Emotion UX on Speckyboy Design Magazine https://speckyboy.com/topic/emotion-ux/ Resources & Inspiration for Creatives Tue, 21 Jan 2025 15:18:28 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://speckyboy.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/cropped-sdm-favicon-32x32.png Emotion UX on Speckyboy Design Magazine https://speckyboy.com/topic/emotion-ux/ 32 32 How Empathy & Personalized Interfaces Can Help Improve UX https://speckyboy.com/empathy-personalized-interfaces-ux/ https://speckyboy.com/empathy-personalized-interfaces-ux/#respond Wed, 18 Sep 2024 07:12:58 +0000 https://speckyboy.com/?p=93642 Personalization and intuitiveness are integral parts of modern web design and are vital to crafting amazing user experiences.

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Web design trends can pivot on a dime, but some design concepts have proven their efficacy and timelessness. Two of these concepts, personalization, and intuitiveness, are integral parts of modern web design and are vital to crafting amazing user experiences.

Thanks to modern developments, it’s easier than ever to capitalize on these design concepts to the benefit of the user. To leverage these concepts effectively, designers have to empathize with their users.

Empathy Drives UX

To create amazing UX, you definitely need a different approach. Unless you empathize with your users, it can be hard to understand what they are looking for when they land on your site. You need to be honest in guiding users while understanding their requirements.

With users in mind, look at their different perspectives and give them engaging solutions.

If you have trouble with this, step away for a moment – what would your mother feel like if she visited your site? How would that differ from your college-aged cousin? Whether you choose your mother or your cousin matters – who are you talking to with your site?

Get to know your audience a lot better by understanding their demographic. Figure out how their needs can be best addressed. Simultaneously, focus on result-driven solutions that will attract them.

Modern businesses have plenty of data at their fingertips, so it shouldn’t be too hard to figure out who your target demographic is.

That information can be used to engage customers, and customers – happy to see a brand they know is targeting them – will engage back.

personalized mobile use.jpg

To do this, brands need to make a solid first impression and establish value and reliability to consumers as quickly as possible.

If you’ve spent time getting to know them and implementing practices that makes their UX easier, they will feel it. Failing this, consumers will look elsewhere and see what competitors have to offer.

Most contemporary business strategies use data collected from their audiences and user bases to craft new tactics for generating brand interest and making connections to customers.

Data drives the modern world, and it’s critical for designers to leverage the insights gained from data to the benefit of their customers.

This aligns seamlessly with overall business goals: you analyze your data to see what customers are most interested in buying, which pieces of your content they enjoy the most, and how much time they spend engaging with you.

While companies leverage these data trends to provide better customer goods and services, these insights can also help web designers create better user experiences for their consumers online.

Intuitive Web Design

When you visit a website, you generally have a better overall experience if you can quickly and easily navigate around the site and find what you need.

When web designers imagine what their customers are going to want to see on their sites, they can devise more intuitive user experiences. Anticipate how a user will want to engage with the site and design it with functionality and usability in mind.

Intuitive design hinges on knowledge of your customers and understanding their goals and reasons for engaging with your brand. Customer profiling, or the concept behind defining your ideal customer types, is crucial to intuitive design.

intuitive web design

Depending on the type of business you conduct, the typical customers you serve, and the overall culture and mission of a company, potential website designs can vary widely. The first step in effective, intuitive design is taking the time to understand your customers.

Design for Users, Not Search Engines

Once you know who you are targeting, you must establish value to them. This means proving your relevance in your market and showing customers what sets your brand apart from the competition.

This matters in web design, too. Countless companies use cookie-cutter templates for their websites, and stuff them full of keyword-laden, generic content to improve their search result rankings.

It’s imperative for modern web designers to avoid falling into the trap of designing for search engine bots rather than actual users.

Search engine giants like Google and Bing regularly update their search result algorithms. This practice aims to create a more level playing field for every brand vying for top search result page positions.

In turn, you must find new ways to make the search engine rules work in your brand’s favor.

In years past, getting the top spot in search result rankings depended on a web designers’ ability to make their sites easily readable for the bots that crawl through web pages to determine value.

Now, most search engines prioritize sites optimized for human browsing, penalizing sites that use exploitative tactics like keyword stuffing to reach the top spots.

Think about who will be visiting your site and what they will need to find, want to see, and which kinds of content they’ll enjoy. In many cases, this may require quite a bit of testing.

