Designing for emotional connection

As part of our delivery of fully integrated brand experiences my digital experience teams employ a design thinking methodology which is founded on human centred design. This is the process by which before we can create content or deliver an experience, we must first understand who our target audience is and develop empathy for them. We try to understand there likes, dis-likes, by learning their desires, values and needs. We really need to understand the phycology behind what influences our intended target audience in order to deliver a design solution that will effectively illicit the reaction we are hoping for. We then proceed to refine our intended audience by establishing personas for them. As we then begin designing or prototyping our ideas, we always consider how what we are creating will affect theses targets. Then once we have developed concepts, we look to validate them through testing and then use the learnings we gather to evolve, perfect or refine our concepts. Depending on budget, scope and timelines these steps could be more or less involved, but we always ensure they are followed, and we design with purpose and intent to meet business objectives and resolve design challenges.

One particular project that my digital experience teams and I conducted not too long ago involved leveraging neuroscience in conjunction with Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality to determine how our target audiences emotionally felt in retail and banking environments we helped design. We explored how they navigated through the customer journey in the environments and how they consumed the integrated digital experiences within. This allowed us to truly understand how they actually felt in the space. We were able to detect comfort, confidence, happiness and pleasure and also anxiety, confusion and frustration. This analysis allowed us to then help the environment designer make adjustment to the physical design and us to evolve the digital experiences within them to improve any negative reactions and deliver better experiences. We are an emotionally driven species and much of what we do is governed by how we feel This includes our purchase decisions or when we choose to build brand affinity. It is vital to design for emotional connection and this is the key driver behind all the experiences my teams create.