Whether you're creating a game or a website, a lasting bond with users is more often than not the result of emotional attachment. Knowing the ins and outs of emotional design will enable you to imbue your creation with personality and to shape the user's perception.
Find out how to integrate emotional appeal into your website, and how to turn your game into more than a cold, flawless, technical challenge. A personal touch can make all the difference, if you know how to design it.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
- Inclusive Design
- The Personality Layer
- Give Your Website Soul With Emotionally Intelligent Interactions
- Not Just Pretty: Building Emotion Into Your Websites
- Playful UX Design: Building A Better Game
- Gamification And UX: Where Users Win Or Lose
- Adding A Personal Touch To Your Web Design
Technical Information
- Formats: PDF, EPUB, Kindle (DRM-free)
- Pages: 122 (in PDF)
- Language: English
- Released: January 2013
- Publisher: Smashing Media GmbH
- ISBN: 978-3-943075-57-1
Excerpt From Chapter 1
Inclusive Design — by
We’ve come a long way since the days of the first Macintosh and the introduction of graphical user interfaces, going from monochrome colors to millions, from estranged mice to intuitive touchscreens, from scroll bars to pinch, zoom, flick and pan. But while hardware, software and the people who use technology have all advanced dramatically over the past two decades, our approach to designing interfaces has not. Advanced technology is not just indistinguishable from magic (as Arthur C. Clarke said); it also empowers us and becomes a transparent part of our lives. While our software products have definitely empowered us tremendously, the ways by which we let interfaces integrate with our lives has remained stagnant for all these years.
In the accessibility industry, the word “inclusive” is relatively commonplace; but inclusive design principles should not be reserved for the realm of accessibility alone, because they apply to many more people than “just” the lesser-abled. Interface designers frequently think in binary terms: either all of the interface is in front of you or none of it is. But people are not binary. People aren’t either fully disabled or not at all, just like they aren’t merely old or young, dumb or smart, tall or short. People sit along a vast spectrum of who they are and what they are like; the same is true when they use interfaces, except that this spectrum is of expertise, familiarity, skill, expectations and so on.
Excerpt From Chapter 4
Not Just Pretty: Building Emotion Into Your Websites — by
Emotional design has become a powerful tool in creating exceptional user experiences for websites. However, emotions did not use to play such an important role on the Web. Actually, they did not use to play any role at all; rather, they were drowned by a flood of rational functionality and efficiency.
We were so busy trying to adapt to the World Wide Web as a new medium that we lost sight of its full potential. Instead of using the Internet on our terms, we adapted to its technical and, at first, impersonal nature. If it wasn’t for visionary contemporaries such as Don Norman or Aarron Walter, we might still be focusing on improving processes, neglecting the potential of emotional design.
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