You’ll need to carefully define your customer profiles and determine where they spend their time online, which social media networks they use, how they prefer to consume content, and what types of content they tend to share.

Once you have an understanding of the type of customer you want to attract, it’s much easier to design a website built around providing that customer type with a stellar experience.

Personalization Takes Intuitive Design Deeper

While intuitive design aims to provide various general customer types with fantastic experiences, personalization takes this endeavor further and strives to generate functionality and content tailored to individual users’ preferences.

Many services like email clients, social media platforms, bill paying websites, and various eCommerce sites provide their users with a plethora of customization options. Users can tailor their experiences how they like, only seeing the content and information that most appeals to them.

amazon personalized

Customization vs. Personalization

Customization can be enjoyable for many users, but ultimately personalization has a more profound effect.

Some of your users may not want to have to tailor their experiences themselves, or may not realize the option is available. They’ll assume the site’s apparent clumsiness is the fault of the designer, not their own, for failing to investigate how much they can customize on their own.

When you employ user data to craft personalized experiences, it conveys that you are paying attention to your users and want them to have a fantastic experience.

For example, in Android’s BBC News app, users can select their preferred news topics and access them quickly in the ‘My News’ section of the app.

bbc news app customization

Most modern consumers likely engage with highly personalized designs on a regular basis without realizing it.

As we all know that if you regularly sign into a Google account to read emails, browse the web, pay your bills, and make purchases, you probably agreed to allow Google to collect your user data as part of your end-user license agreement.

Google collects your data to determine your habits and which aspects of the web you find most appealing.

Eventually, you’ll notice the advertisements shown on various websites resonate with your interests, and may even directly relate to products and services you’ve purchased or researched in the past.

Personalized Data Creates the Best UX

Ultimately, customers must make peace with the fact that their user data is a valuable commodity to the businesses that advertise to them. By providing companies with this data, users will eventually start to have more meaningful and engaging experiences with those companies.

Data is a critical element for achieving this, but solid design matters just as much. If users aren’t enjoying the time they spend on your site, it doesn’t matter how much time and money you’ve invested in researching them.

Great user experiences in web design should be a marriage of artistry and functionality. We’re growing closer to a world in which every internet user has a unique, carefully tailored experience on the internet.

Web designers should strive to make this a reality on a smaller scale with their own websites. Intuitive and personalized design will invariably generate better.

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Improve UX by Understanding What Compels Human Behavior https://speckyboy.com/improve-ux-human-behavior/ https://speckyboy.com/improve-ux-human-behavior/#comments Mon, 16 Sep 2024 09:14:09 +0000 https://speckyboy.com/?p=88683 How understanding human behavior can lead to improved UX, creating more intuitive and satisfying digital experiences.

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When assessing the effectiveness of a website’s design, we often look at numbers. After all, numbers don’t lie. We track bounce rates, engagement rates, or spikes or dips in organic traffic, and then derive conclusions based on observable trends.

However, designers tend to overlook one crucial element in favor of logic, statistics, and everything our rational mind can cook up. It is the one thing that user experience designer Aaron Walter described as “the lingua franca of humanity”: Emotions.

Why Emotional Websites Work

Consider how cigarette packs are designed with graphic images of diseases caused by smoking; how a humorous commercial that went viral on social media increases awareness of a cause; or how sex sells in pop songs.

The same concept applies to web design.

Emotional web design deliberately affects the feelings of site visitors through the colors, fonts, call-to-action buttons, even down to the last image and words used in the body text.

Appealing to your users’ emotions work because it:

  • Shows that there is a human being behind the website. Visitors would feel that they are not talking to machines; rather, human beings they can relate to and actually converse with.
  • Puts human beings front and center. A website designed for emotions are more human-centric, as opposed to a website made for search engines algorithms or any other site metric. It goes back to the core of UX – that is, to build a website to ultimately benefit the user.
  • Helps customers be reminded of you. When done right, an emotional web design leaves a longer lasting imprint in the memories of visitors. A memorable image that, for instance, they were able to emotionally connect with would make them stay on your website more. The more time they spend on your site, the more they lose interest in competitors.
  • Influences decision making. Some of the most powerful advertisements appeal to emotions. They work because they tap into the desire or fear of a customer that would ultimately make them decide to buy. Numerous studies have been conducted establishing how emotions affect buying behavior, be it online or offline.
  • Establishes relationships with customers. Connecting with customers is the Holy Grail of marketing campaigns, as this is the first step towards building a relationship and ultimately forming trust in a brand. The key to connecting is knowing which emotion a website needs to trigger and how to execute it properly.

