SDES9211 - Integrated Design Studio 2

Assessment Task 1 - Conceptual Frameworks

Yuying He / z3453009

21/8/2014

Research on emotional design of web interface Abstract With the development of science, technology and improvement of living standards, people pursue not only materials, but also a higher level of spiritual and emotional experience. This paper will throw light on the current relationship between design and emotion, introduce feasible conceptual framework applied to interface design on website and suggest directions for an expanded and perhaps more effective conceptual model of emotional design on interface design field.

Introduction With the rapid development of technology and economy, people's lives have been improved and not only pursuing materials, but also spiritual spirits on a high new level. In the last few decades, people in society have witnessed a growing interest in the role of emotion has played in product design field and emotional impact of products on users. Emotional design has come into place and, it is currently expending in a wide range of application area. Interestingly, Interface design research is becoming significantly popular with a highly developed Internet in recent years.

Nowadays, people are more concerned about the relationship between product utility and user emotions, as it can be neglected easily. Most of the researchers claim that they have difficulty in distinguishing products on their basic functioning or quality, as a result, emotional responses are generally decisive when customers are making purchasing decisions. Initially, when a product was designed, designers intended to focus most on its features and function but the feelings between the users and the product. According to Norman, D (2004), designers should pay more attention to emotions on products and make effort to study and understand what people really need from products, as pursuing emotional satisfaction is the product design trend with the improvement of the living standards.

In the example of web interface design, usability has become the basic requirements. However, a conceptual level of demand such as emotional design attracts designers’ attention. Many advocates focus on user experience, in a way called "user-centered" design, Norman, D (1988, p118) states that product utility and quality are all based on what user needs and their interest as well, as defined “user-centered” design. According to Wilbert O. Galitz, an interface could reflect a person’s needs and interests on its design, it can be an extension of a person. Therefore, user experience can be crucial on the aspect of interface design. The ultimate purpose of these design ideas and emotions are starting from a user's perspective designed to meet the emotional needs of users, and ultimately allows the user to obtain a psychological pleasure and emotional satisfaction. User centered methodology and a product emotion design can help designer move towards an aspiration to add emotional value to a product.

Conceptual Framework It is significant to identify research directions are not only focusing on product functioning and utility but more on emotion-related issues in design. User satisfaction is certainly one of the emotions involved, but this could be embedded in historical understanding of emotions and gradually move closer to meet the emotional needs of users, starting from the old design, and strive to give user a feeling of pleasure as a whole. According to Norman, D (2004)，there are three levels on design – visceral, behavioral and reflective. The level of visceral is the primary emotion on user, at this level, the use of effects could be irrelevant, only reached striking, resulting in a strong first impression. In terms of interface design, visceral level includes colour, font, picture, layout and dynamic, which, gives the look and feel at the initial stage. At behavioral level, Designers will have different emotions in the process of their work like a sense of happiness, a sense of trust, or pain, or exclusion and so on. These emotions will accompany with user experience in the use of products. In this level, the design works that bring people function and emotional experience is particularly important, it is crucial to support user to use products to emotionally satisfied level. This level includes function and usability. Reflection level is the highest level of people’s awareness. It is the level that people's culture, personal experience and education are closely linked with a certain complexity and grow. As Norman, D (2004) states, a design should balance all these levels in order to achieve to be successful. Therefore, a good user interface design is designed to allow users to ignore the existence and allow users easy to use, easy to understand, to feel good, to use it more in their own instincts level, focusing on emotional pleasure. A great user interface design would attract user’s attention intensely so that the user could completely immerse himself into the web and stay on the site to achieve his work (Stone , Jarrett , Woodroffe , et al.2005).

-Visceral on interface design - Colour

Color can infect people and therefore users can produce different emotions according to different colors. The color attracts our attention for the first time, play a direct role in the rapid expression. Barbara. J.M (1988) asserts that Color can be significantly useful as it can help users to differentiate information with various reasons from aesthetic to the utilitarian. Consequently, color can be such a helpful tool in terms of interface design and interface interaction with users. - Font Currently, there are a variety of designed fonts on the Internet, different fonts have their morphological characteristics, and each one could bring people different visual experience. Consequently, Appropriate word combinations chosen could be more convenient for people to read and easier to understand. - Picture Beautiful pictures can attract the user's attention for the first time, prompting the user to keep watching. Many web sites will use a large area of the picture, and weakening of the area text message to get users attention to the largest extent. Moreover, text can be a decorative role in the picture, the main advantage of using picture can increase the beauty of the web site. Also, this approach is simple and effective, users can easily be attracted by beautiful pictures and stay on the site. - Layout Reasonable layout can bring users more convenience experience and emotional benefits. As a user browsing the web site for the first time, a reasonable and comfortable layout of the content on the website could be significantly important to user experience. - Dynamic Users tend to be more pleasure and content in a vivid environment with great sound and beautiful pictures. Dynamic effects on the Internet an important presentation, which is different from other media effects, allowing users to get more access to information in an intuitive meeting, while giving the user inputs for the motion picture experience. -Behavioral on interface design In the web interface design, behavioral aspects of emotion generated in the course of using the user interface, whether to get a pleasant experience in use. Therefore, the design on this level has become the key factor. In this level, the interaction between the user and web interface has become the largest manifestation, that is, the user via mouse, keyboard operation at the site in order to achieve the course of the interactive experience, experiencing a communication with the site by choosing to stay browsing or leave. -Function

