Aarron Walter

Testing one user early in the project is better than testing fifty near the end.

@skrug

For every dollar a company invests to increase usability, it receives $10-$100 in benefits.

John Karat, IBM Research

This story from Walter Isaacson’s Steve Jobs biography says a lot about how usabile products change us.

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What’s clear, and it’s been said before, is that there’s an opening for a new type of designer. Someone that understands interaction design, product design and can add character to things through behaviour. A light touch. Very subtle in order to make them believable – without them being too ridiculous.

Ben Bashford’s blog post entitled Emoticomp read on »

I had a lovely time chatting with @JenSimmons, host of The Web Ahead podcast on the @5by5 network. We talked about interface design, working in design teams, and the joy and pain of critical feedback. Have a listen, won’t you?

Listen to The Web Ahead, Episode 10

In September of this year I delivered at talk about emotional interface design at Webdagene, an amazing conference in Oslo, Norway. The conference organizers were kind enough to record the talk, which can view on their website in case you missed it in Norway.

Video of Learning to Love Humans Talk in Norway

There are a host of interesting books about psychology, design, emotion, and how our brains work that informed my book, Designing for Emotion. Here’s a list of essential books for the shelves of any user experience designer, web designer, or content strategist interested in the topic of emotional design.

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UPDATE: Read what Fast Company has to say about VoiceAndTone.com

We take our brand very seriously at MailChimp, not because we are hyper brand-nazis, but because our brand is our personality. It’s who we are as individuals and as a collective. We think a lot about how to convey our personality consistently while adapting to different contexts. MailChimp’s Content Curator, @katekiefer, has been pondering how to shape the MailChimp voice while adapting tone to the emotional state of readers. We have a lot of people writing for us, and guiding them into the voice of the brand can be tricky. That’s why we’ve created a simple little website that shows our writers how to use the MailChimp voice. It’s called Voice and Tone.

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Nearly four years ago I stumbled onto a topic that I just can’t get off my mind. As we’ve started to share more of our personal lives online and the barriers of our public personas have begun to crumble, we’ve started speaking with a more authentic voice. The blurred line between personal and professional is starting to influence our expectations of the products and services we seek.

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I recently spoke with A Book Apart editor Mandy Brown (@aworkinglibrary) about design, psychology, branding, and finding a place for emotional design in our professional workflow. Our conversation has been published in .net Magazine.

Read the Interview

Psychologist Robert Plutchik’s research on emotion and its evolutionary origins provides fascinating insights and foundational theory for those of us exploring emotional design.

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I travel a lot, so I end up spending more time on travel booking sites than I’d like. When you’re planning for a trip there’s just so much on your mind. You’ve got to figure out your schedule, who’s going to pick you up at the airport, what the weather’s going to be like, and you have to make plans with people at your destination. All of these things have some bearing on the flight you need to book. If you’re like me, you wait until the last minute to book your flight because it’s just such a hassle to figure it all out. It’s a lot of stress. When I go to book a flight, I just want to find one that is going to inflict the least amount of pain.

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