Understanding what compels human behavior and translating that abstract idea into specific elements of a website will vastly improve user engagement.

As UX designers, emotion-based websites means giving visitors more impetus to follow the journey you have laid out for them – whether it is to sign up for a newsletter, to become more aware of a brand, or to purchase a product or service.

Fundamental Elements Of An Emotion-based Website

Much like building any edifice, creating an emotionally-infused website requires a strong foundation. These are the elements to take note of:

Know Your Audience

While designing with metrics in consideration are important, numbers are not the crux of emotional websites. Simply put, user experience is about the user, not the algorithm. Think of them as human beings, not as a numbers on the site visitor counter.

To do that, find out information about general details like age, sex, country, and line of work to get a clear image of who the website is for.

Connecting on an emotional level, however, entails more than demographics. Find out who they are. What are their goals? How will they interact with your website? What are the things that they consider important? What problems do they have?

It’s vital to get to know your audience and ultimately what they feel, in order to deliver the site’s message properly. A service page, for instance, needs to communicate the feeling that you understand and are able to provide solutions to the customers’ problems.

Trigger the Right Emotion

Set your goals at the beginning. What would you like your users to feel upon visiting your website?

One of the common mistakes of designers is to target multiple emotions within the website. The trick here is to focus on just one emotion.

Is it joy, surprise, pleasure, anticipation, calm? Pick one and work your way towards achieving that one emotion, from your images, to colors, to the text, and overall tone of the website.

human behaviour emotion ux uxer experience

Use The Right Image

Visual content continues to be one of the most powerful tools in online marketing. In fact, colored visuals would compel your reader to read your content by as much as 80%.

However, if you wish to emotionally connect with your audience, you can’t use randomly Googled photos or stock images. The key here is to provide relevant and relatable photos to engage site users. Relevant images paired with content gets 94% more views than content without any relevant images.

Keep in mind that if the images you chose do not complement your message, it will cause confusion to your users which could then result in your losing credibility.

Use Appropriate Color Combinations

Color psychology looks at how different colors sway human behavior. It works powerfully on a subconscious level that a change in hue can impact the way your website is perceived, be it positively or negatively.

Which colors you choose depends largely on the emotion you want to evoke. For example, blue and green are safe, go-to colors when designing websites. However, different shades would connote different emotions.

Light and dark blue are calming colors, but go to darker shades of blue and you will evoke emotions of security and strength. Red signifies passion, green for health and wealth, black for formality, purple for elegance and femininity. Men and women would also differ in their color preference.

Always keep your target audience in mind-who they are, what they want, what are their goals-so you can pick the colors that would lead them to conversions.

human behaviour emotion ux uxer experience

Write Compelling Words

Writing is more than just stringing together words and phrases that sound edgy or is a close synonym of the emotion that you want to evoke.

There is an art and a science involved in writing compelling copy, especially for websites that want to connect with emotions. The tagline or header title, for instance, can immediately set the entire personality of the website.

Moreover, it’s important to use the proper tone of voice. Should you be professional? Should you be empathetic? Or is your target audience receptive to witty and funny lines?

When creating a website that appeals to emotions, you need to make sure that every element is intentional. Words, images, colors-these should all blend into one coherent design that would ultimately evoke the right kind of emotion to your target audience.

At the end of the day, a good emotion-infused website grabs the user’s attention, guides them into interacting with your website, is visually appealing, and leaves a long-lasting imprint on their memories.

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Emotionally Intelligent Design: Your Mobile App Needs a Soul https://speckyboy.com/emotionally-intelligent-design/ https://speckyboy.com/emotionally-intelligent-design/#respond Mon, 01 Feb 2021 10:39:02 +0000 https://speckyboy.com/?p=106951 Explore the concept of emotionally intelligent design to create more engaging and empathetic user experiences.

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We have paid a lot of attention to the functional layer of technology, slightly forgetting about its emotional one. Technology is constantly integrating into every aspect of our lives. Emotionally intelligent interactions with our devices are shaping the future of our mobile devices.

Emotionally intelligent design has positioned itself as one of the best mobile UX design principles and practices. It’s not about just evoking emotion, but also about considering it in all its unique forms when we experience technology.