Function is a principal consideration in most behavioral design. A well-designed behavioral level interface is to guide the user to complete the appropriate action, and making users easy to understand and operate. To achieve this, certain design specifications must be complied with, in particular, to respect the universal design theory. Universal design is the design for all kinds of human. In interface design, the influence of the functional versatility is especially important because it needs attract users to experience. -Usability Usability is another significant standard to design an interface on website. Ease to use can be used to measure the degree of achievement of a product to use. Dumas and Redish (1993, p4) believe that usability of a product could quickly help user to achieve the task easily. If an interface is too difficult to use it, at least could not good to use it, it might make people would ever want to use this website again. -Reflective on interface design The reflective level on the user interface emphases on stimulating user memory, allowing users to produce nostalgic and miss to the site even when they are not in use. It is interesting to note that how to make a multi-user subjectively using this site is the main concern on this level. Although the interface is very little for personal customization, many web interface designs are highly targeted to most significant part of users. Therefore, understanding most of the common user experience, caring about their memories over the years would be dramatic help of building a good web interface.

This is a children charity website, a large photo of disabled children with a good smile on the home page, making people to recall their times of childhood and beautiful memories. Although the children on the web site is disable, but he is still smile, this could arouse people’s sympathy and want to help them.

Case Studies

-Google search engine (www.google.com)

Visceral: Google search engine publish doodles for each holiday and commemorating big theme in the world. Various graphics and interesting design are more easily to

catching user’s attention, because people always curious about new stuff and creative design. Google search engine use different kinds of doodle to combine its logo, make it become more interesting, recreational and friendly, leaving great impression for users. Behavioral: The primary function of Google search engine is search information. So in index page of Google, there is only search bar and its logo. Such a simple design can make every user know how to use it even at the first glance, it touches base with user and predicts what users want to do Reflective: Because of the usability and creativity of Google search engine, bring a pleasant experience to users. Compared to other search engine, people are keen on to use Google to achieve the searching result. -www.calm.com Description: It is a website that helping people relax themselves.

Visceral: The interface design of this website is simple and fresh, not many elements on the interface, just only a big photo decorates the whole screen. Animations will be replaced every few minutes and they are all beautiful natural scenery. It really help people to release stress in a relax environment and experience inner peace and mental pleasure. Behavioral: Though click the button on this website, its very functional and easy to follow, the primary function of this website is to help user relax themselves and relieve the pressure. Reflective: After attempting to follow the instruction, it is really helpful to relieve the stress after a full day work or study. The site strongly interacts with audiences and allows users to enjoy the animation in a easy environment. This site uses sound and animation to

create a peaceful world, people really felt like being in the nature of them, resulting in physical and mental relaxation.

-Facebook

Visceral: The interface design of Facebook is very clearly and conciseness, the use of font are suitable for this website, in terms of layout, register information were put on an obvious position that clear for the first users. Behavioral:

Because it is a social website, so the primary function of this website is keep connections with friends. Besides, users can post their thoughts and upload picture to

updates his current status and share with all his friends. The site has clear module distribution and easy to follow, users experience comfortable using it. Reflective: In terms of reflective level, Once users have started use Facebook, they are very easy to rely on Facebook, because there are all your friends on Facebook, so that young people almost every day now login in Facebook and update his current status and the information, checking status of their friends as well. Conclusion In this paper, I have tried to formulate a critical approach on emotional design by proposing a conceptual framework, which is based on Norman’s theory, it includes three levels of visceral, behavioral, reflective. Only from different dimensions to the use of emotional design can be truly "user-centered". The emotional design will apply to interface design in order to attract the user's attention and meet the user's emotional needs, achieving high emotion and high-tech balance.              

Reference Norman, D.A., 2004, Chapter Two (pp. 35-60); AND Chapter Three (pp. 63-98), in ”Emotional design: why we love (or hate) everyday things”, Basic Books, NY Norman, D.A., 1988, Design of everyday things. New York, NY: Currency Doubleday. Dumans,J.S. & Redish, J.C., 1993, A practical guide to usability testing. Norwood, NJ: Ablex Publishing Corporation.

Barbara J. Merier., 1988, ACE: a color expert system for user interface design, p117-p128

Galitz, W. O., 2007, The essential guide to user interface design: an introduction to GUI design principles and techniques. John Wiley & Sons. Stone, D., Jarrett, C., Woodroffe, M., & Minocha, S., 2005, User interface design and evaluation. Morgan Kaufmann.

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