The difference between an ordinary product and a captivating product is emotion. People, your customers, have emotional desires as well as the need to perform tasks. This book attempts to provide an argument and a how-to guide for how to make emotions flow from your product — from the ground up.
Emotion based opportunities exist for all products. Not just iPods.
There is a difference between manipulating emotions to sell a product versus providing a product with emotional benefits that a customer truly values. Can a product authentically provide emotional benefits?
Supported vs Associated Emotions
Supported emotions are evoked by the product itself. A sense of excitement, adventure, power, and passion are all supported by a well-designed sports car. Second path is that of “associated” emotions. A tobacco company may suggest that its cigarettes will make consumers feel more masculine and self-confident. The product itself does not create these feelings.
Associated emotions have historically been the prime focus of generating emotions in customers. Associated emotions may be manipulative, unfulfilled claims intended for profit. Though superficial, they are not however necessarily bad.
Not all ads are based on associated emotions. Ads are valuable in that they create awareness of a product and its benefits, both functional and emotional.
Despite little difference in the actual cola products, the emotional differences are real and valued by customers, even if superfluous. Coke and Pepsi spend on ad’s annually, generating emotional value to create perceived differentiation among commoditized products: value made real. But it does cost them 100s of millions of dollars to do so. Coke had a century of investment in associated emotions!
This book though is primarily about supported emotions.
Products that deliver supported emotions directly do the work of advertising without the cost of advertising. Associated emotions that echo the product’s supported emotions can magnify the customer’s emotional connection to the product, reinforcing the benefits that customer receive from the product. This is critical for the brand too. Ad’s should leverage and build upon emotions that are actually engendered by the product.
Product Emotions
Many companies have long treated emotions as something to evoke after the product is built in order to make the sale.
Emotions that powerfully engage customers are those that are core to the very reasons to make the product in the first place: because it will be a product that customers value. A product built to love.
Possibly the ultimate “how it makes me feel” product is music. No functional need: it is all about emotion. Music makes you feel happy or melancholic; energetic or restful. Music can connect you to memories and experiences. Emotion of music is integral to many experiences, such as movies.
Many firms recognize that emotions matter, but they attempt to use emotions rather than provide emotions. Unlike emotions meant to provoke a quick sale — product emotions are designed to endure for the lifetime of product use.
Emotion is what causes people to talk about products. Word of mouth!
Product emotions must be designed! Understanding the value of product emotions will not simply transform your marketing strategy but changes the product strategy and perhaps the mission itself. Every detail of a product can be used to provide valued emotions. Even packaging!
Product Emotion Strategy
The model has three steps:
- Determine appropriate emotions for the product. What emotions resonate with the customer and the company?
- Craft emotion strategy. Synthesise emotions into strategy.
- Translate strategy into emotion-based features. Design touch points.
Based on research studies, there are over 130 terms that describe emotional responses to products — excited, hopeful, confident, worried. But many emotions are similar and can be grouped together. Ex — secure is similar to steady, assured, safe, and invulnerable.
This product makes me feel ….
- Independent (not reliant): freedom from constraints, feeling of self-sufficiency
- Secure (not vulnerable): feeling safe, low anxiety, assurance
- Confident (not uncertain): self-assuredness
- Powerful (not incapable): feeling of control
- Passionate (not apathetic): engaged, fascinated, enthusiastic
- Compassionate (not neglectful): sympathetic, nurturing
- Content (not envious): satisfied, at peace
- Optimistic (not depressed): positive outlook towards future, all will be OK
- Joyful (not sad): elation, vigor, a good mood
- Proud (not embarrassed): feeling of effectiveness, of competence
- Sensuous (not undesirable): arousal, stimulation through one or more senses
- Adventurous (not routine): curious, desire for variety, surprise
- Honorable (not inconsiderate): trust, believability, wholesomeness, fulfilling norms of righteousness, honesty
- Luxurious (not sparse): feeling of being well cared for, comforting
- Connected (not lonely): feeling of belonging, being included and accepted
- Distinct (not common): feeling unique, distinguished, differentiated
These are building blocks of a product emotion strategy.
A variety of methods can be used to assess people’s emotional desires. Surveys. Trained professionals may observe people to elicit and infer emotions (ethnography). fMRI scans.
The eMAP process suggested in the book uses the product emotion categories to enable the designer to proactively tap into specific emotions and to bring about these emotions through a product emotion strategy that is realized via product features — aesthetic, functional, and otherwise.
Below is a filled eMap for an engineering synthesis software used primarily by PCB designers.
The eMap process helped the company articulate the emotions it wanted its customers to associate with the company: customers should feel smart, enabled, powerful, collaborative, and distinct. This strategy started driving the development of several new innovations in an industry that had seen little development.
Next step is to connect the product emotion strategy to product touch points: points of interaction with the user’s senses.
The Emotion of Form And Touch Points to Create It
The design of the product form should not be random. It should involve thought, research, and a deliberate emotional connection to the customer. Visual identity is a powerful way to evoke valued emotions in customer. Like the Harley’s V-Twin engine!
What is potentially so powerful, and often missing from unsuccessful products, is an alignment of the visual identity and the product emotion strategy. The process of creating successful forms comes from translating the product emotional strategy into a visual form language in the product.
For new companies, a visual identity can be strategically designed and thoughtfully planned, providing a means to communicate the company’s product emotion strategy. Some new companies are so focused on getting a functional product to market that they miss this powerful long-term opportunity.
Noticed the power of emotions in buildings?
Steps to translate emotions to touchpoint features:
- Identify touch point attributes that would engender each emotion.
- Integrate into product design features
- Test product with target market
- Iterate until product effectively engenders emotions.
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