How do we design technology that prioritizes a connection on an emotional level? Let’s draw on the hallmarks of emotional intelligence to create a meaningful approach to emotional design that moves beyond delight.

Emotional intelligence: a new meaning

Per Google, emotional intelligence is the capacity to be aware of, control, and express one’s emotions, and to handle interpersonal relationships judiciously and empathetically.

However, recent technological progress has made it possible to incorporate emotional recognition into mobile apps. This has given birth to a new meaning to the concept of emotional intelligence. Artificial Intelligence (AI) paired with emotionally-intelligent technology is shaping the mobile experience of the future.

Why are emotions important for business?

Emotional intelligence is one of the most critical areas that allow us to interact with each other. You might not notice it, but we are applying it almost everywhere: from ordering a pizza to communicating with our loved ones.

So, how can we ignore such a powerful thing that has such an influence on people? Especially, when it comes to business? Everyone working in marketing knows that emotion sells. Emotion implemented in design can have a deep effect and make your mobile app stand out among others. Keep in mind that we are designing for humans; we are designing for the overall experience.

To create such a product, you should know how to find the right app developer and designer that will help you build a long-term relationship with users. You’d also want to be aware of the incremental costs that accompany the app development process and the essential considerations needed to manage them.

So How Will EQ be Incorporated in Mobile UX?

Our devices are becoming even more sophisticated. They collect and analyze data from various inputs such as the camera, audio, or physical sensors and use AI techniques to detect emotion.

Emotionally-intelligent mobile user experience can be split into three key areas.

  • Natural language processing.
  • Facial expressions recognition.
  • Analysis of physical signals.

Natural language processing

Man has always wanted to be able to communicate with technology more naturally. Recent developments in NLP (natural language processing) have made this possible. We’re talking about a new type of UI – conversational interface. That’s what blends conversation and emotion together.

Today you can find only two major types of conversational interfaces on the market – chatbots and voice user interfaces.

Much more than a chatbot

A new generation of chatbot has been born – artificial neural networks that recognize patterns in speech.

A great example of such a technology is Xiaoice – an advanced NLP chatbot created by Microsoft which you can find only on the Chinese market today. It can use sentiment analysis and adjust phrases and answers based on positive or negative cues of its human analogs.

Xiaoice app can learn and remember the details from your previous conversations and re-use them in the future. Today it’s used by over 40 million people.

robot blue sky

The important feature that makes Xiaoice stand out among its competitors is the ability to recognize emotions from text. The chatbot can respond with empathy and sensitivity. When you interact with the app it responds with suggestions that haven’t been programmed before. The ability to learn is what makes this chatbox exciting.

Voice analysis

Yes, a bot can understand what you’re feeling by analyzing your vocal intonations. One of the most famous applications that allows for emotional recognition from voice tones is Moodies Emotions Analytics, developed by Beyond Verbal.

It can decode a spectrum of emotions while listening to your conversation in real-time. This app is what can bring interfaces and user interactions to a higher level.

Facial expression recognition

Facial expressions are the most powerful tools people have to express themselves. Facial recognition is used mostly by social networks for automatic detection of your friends from photos. It may be very useful while creating an emotionally intelligent design.

Let’s consider how Facebook use emotional intelligence in its design. The ‘Like’ option was extended to the full spectrum of reactions to let users share their emotions explicitly… and to give designers and marketers emotional data too.

animated emojis

Of course, there are plenty of questions about the privacy of this technology – not everyone will be happy if this “emotional” information is used by corporations and third parties. However, facial expression recognition is still integrating into the technologies and forming new approaches to UX/UI design.

Analysis of physical signals

Today’s technology doesn’t just interpret our emotions. You might be surprised, but your mobile device can become your personal coach and help you achieve emotional well-being. Imagine, your phone understands that you’re stressed and provides tips on how to cope.

There are two products on the market using sensors to read your pulse, blood pressure, and skin temperature to define your emotions – Feel wristband and Spire. It’s incredible, but they can suggest you recommendations based on your emotions.

Why do we need to respect emotions in design?

More data about our emotions doesn’t mean a better technology experience. In our attempts to create truly great emotionally-intelligent design we will face plenty of challenges that will change the way we think about design.

Today, designers are focused on functionality of design. However, designing for emotions requires a different approach. The technology is moving to the point where the product designers will develop a greater overall sensitivity to emotion by collecting data, mapping it to emotions, and evoking those emotion in various ways. That will make creators understand what people feel when using their products. And make them respect user emotions in design.

