(Book Review) Designing for Emotion, 1st Edition

Overview

Review Published: December, 2018.

From design leader Aarron Walter comes an examination of how UX teams can create truly memorable solutions for their audiences through the use of emotionally-resonant designs.

Starting with the general principles of how emotion and memory interact, the author moves on to show how design teams can leverage those principles, and shares specific strategies for implementation.

Rating:

4 / 5

(Good Content, Entertaining Presentation)

What does this score mean?

Difficulty:

Beginner (Content is well written & presented in a conversational tone).

Length:

109 pages.

Where to Buy It:

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What's Good

Presents a clear hierarchy of user-needs and how they interact; a clear relationship of the different types of user-needs is established, and the author pays careful attention to provide ways to meet higher-level needs without compromising the lower-level ones.
Lots of great examples; in addition to outlining principles and techniques, the author gives clear examples of each type of emotion-based design so you can see them in real-life examples.
An approachable guide to designing for emotion; the author does a great job of laying out designing for emotional effect in a very clear way, and progresses from principles to details for implementation very smoothly.

What Can Be Improved

Doesn’t include an explicit explanation of the highest level of user needs in the hierarchy; while the author presents a comprehensive hierarchy of user-needs (based upon Maslow’s “Hierarchy of Needs”), it glosses over the highest level of “self-actualization/meaningfulness” needs by including them in a general “pleasurable” category, and an expansion of this would make for a compelling 2nd edition.

NOTE: For the curious out there, you can find a slightly more complete model of needs outlined here in Ward Andrews’ “The Experience Success Ladder: How to Create a Meaningful Experience”.

The Bottom Line

A unique book that should be in your design collection; encapsulating the complex underpinnings of emotion-based design is a difficult and complex job, and the author has done this very well in an accessible package of 109 pages.
For beginner to intermediate UX designers looking to give their work polish; while it could be even better with an expanded explanation of higher-level user needs, this is a great book you should have in your collection.
A valuable read for optimizing designs; in today’s competitive marketplace, giving users the very best experience is critical, and this book is a great guide for how to do that with empathy, wit, and humour (all for around $14).