[UX] Understanding emotion (Definition of the emotion)
Emotion is one of the main concepts in UX definition with Usability, Usefulness, but this is very subjective and metaphysical. Therefore, I am going to focus on the actual point to design emotion in UX design work. Emotion can be defined as a sub-concept like 5 senses of human, and I am going to explain the actually designed cases in UX.
(Translated in Korean: Link)
1. Introduction
In this posting, I would like to state the definition about Emotion to understand UX better. Some people define this as 'Affect'. In the point of view, they define Emotion as a sub-definition of Affect. They break down the concept as Emotion, Impression, Personality from Affect, but I would rather explain it as Emotion because you know most of people can't distinguish them of each. I think that is for the research but I don't meant that's not necessary though.
I tried to approach to define the concept for the real work. In this article, I focused on how to make it clear for the work more than just how to define it in detail like a research approach. Anyway, emotion has been studied as much as Usability, so if it needs to be discussed, I'll do that in the blog someday.
As I stated UX before, I defined UX with 3 concepts, Usefulness, Usability, Emotion. Emotion is one of them and it is very related to how to understand people's thought when they interact to UI. You can also figure out the definition in the dictionary. Emotion is something which people feel with their sense.
I was just wondering how I could explain Emotion easily. This is what I really have focused on, by the way. As I found out the concept in the dictionary, I wanted to explain it with something to feel with human sense. I thought I could explain it more objectively with human sense.
In fact, human has 5 senses. They are sight, hearing, smell, taste, touch. Some people add 1 more sense, and we call it six sense. However, you know six sense is not approved yet and it can be explained with human sense commonly. Therefore, I don't want to tell you about this when I define the concept, Emotion.
At this point, I am going to define Emotion with 5 senses, and try to talk about how to use the concept when we work in UX.
2. Sight
Sense of sight is something related to the feeling when we see something. Recently we can see two sorts of home button on smart phones, and those are surely distinguished visually.
I am not interested in what the manufactures want to appeal, but I would like to say which shape of the button is more attractive to you. (By the way, home button is a button to end of the process on smart phones but you know sometimes the process is not end perfectly though. Anyway it gives us that kind of UI.)
Let's go back to the question. Have you decided it? I think this question is very subjective. Some people feel attracted to the round type of the button, please refer the left side image above. Others can think the right one is more attractive than the other one. I know there is no right answer to this question but literarily something like round ones tend to make people feel more comfortable than sharp ones when people see them.
In other words, there is high probability that the round ones make people feel more comfortable when they see that. I am not sure that it is in a chance, but you can see the right one is not also perfectly rectangle. They cut the edge more like the round one. I believe they also considered this point of view.
Next, I want to tell you about the material of the product. Of course, this is also very subjective like the shape. Have you ever thought which material is more attractive between shiny one and rough one? Generally shiny metal can give you feeling which is kind of cold, but a kind of rough texture can make you feel warm.
By the way, let's talk about why people love jewel. As you know, the amount of them is very few in the world. That can be the reason but I think that is related to the character of our eyes. Our eyes easily respond light and metallic ones reflect light as well, so I believe that people like something like metallic and shiny ones for this reason. (At least, the light is not so critically dangerous like laser.)
I just wanted to tell you that we need to consider this type of stimulation and response when we want to give more impressive experience to people. However, we should consider that this approach is not always the right. For example, no one feel attracted to the metallic ones when they go to have a surgery to the operating room. (I meant you can see many metallic ones in the operating room but they won't be attractive at all...)
3. Hearing
Sense of hearing is something special compared to other senses. Especially we don't have to concentrate on the sense, so it is used to inform dangerous situations in the construction sites or big plants. That means sense of hearing is a very effective way when you give some good experiences to users without any resistance, as long as you designed it very well.
Why most of mothers try to take care of the hearing when they are pregnant? Like good music is very helpful of their babies' brain. I am sure that you have heard of it.
Anyway, sense of hearing is the sense that we can respond even when we were just inside your mothers, so I think sense of hearing is kind of instinctive and unconscious. These days hearing is used to naturally give more positive experiences. We usually call it Sound UX, and it is used for the marketing area somehow. I am going to treat the topic about Sound UX next time though.
Thus, which sound do we respond positively and what do we think about that? Highness and lowness of sound can be said by pitch when we hear the sound. What the pitch is high means high note. What will you feel when you hear the high note? Yes. It will be so sharp to your ears, and that must be unpleasant. However, how do you think about opposite one? If the pitch is low, you won't feel unpleasant about that a lot. Of course, you know what do we do with this principle. Mixing the notes all of them properly is the best practice to make a good user experience in sense of hearing. In short, there is no reason to use high note when we make a good user experience. (I bet you surely know when you make people pay attention, you can use with it.)