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Exploring the Impact of Emotion in Web Design https://speckyboy.com/impact-emotion-web-design/ https://speckyboy.com/impact-emotion-web-design/#comments Mon, 23 Jul 2018 10:01:00 +0000 https://speckyboy.com/?p=78269 For us designers it is sometimes a hard pill to swallow, but our beautiful work is useless if they do not serve the goals of our clients. And for every...

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For us designers it is sometimes a hard pill to swallow, but our beautiful work is useless if they do not serve the goals of our clients. And for every client, the first order of things to do is to attract visitors to their websites and products.

Times of aggressive digital marketing (ads, banners, and pop-ups) are gone. Today’s web users, even millennials and seniors, expect their browsing experience to be “clean” and aesthetically pleasing. Look at how much the search volume for ad blocking software has increased over the last five years.

With ad blockers installed on every other device, we all have to disband with the simple go to options and look for ways to advertise and sell products, services or ideas with more sophisticated instruments.

One such instrument is known as Design for Emotion – a psychological approach to design, that aims to invoke the intended user with emotions, and anchor the visitors to your website’s objective.

For example, if we were to design a website to promote a soft drink, we could do it in two ways:

  1. Put the product and brand on the forefront.
  2. Put the product and brand in the fitting emotional entourage.

Imagine visiting a site and viewing an image (or video clip) of young people playing volleyball on a sunny beach. Even if you are not a big volleyball fan, the emotion of how much fun these people are having would instantly resonate with you. And then, when one of the people refreshes with a cold drink, you can’t help but feel an itch of thirst in the back of your throat as well.

beach volleyball

The aim of the image or video was not to promote beach volleyball but to sell the soda brand. However, it did not just hit you like a train but was brought to you gradually and unobtrusively, through the emotion of fun and spirit of the game.

Levels of Emotional Comprehension

Designers have studied the emotional impact of websites since the early days of Web 2.0 when complex animations and lightweight clips gradually took over the virtual space. “Designing for Emotion“, a book published by Aaron Walter in 2005, quickly became a bestseller and a tabletop guide for many web designers of today’s generation, including myself.

In his book, Walter identifies the three stages of emotional engagement of a typical website visitor, they are Impressed, Intrigued and Involved.

1. Visceral Level: “Impressed”

The first impression is always subconscious and is interpreted by our brain automatically, regardless of reasonable judgment. When we visit a website, we instantly give it either a “thumbs up,” or a “thumbs down.”

And based on that initial estimation, we will continue to positively perceive all content on that site. So, it should come as no surprise that a good visceral design must only invoke the “thumbs up” reaction.

2. Behavioral Level: “Intrigued”

If something looks cool at first sight, our brain tries to analyze what it is and how it works. This triggers our behavioral patterns, and we begin to get emotionally excited about something we like. So, the second step of emotional design would be to make your design inviting for further investigation.

When the visitor is intrigued, they won’t be able to resist scrolling down, following the link, or even clicking a call to action.

3. Reflective level: “Involved”

This is the highest level of our cognitive thought processes. This is when we analyze and make logical judgments about the things we are seeing. The website user is drawn to this level by the previous two, and at this point, all the cards must be put on the table by showing what the product is, and why it’s useful for the user.

In their head, the user will understand the site’s intention to sell the product, but due to the positive emotion they have experienced, this intention will not be perceived as hostile.

So, as you can see, design for emotion aims to invoke a chain of psychological reactions. Firstly, hook the user with the wow-effect, then make them eager to explore further, and lastly, bring them to an understanding of what exactly the fuss is all about.

Now, let’s take a look at what tools contribute to creating emotionally engaging visual designs.

Components of Emotional Design

We will look at the three obvious inbounds which every designer uses to create visuals for a product or brand, and try to analyze them from the perspective of designing for emotion.

1. The Brand Book

If we are aiming to sell the brand with emotion, we have to first study the rulebook of that particular brand. A good brand book or style guide will contain color schemes, fonts, grid alignment principles, do’s and don’ts of advertising space placement, and so much more.

You have to presume that the brand identity already has some built-in emotional sense. Many designers will take that sense and expand it to the whole site. In the end, they will have one big mega-logo instead of just a website.

example adidas brand ad website ace 16

A better approach is to extract the brand essence from the book, but put it between the lines, rather than at the forefront. Leave the logo in the top left where it belongs, and devote the rest of the space to things you want the users to associate the brand with.

