boxes and Arrows (2002). Design>User Centered Design>User Experience>Emotions

Mystery Fiction and the Technical Communicator: Emotion Separates Fiction from Fact   

Although technical documents and mysteries share certain characteristics, emotion separates the two types of writing. Mystery fiction may be popular among technical communicators because it engages both the analytical and the emotive parts of the readers' personality. This panel presentation describes techniques that mystery authors use to trigger readers' emotions. An awareness of these techniques can help technical communicators understand their affection for mysteries and stay clear about the purpose of their own work.

Jennings, Ann S. STC Proceedings (1999). Articles>Writing>TC>Emotions

Panic! How it Works and What To Do About It

When we create technologies that are extremely complex and do not provide comprehensive feedback for each and every possible error, such as a seat belt left unbuckled, people have a tendency to drive their aircraft into garden parties. When we create technologies where similar actions produce dissimilar results, such as placing a brake and accelerator pedal side-by-side, to be actuated in the identical manner by the identical limb, people will periodically die.

Tognazzini, Bruce. Nielsen Norman Group (2004). Design>User Interface>User Centered Design>Emotions