In another case, we can make the sound with various notes. We expain it as harmony. Generally, when the sound is perfectly fit by the exact harmony, we can have a nice experience compared to the other case. For example, think about the sound when the ghost appears in a horror movie. Have you ever heard of the beautiful harmony from that?
In detail, we can devide chords into major and minor ones. In this case, major chords give you better and brighter feeling when you hear them. For instance, most of dance music is made by major chords more than miner ones. (Only special one is making dance music with minor chords in Korea. This is not so common in the world. I never mean that I look down on Korean cuture, by the way. )
Furthermore, If you distinguish between natural sound and machine sound, which sound do you feel more comfortable? I bet you already know the right answer about that. Especially, some people who go to night club can feel better when they hear machine sounds, but this is highly able to be a rare case to most of people.
Finally, If I mention the pattern of sounds, how can we use this melody pattern to make goood experiences to people? Have you thought why almost commercial is made in 30 seconds? In 30 seconds, copywriters should catch your eye with creative ideas. They sometimes use background music to do that. In this case, the music is very simple, repeated, and easy to remember. This music makes people remind the commercial easily, and this is a very common case to give a good experience to people.
We can think about many things when we consider sense of hearing at work. If you provide good experiences to your users, why don't you consider this well. I hope this can be realistic for your work.
4. Smell
Sense of smell is one of the easily tiring sense who we are having, and you know losing your smell means the time that you die. This sense let you know how healthy you are or not.
Mostly this sense is developed for animals more than humans. They can find a feed, and they check their territory each other with the sense. In this case, if sense of hearing is one of the senses that you can recognize without any consciousness, sense of smell is one of the easiest senses that you can remember.
Of course, when you remember something with your eyes, that is the best thing that you remember longest and surely as long as you are conscious. As I mentioned above, this sense is felt tiring easily from the stimulation. That's why it is very hard to make the same response from the same stimulation, and it is also difficult to distinguish if the smell is the same or not.
Yes. it is. You know this sense seems to be very instinctive. Oh yeah. we can also say every sense is instinctive because we use sensory organs for that on our body. How is this sense applied for our life?
Have you ever heard that some stores make you remember their unique smell in the store and it makes you visit there again with your memory that you had ever been? After I knew this, I tried to check how many stores have their own and different smell. Well, I couldn't believe such a many places have different smell, and that is not new for me any more, and this is truly believable.
How do you think about perfumes? There are thousand of perfumes, and I bet you have heard about pheromone. Hormone is a secretion inside our body, pheromone is the one that is going out from our body. For animals, they can communicate one another with this. Surely, this is just a kind of non-verbal communication, but this is possible to feel their interests together with them. This is one of the interesting facts, and the perfume for men is made by smell to attract to woman, and the perfume for woman is opposite.
I think this characteristic can give a good inspiration when you design UX for a specific gender with this sense.
For example, decision maker for buying a car is a man, but one for shopping at a grocery mall is a woman. Even women are powerful influencers when they buy some clothes for their husbands. Who will you target in this case? I think if you are smart, you will kill the proper decision maker with this sense.
In other words, it seems like cheating with this characteristic of senses, but I am sure this will make users feel a good experience, and it makes them purchase with a optimistic feeling. You know there is no reason to deny this, and I think this is apparently one of the points to consider for sense of smell.
(in translating as below...)
5. 촉감
인간은 촉감을 통하여 통각,압각,냉각,온각 의 4가지 감각을 느낄 수 있다. 압각을 통해 느끼는 부드러운 느낌의 촉감은 까칠한 느낌의 촉감보다는 긍정적 사용자 경험을 제공할 가능성이 높다. 그렇지만 대부분의 감성적 장치가 그러하듯 이를 활용할때는 사람마다 느낄 수 있는 상대적 차이를 반드시 고려하여야 한다고 앞서 이야기 한 바 있다.
예를 들어 시각 장애인들의 점자를 생각해보자. 점자가 단순히 부드러운 느낌만을 고려하여 만들어졌다면 어떠할까? 이를 통해 정보를 인지하는 시각 장애인들에게는 정보전달에 문제가 생길 수도 있다. 이때는 오히려 너무 부드럽고 밋밋한 느낌의 촉감이 부정적인 사용자 경험을 제공할 수도 있게 될 것이다. 냉각과 온각의 경우는 어떠한가? 이 경우 역시 상대적으로 처한 상황에 따라서 사용자들에게 전달되는 정도가 달라질 수 있다. 예를 들어 뜨거운 냄비를 집기 전에 찬물에 손을 식히고 바로 뜨거운 물건을 잡으면 온각이 상대적으로 둔감해져 뜨거운 정도를 덜 느끼게 된다. 여하튼 이러한 냉각과 온각을 이용하여 긍적적인 사용자 경험을 제공하는데 이용한다면 사람의 마음을 움직여야 하는 상황에서라면 따뜻한 것이 차가운 것에 비해 유리하며, 논리적이고 이성적인 판단을 해야 되는 상황에서 이를 이용한다면 차가운 것이 따뜻한 것에 비해 더 좋은 사용자 경험을 제공할 것이다.