2. Colors

On a general level we all know what the colors represent. Red is danger, aggression; blue stands for calmness; and green for permission, freedom, nature. When designing for emotion, color tones are much more important than raw colors. Making the tone darker or lighter can drive the intended emotion in various directions.

Below is a short video that features the discography of Ben Lukas Boysen, but without any sound. All emotions are portrayed with colors. Without hearing the music, we still get a subconscious emotional feeling for every song.

Also, you must keep in mind the cultural peculiarities of each color. In Japan, white is the color of grief, and to people of the Middle East, yellow is often seen as disgusting. Here is an interesting and informative piece on what the colors represent in various cultures.

3. Entourage

Emotions are much easier to invoke by the entourage than the brand itself. The brand has to be put into the environment or circumstances, in which it is likely to be appreciated the most by the viewer.

One of the best examples is a refreshment on a hot day. We rarely consume soft drinks just by desire of heart. But on a sunny day, during a vacation, when laying on the beach or hanging by the pool, what can be better than a cold drink with thirst-quenching bubbles?

perrier ad large branding emotion

Emotional design turns casual users into fanatics, ready to tell others about their positive experience,” concludes Aaron Walter, one of the founding fathers of emotional design.

Conclusion

Truly, every website is all about the experience – visual, sensual, informational or simply fun. If the website you create provides one of these experiences, then you can be assured that it will make visitors want to come back again and again. And regular visitors to your client’s website is the best way to invoke the most appreciated of all emotions – client satisfaction.

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The Emotionally Intelligent Web: How Will Machine Learning Affect User Interaction? https://speckyboy.com/emotionally-intelligent-web-user-interaction/ https://speckyboy.com/emotionally-intelligent-web-user-interaction/#respond Sat, 07 Apr 2018 09:03:20 +0000 https://speckyboy.com/?p=91733 One of the biggest technological revolutions in recent history has been the advent and increased precision of machine learning. Artificial intelligence (AI) is ushering in a new era of the...

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One of the biggest technological revolutions in recent history has been the advent and increased precision of machine learning. Artificial intelligence (AI) is ushering in a new era of the “emotionally intelligent web.” Emotional intelligence has never described machines until now – it was a feat scientists believed outside the realm of possibility.

Yet as computerized simulations of intelligent behaviors become more advanced, it is reasonable to say emotionally intelligent machines will disrupt industries in the near future. One such industry is web design.

The Emotionally Intelligent Web

First, let’s delve into the emotionally intelligent web – what is it, and how are people using it? Emotional intelligence is the ability to manage relationships with others and understand emotional information. According to Daniel Goleman, a science journalist, emotional intelligence has five main characteristics:

  1. Self-awareness. The ability to recognize moods, emotions, and drives within oneself, and their effects on others.
  2. Self-regulation. The ability to control disruptive moods and impulses, and to suspend judgment and think before taking action.
  3. Internal motivation. A passion or determination to work for internal reasons, such as an inner vision of what is truly important in life, instead of external factors like money and fame.
  4. Empathy. The ability to understand the emotions of other people. Empathy is the skill of treating people according to their emotional makeup.
  5. Social skills. The ability to manage relationships and cultivate networks, finding common ground with others and building rapport.

At first look, these five components seem impossibly human. After all, how can a robot have internal motivation without a heart, brain, or soul? How can a chatbot have empathy when it has never experienced what a human has gone through? Thanks to greater quantities of data and sophisticated technologies to interpret and use this data, AI has begun to crack the code of emotional intelligence and finally react like a human.

The emotionally intelligent web connects with users on a deep, emotional level. Websites that are emotionally intelligent should give users a good impression, and a positive visceral, or gut, reaction.

Today’s web designers already implement the characteristics of emotional intelligence in their user experience (UX) best practices as much as possible – using storytelling to convey emotion and connect with users on a deeper level. However, artificial intelligence and emotionally wise chatbots may be able to achieve this connection on a much more personal level.

Current Companies Using Emotionally Intelligent Machines

Many designers are using AI and emotionally intelligent web programming to change the way their brands and products interact with users. For example, meet Amy.