필시 머리는 차갑게 가슴은 뜨겁게 라고 하는 것은 이러한 것을 염두에 두고 나온 말일 것이다.
마지막으로 통각을 감성적 장치로 사용하여 긍정적인 사용자 경험을 어떻게 제공할 것인가에 대해서는 현재로서는 마땅히 떠오르는 아이디어가 없다. 기본적으로 인간으로부터 통증은 부정적인 경험으로 받아들이는게 보편적이기 때문이다. 물론 성적 판타지를 가진 일부 사람들에 한하여 이것이 역전되는 케이스도 있을 법하긴 하지만 보편적인 상황에서의 통각을 감성적 장치로 사용하는 것은 쉬운 문제는 아닌 것 같다.
6. 미각
인간은 미각을 통하여 단맛,쓴맛,신맛,짠맛의 4가지를 느낀다. 이 외에 매운맛을 논하기도 하지만 사실 매운맛은 미각을 통해 느끼는 맛이 아니라 통각을 통해서 느끼는 것이다. 이를 이용하여 마케팅에서는 강한 자극을 미각을 통해서 주는 것에 대해서 활용하기도 한다. 미각의 특징을 살펴보면 중독성이 있다는 것에 있다. 흔히 우리의 혀는 단맛과 짠맛에 대해서 중독성을 가지며, 이를 사용자 경험으로 활용하기도 한다. 예를 들어 많은 맛집에서는 더 자극적이고 더 중독성 있는 음식을 위해 짠맛을 통해 자극을 주기도 한다. 하지만 미각을 감성적 장치로 사용하여 긍정적 사용자 경험을 이끌어 내는 것에는 윤리적 책임이 따를 수 밖에 없다.
인간이 가진 감각적 특성을 이용하여 중독을 유발시키는 마케팅 수단으로서 활용하는 것이 정당화되는 것에는 부정적일 수 밖에 없는 것이 현실이기 때문이다. 단적인 예로 마약을 음식에 섞어서 판다면 판매자는 부자가 될 수 있겠지만 이는 사회적으로 큰 문제가 될 수 있을 것이기 때문이다. 따라서 미각을 이용하여 감성을 전달하기 위해서는 많은 주의가 필요하다.
7. 마무리
이번 글에서는 인간의 5감을 통해 긍정적 사용자 경험을 주기 위한 감성적 장치와 이를 어떻게 활용할 것인가에 대해서 논의를 해보았다. 물론 일부 주제에 대해서는 논의라기보다는 이러한 감각적 특성에 따른 경험적 논의로 주제를 제한하기도 하였다. 이에 대한 판단은 이 글을 읽는 여러분의 몫에 따라 가치판을 해야 되는 게 타당할 것이다. 당신들의 고객이 누구인지, 그리고 그들이 처한 상황에 따라서도 이를 활용하는 것은 역시 당신의 숙제 중 하나이다.
감성을 정의하는데 다양한 기준과 판단 근거를 제시할 수 있겠지만 본 글에서는 실제로 우리가 일상생활에서 설명이 쉽고 적용이 가능할법한 5감을 기준으로 감성에 대해서 설명하고자 하였다. 서두에서도 언급을 했지만 감성은 Emotion, Impression, Personality 등의 다양한 개념으로 설명이 가능하다.
이러한 개념적 접근에 있어서 한계를 갖고 있음에도 이를 제한한데는 감성이라는 것을 좀더 실체화하는 것에 목적을 두고 논의를 해보고 싶었기때문이다. 필자는 모두가 쉽게 이야기 하는 감성이 단순히 사람이 느끼는 그 어떤 것이라는 것으로부터 좀더 객관화된 기준과 설명가능한 예시를 통해서 접근을 해보고 싶었다. 그게 UX를 담당하는 실무자로서 가져야할 접근방법이라고 믿고 있기 때문이다. 이론을 실체화 하는 것이 연구자와 현업에서의 실무자의 차이가 아닐까 싶다는 생각을 하며 글을 마친다.
댓글
댓글 쓰기