Amy is an AI-powered personal assistant who can schedule meetings using very human-like learning. First, she gains an understanding of your schedule and preferences. Then, you simply CC: amy@x.ai in your email with a coworker and she’ll handle the rest. The emailing back and forth to assign a date, selecting a time that works for you, and putting it on your calendar is all an automated process – with no one the wiser.

amy-personal-assistant-ai-bot

Amy learns and forms responses using emotional intelligence, making her incredibly human-like via email. People using Amy have even reported clients calling the office and asking to speak with the “assistant” Amy – only to be shocked to find that she is, in fact, a robot.

Amy makes scheduling meetings, interviews, and even personal tasks a breeze – without the typical commands users would have had to use in the past. Amy reads and understands emails, and knows how to respond like a human would. This is just one example of how the emotionally intelligent web has already changed the workplace.

Then there is Xiaoice, the amazing natural language chatbot Microsoft developed and launched in China.

Xiaoice runs on many Chinese services, and is used by over 40 million people today. Xiaoice is like Siri or Microsoft’s less popular chatbot, Tay. Except Xiaoice is a kind, friendly, and emotionally intelligent chatbot users can converse with like a therapist.

xiaoice-ai-bot

Xiaoice listens with emotional cognition, and can reply accordingly. Using something called sentiment analysis, she adapts her phrasing and responses based on positive and negative human cues. She can exchange deep, incredibly human-like views on any topic. She can even become “embarrassed” or “angry” if she doesn’t know much about a topic. Xiaoice is showing users what the future of AI could look like.

AI’s Potential in Web Design

Artificial intelligence has incredible potential to transform many industries that center on people – for example, healthcare, hospitality, and customer service. One recent startup, CureMetrix, is already using AI algorithms to help medical professionals treat their patients.

AI is also changing the way users interact with the Internet. “Intelligent web” is beginning to detect, understand, and react to the emotions of users. This significantly changes how websites and web designers do their jobs.

Until now, the web has been emotionless and stark. Web design deals with digital terms, without the tools to make sites more emotionally capable. Today, however, researchers have broken emotionally intelligent web design down into smaller pieces. Now web designers are implementing the abilities to detect, recognize, and react to emotional input, programming these human-like capabilities into how a website reacts to users.

The future of web design is a platform that no longer requires users to augment how they naturally communicate for machines to understand them. Instead of changing searches and commands into digital terms, users will be able to communicate the way they would with a human. As AI becomes more sophisticated thanks to more available data, the world is seeing an incredible shift – a transition toward the emotionally intelligent web.

Emotionally Intelligent Websites

Robots are one thing – emotionally intelligent websites are another. Website designers and content writers already strive to make an emotional connection with the audience. They do this with more personal content marketing, riveting imagery, and videos that hit home with viewers. Yet something has always been lacking in terms of how a website connects with its users.

Websites still demand certain actions and commands to operate correctly. With AI and emotional intelligent machines, users have a new world wide web coming.

As we move into the future, more web designers will engineer and develop sites to be emotionally intelligent. Just like the brands they represent, websites will have their unique personalities. Sites will be able to augment and reflect users’ emotions in line with a brand’s voice, answering queries and clicks the way a user might expect the brand to.

These websites will be able to tune in on the user’s emotional preferences, adapt, and react appropriately to each individual person. This level of connection and personalization with a website will significantly improve first impressions and customer loyalty.

Is it possible to build a website that can influence the emotions of users to an extent that they will feel good about their interactions with the bot – and by extension, the company? Thanks to the emotionally intelligent web, many believe it is.

Websites can already collect user data such as browsing history and react to user preferences accordingly, recommending similar items and taking other related actions. In the future, websites will be able to establish a set of emotional states that reflect the personality of a brand – creating a powerful and intimate interaction between brand and user.

The Future of Web Design

AI and emotionally intelligent chatbots are developing quickly as researchers collect and learn how to analyze massive quantities of data. Using millions of data points gathered from users and interactions with humans, scientists are creating AI machines that think and sound more human.

Incorporating AI and emotional intelligence in a website can allow a business to analyze users’ emotions, empathize with their needs, and react appropriately to the individual user.

Humanizing the web has the potential to bring customers closer than ever to their favorite brands. Soon, companies will be able to communicate their vision, missions, and goals in a manner that’s more conducive to brand loyalty and a personal customer experience.

Stay tuned for further developments in AI, emotionally intelligent web, and emerging web design practices that are transforming websites as we know them.

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